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Blank leaves added during restoratkHis may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / II se peut que ceitaines pages blanches ajouttes lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, kxsque cela etait p» aignifla "A SUIVRE". la aymbola ▼ aignifia "FIN". Mapa, Plata*, chart*, ate, may ba fllmad at diffarant raduction ratio*. Tho*a too larga to ba antiraly includad in ona axpoaura ara filmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar. laft to right and top to bottom, aa many frama* a* raquirad. Tha following diagrama illuatrata tha mathod: Laa carta*, plancha*. tablaaux. ate. pauvant itra fllmte 1 daa Uux da rMuction diffiranti. Loraqua la documant aat trop grand pour atra raproduit an un *aul elich*. il aat filmt t partir da I'angla *up4riaur gaucha. da gaucha i droita. at da haut an baa. an pranant la nombra d'imagaa nAcaaaaira. La* diagramma* auivani* illu*tr*nt la mtthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 motoconr rksolution tist chart 'ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 Ifl^ ■ 2.5 ip.2 I.I llil£ 1.8 1125 mil 1.4 1^ 1^ m ^ APPLIED IM^GE Inc 1653 Eo)t Ma,n SUeef RoctmtBr, Hew I'oric 1 (716) +BJ - OJOO- Pfion (716) 288- 5989 - fo- 'VOY^p ON THE YUKON ; AND ITS XRIBUTARIES :-»: L t'-i- ^:l^m:^ m ■*-K '•i*! \-^- \ !^ >■ I |i- ■-■■■>■., ^r:- HUDSON STUCK t^m •■^hf^ ol^^- \ s< VOYAGES ON THE YUKON AND ITS TRIBUTARIES BOOKS BY HUDSON STUCK, D.D.. F.R.G.S. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THB .\aCCNT or DINALl otk.."—Liltrary IHfit. U\ \>.<" I '\ ! 4 ^ ' ■* i ili ni"}'i: >\ U A fi VOYAGES ON THE YUKON AND ITS TRIBUTARIES A NARRATIVE OF SUMMER TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR OF ALASKA A ''1^Z_ BY HUDSON STUCK. D.D.. F.R.G.S. AUTHOR or "THE ASCENT OF DENAU (MT. McKINLEV,," ..JEN THOUSAND A DOG SLED," ETC. MILES WITH WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1917 * 10 ! 2 0117 i ComtOHT, 1017. IT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Fubliibcd Novembei, 1917 WALTER HARPER ARTHUR WRIGHT AND JOHN FREDSON NATIVE AlASKAN YOUTHS, WHO DURING THE PAST TEN YEARS HAVE BEEN ENGINEERS AND PILOTS OF THE LAUNCH "PEUr.N" AS WELL AS DOG-DRIVERS AND TRAIL ATTENDANTS ON MANY THOUSAND MILES OF THE AUTHOR'S WINTER JOURNEYS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF FAITHFUL AND KINDLY SERVICE PREFACE I /■- PREFACE is useful, if it be useful at all, in convey- ing to the reader some fuller notion of the nature of the book he holds in his hand than the brevity of the title- page permits, so that he may have guidance as to whether It be worth his reading or not. This book, then, while quite complete in itself, is written as supplement and complement to "Ten Thou- sand Miles with a Dog-Sled," and forms therewith a survey of the interior of Alaska under the totally differ- ent aspects of winter and summer. In winter one travels with the dog team almost wherever one wishes; summer travel ,s confined to the waterways with which interior Alaska IS so liberally supplied; so that a book on river voyages may really deal with the whole country so far as the summer is concerned. Since this book may have readers its predecessor had not. It IS well to explain that it is a sober attempt to de- scribe the country and its people, without any ulterior ends whatever. It has no drum-and-trumpet purpose- it does not boost and boom; it is no "Nation in the Mak- ing" book, no "Frontier Wonderland" book; it owes no inspiration to chambers of commerce or allegiance to railway propagandists, official or otherwise. It does not "leap from crag to crag with loud and jocund shout" along the Yukon River nor sound the loud timbrel o'er VIII PREFACE Bering's dark sea. Such tasks may safely be left to the visiting journalists, of whose books on Alaska there is plentiful supply. It is now thirteen years since the author began his residence in the interior of Alaska, and by far the greater part of the time of that residence has been spent in al- most continual travel. The present season is the tenth during which the launch Pelican has traversed the waters of the Yukon and its tributaries, and the total distance she has covered is close upon thirty thousand miles. The original plan of the book contemplated the transcription of a series of journeys from the log of the launch and the author's diaries, in much the way that "Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog-Sled" was composed, and the title was determined upon at that time. But when the plan came to the execution the author found that the subject did not readily lend itself to such treat- ment. He has therefore preferred to take the reader right down the Yukon River from its source to its mouth without much specific reference to the voyages of the Pelican, and this journey constitutes the first part of the book. The journeys which the second part of the book de- scribes were made on the Alaskan rivers tributary to the Yukon, the "side streams" as they are generally called by river men, though they are themselves great rivers, and a chapter is devoted to each of the more important ones. All of these streams except the Chandalar have bee.i traversed again and again by the launch, and in- PREFACE ix cidents are often culled from several such journeys and incorporated in the one which the reader is invited to take. Here, as indeed throughout the book, the author has availed himself of any sources of information to his hand that might add to the interest of the description, but his own diaries have been the chief source because it has long been his habit to note therein whatever attracted his attention of local history or tradition as well as the de- tails of voyages. In the extraction and digestion of such notes care has been exercised to verify and supplement what has been given of dates and cir-rumstances of record, and in the course thereof he has read over again, he be- lieves, every published account of Alaskan exploration except the Russian. It has been borne in mind, however, that the chief purpose of this book is a narrative that should interest the general reader and convey a just impression of the country and its inhabitants, and in some cases a brief sentence, a date or a name, may be all that stands for hours of such reading, or there may stand nothing at all. Scientific instruments, such as thermometers and barometers, are said to be least reliable at the extremes of their scales; so it may be said that what a man writes is least valuable when he is writing up to the limit of what he knows, and lessens in value as it approaches that limit. It follows that to deal thoroughly with the literature of any subject it is not only necessary to read a great deal, but it is also necessary to be content not to use a great deal that is read. X PREFACE The exigencie* jf authorship at a point within the Arctic regions, in the absence of all books save the com- ?non books of general reference and such special books of the north as he has diligently collected in the last few years, ni?y perhaps plead the author's excuse for some of the faults he is quite conscious the book contains; the intervention of i winter-sled journey of three mont'is' duration between the despatch of the first part to the printer and the writing of the second, so that in the w) it- ing of the second he has been unable to refresh his mem- ory of the first, may account for some lack of co-ordina- tion, some repetition, which he fears a careful examination will disclose; while the unfortunate circumstance that he is so situated that he cannot read a paged proof of the book without delaying its publication for a whole year, he asks may be remembered should the volume not match the record of its predecessor in being free from printer's errors, and, in particular, should the reader be annoyed, as the author is always annoyed, by finding il- lustrations not placed against the text they are intended to illustrate. *" Here, with submission to the reader, is no apology for scamped or hasty work — there can be no apology for offering such to the world; the book has been prepar^-d with all possible care, has been written and rewritten; but there are several particulars in which the author would have been glad to be more precise, or more posi- tively assured, had the means been at his command. The author has no apology to oflfer for the freedom with which he has expressed his opinions on many mat- PREFACE xi ters which engage his interot and concern; he has had opportunity for careful ob ervation and reP .tion ar.d they are not hasty or ill-cnsidered. The reader will make his own estimate of their worth. Beyond his obligations to the authors he has cited in the text the present writer has no acknowledgments of literary assistance to make, save to a lady in New York who presents the a nirable and very rare com- bination of a highly cultivated woman and an expert stenographer and machine-writer. The care she has bestowed upon his manuscript is of the kind that fees cannot compensate, and as one who, in his time, has suf- fered many things of many stenographers, he offers his grateful thanks to Mrs. Kathleen More. But if this be the only obligation of a literary nature under which he labours, there is another obligation, without which the book could not have been written at all; and for leisure and convenience for writing even amidst the disturbance of removal from a house under- mined by the encroaching waters of the Yukon River, for every possible assistance and relief of a domestic kind, the author is profoundly grateful to Doctor Graf- ton Burke, the medical missionary at Fort Yukon, and in even higher degree to Mrs. Burke; and here makes affectionate acknowledgment to them both. Fort Yukon, Alaska, Junt, 191 7. CONTENTS InTKOOUCTORV OlAnER '"■ I PART I I. Th« Ufpm Yukon I8 II. The Uffer Yukon-Fortymile. Eacle. and Circle 5, III. The Yukon Flats 90 IV. The Lower Ramparts and Tanana „, v. Tanana to Nulato '49 VI. Kaltao. Anvik. Holy Cross, The Pimute Portage. Marshall . . '71 VII. The Delta Country, Bering Sea. and St. M.chael 198 PART II VIII. The PoRcuprNE and the Chandalar ,j, IX. The Tanana River . 262 X. The Koyukuk River 3'2 XI. The Chaoeluk Slough. The Innoko and Iditarod Rivers ... 364 Index . . 389 ILLUSTRATIONS The Ptlican reaching Eagle . The inside passage The ruins of the town of Beiinett ' The Five Finger Rapids . Dawson, the Klondike, and the Yukon f , .. ' The town of Eagle '"^ ^"''■'" f™» "■= Moosehide Native children at Circle City I The Yukon Flats ... ''■'■•■ Play encan,p.ent of Indian 'chndren,; Fort Yukon ' A gathenng thunder-storm on the Yukon 'I little mother ' ' The town of Rampart Yukon River, within »k= i "'' '™'f ramparts . . T;:zr:::::;r:7"'--^— ■ . --eyarda?..::;:?^:—-- 1 he Kokerine Mountains The town of Ruby in its «„,,.;„;;, ' ' I-owden . _ ^ ■ . The Bishop Mouniain' near the Koyukuk mouth At .he site of the Nulato Massacre of .85, A fish-wheel on the Yukon River ' ' ■ The Mission buildings at Anvik ' ' ' ' ' A native fish-camp on the middle Yukon" The Roman Catholic mission and «ho„, ,, Holy Cross A native graveyard on the lower Yukon ' The Russian Mission and the church Towing barges of merchandise up the Yukon The diversions of the squaw-man fmnlijpitct FAtrifG Pace Moun tain i6 34 SO • 7i 88 ■ 94 ■ 94 • 96 • io6 ■ «34 • 136 ■ 138 ■ '44 '44 156 i6j 162 166 166 '74 '76 180 ■ 88 188 '94 '96 200 t ir i I xvi ILLUSTRATIONS Facino Paob One of the maze of waterways near the mouth of the Yukon 204 The old Russian blockhouse at St. Michael 21J Native types 216 In the upper ramparts 236 At the entrance of the lower ramparts 240 At the Rampart House— one foot in Alaska, one foot in Canada 240 Looking down the ramparts from the Rampart House 244 The native village and mission at Nenana 284 The Mission buildings and potato-field at Nenana 288 A native fish-camp, Nenana 292 The great fire at Fairbanks in 1906 300 The rapid rebuilding a few days after the fire 3°° The Bates Rapids 306 The Pelican near the mouth of the Koyukuk 3*4 Eskimos on the river shortly after the break-up 314 In the cut-off. Hogatzakaket Mountains in the distance .... 318 A native encampment on the Koyukuk River 324 A baptism on the river bank 3^6 The Mission buildings at Allakaket 33^ The fire-making contest at Allakaket 342 Indians coming to the Mission 34^ Freighting on the upper Koyukuk 354 Doctor Loomis vaccin^.tlng natives on the Yukon 366 On the Innoko River 374 An Innoko River mother 37^ The beginnings of Iditarod City 380 Iditarod City and the Iditarod River 382 On the Iditarod River 3^6 MAPS A fraction of the Yukon Flats — compass survey by William Yanert . 122 Map of Alaska ^t 'nd of volume PART I " J J '111 I VOYAGES ON THE YUKON INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER . Jrrz".:'„'i:ir -°™ *'"• h™- . . ^"^ °' channels between iclanj„ j the mainland, known as the "Insirp. 1 '"'' no more than twn nr ,1, . Passage," with of the Pac fie OceTn r ' "" "'"^ ''' °P^" -^" briefly. "" '' encountered, and there but There are three and only three ..,.1, in the world: alone the M '" P^'^'^g" coast of Chile in enrel 9 7!*" '°'^'' ^'""^ '^e -de Passage of h 'Sh ^ k"""' "' '"'' '"■ In all of them a llrrf ^ 7""" """^ ^'^^'^^ ~^«- the ocean swdl anT lalf % ."''"'^ ^'"" ^''^"" f-™ and wildest dtc:;ti : t t^hT^ °' '^ °'''"^ of them the coast !« . T *''^"'''°'^ toute, for in all ' I ALASKAN COAST SCENERY are many who have visited both the Norwegian and Alaskan coasts, and the consensus of their opinion would probably give the palm to the Scandinavian scenery for its more varied charm and the much higher latitude into which it ascends. The Norwegian shore is very well known and has been described a great many times. The best description which I know of the Chilean coast is in Sir Martin Conway's book, "Aconcagua and Tierra del Fuego," and he considers it as yielding in interest to the coast of Norway. But as he sketches that rugged, precipitous, forested coast, threaded with waterfalls and gashed with glaciers, of Messier Channel and Smyth Channel to the Straits of Magellan, the parallel with the Alaskan coast grows more and more striking. Pages of his vivid description might be transcribed without the alteration of a word and would serve as an ad- mirable general account of the Inside Passage. The Alaskan coast is not wrapped in such constant gloom and cloud, though at times it can be foggy enough, and it has far greater interest of picturesque native popula- tion, as well as the mining and fishing enterprises of white men, with thriving towns and settlements, which the South American coast wholly lacks, but the physical characteristics are virtually the same. There is no gain, however, in attempting to set up a rivalry between the attractions of different places, and appraising the comparative picturesque value of this and that feature, as I have heard men do between the Alps and the Rockies, for instance. It will generally be found that they who are really appreciative of the EARLY NAVIGATORS 3 one, become upon acquaintance most highly apprecia- tive of the other, and certainly they whose love of noble wild prospects has led them across the Atlantic to the Norwegian fiords, will be they who find the greatest delight ui the Inside Passage. Even its most enthusiastic admirers, however, must be willmg to admit a certain monotony in a continuous thousand miles of scenery all of the same kind. "Always fine, no doubt, but always fine in the same way," as Conway writes of Smyth Channel. It is therefore well that the Inside Passage possesses other than merely picturesque interest; that it has historic interest; and the traveller is well advised who provides himself with books in which the history of these parts is set lorth. We are on the track of the great navigators of the eighteenth century as we pass through these waters, on the track of the two greatest of them all, Captain James Cook and Captain George Vancouver, and if the voyage be extended to the westward before or after the rive* journey is made, as is often done now, the track of still another will be crossed— Vitus Bering It will add immensely to the interest of the trip if the work of these bold seamen be understood and followed. Espe- cially is this the case with George Vancouver. Fro"> Puget Sound to the Lynn Canal-that is to say, the whole stretch of the Inside Passage-the whole coast teems with the names that he applied. Cook's " Voyages " may be had in many editions, but Vancouver's "Voyages" are long out of print and very expensive. I cannot If, 4 SOURCES OF INFORMATION understand why in this day of cheap reprints no one has republished Vancouver's "Voyages." However, Pro- fessor Meaney of the University of Washington has issued a most careful and painstaking volume* in which he has traced Vancouver's names over a considerable oortion of the coast and has incorporated almost one volume of the "Voyages" into his text, with elucidating notes and many illustrations. It is a thoroughly modest and scholarly piece of work and should be in the pos- session of every intelligent visitor. If in another edition the work could be extended and the same care given to the remainder of the coast, with some notice of Post- lock and Dixon and Meares, the whole would constitute a complete historical commentary of the coast that would satisfy the needs of the cultured traveller. The "Coast Pilot," with detailed charts, may be had in Seattle for fifty cents, and is also an interesting companion to the voyager. Another government publication, that may be had for a like amount if not indeed for the ask- ing, "The Geographical Dictionary of Alaska," will answer correctly many a question concerning the origin and meaning of names, both on the coast and on the Yukon, that steamboat captains and others to whom they are commonly addressed are unable to answer. If instead of the latest "best-selling" trash, and a pile of trumpery ten-cent magazines, the visitor will thus provide himself, he will carry away with him a much more graphic recollection of what he has seen, and will find that he has added to his permanent knowl- • Vancouver'! "Ducovery of Puget'i Sound" (The MacmilUn Co.). INDIAN MONUMENTS edge of the history and geography of his country-which .8 worth while, even on a holiday trip book tl"*" ""!, "' "'■"''" ""' '"•"P^'" °^ '»-' P'"=nt book to provide an itinerary of the sea voyage, but smce nearly all those who visit the Yukon approach by way of the Inside Passage, it ha. not been'though out of place to say a few words about it journr Th' ""''"■ ^'^ => --""^^''V -Pressive journey. The memory of its placid waterways, the s vage majesty of its towering mountains, the mystery of ,ts mnumerable gloomy inlets, the gleam of its loftT dram them down to the water's edge, the dense, dark uxunance of the velvety forests threaded with the hvmg sdver of the waterfalls, will long remain to gladden he m.„d s eye of him who has intelligently observed them. Nor w.ll the uncouth pageantry of the native monuments be readily forgotten, the gules and vert and azure of pnmmve heraldry displayed in the totems or clan ensigns that were erected in front of their dwell- ■ng''; grotesque animal carvings gaudily painted, but often rendered with an admirable vigour, and more- significant certamly, than much of the modern heraldry of note-paper and teaspoons. Those who are interested m that significance may obtain from a clergyman at Wrangel a pamphlet with a popular exposition thereof or they may send to the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- Z^n' I '"'"" '°"' '"'^ '"'"'='' monographs. The totem-poles are rotting away in the rank wetness of the climate and no more are made to-day; for the Thlinkets 6 NATIVE DEVELOPMENT havt been educated out of regard for their ancestor* by teachers who for the most part had no ancestors and therefore cannot see anything but heathenism in dis- tinctions of family descent. There is no scorn more withering than the scorn of a man who does not know who his grandfathers were, for "the pomp of heraldry." The steam-roller of our civilisation is slowly passing over these people and flattening out any picturesque prominence of custom and costume into the dead level of modern uniformity. Those who would see what yet remains of the dignity and parade of savage life, of mas- sive-timbered communal houses flanked and surrounded by the bold blazonry of eagle and whale, of bear and wolf and beaver, of gorgeous and grotesque ceremonial dress and accoutrement, must not linger. It is nearly gone now. These Indians of the southeastern toast of Alaska, and of the coast of British Columbia, had advanced much further in the arts and in the organisation of life than the Indians of the interior of Alaska, with whom we shall cc-ne into contact presently. A kindlier climate had given them greater opportunity; it is highly prob- able that impulses from the more developed rac •• of the Orient had come to them from time to time in the shape of castaways blown right across the Pacific to these shores. Copper they knew and used with much skill, obtaining it by barter from tribes farther to the north who picked up the "float" in the beds of the rivers. They had marched some stages in the path of racial development, and one dreams that they might CIVILISATION AND DEGENERATION 7 : ave been led along that path, retaining what thry had themselves to painfully gained, into a civilisation that should have been their own. The ferocity of their war- like nature tamed (as it was tamed) by Christianity, lU enterprise, its ingenuity, its skill, its boldness and courage, might have been drawn into channels that would have given them some distinctive place in the world, however small, instead of being merely merged and lost in the slush of black-and-tan humanity that frmges the tide of the white man's civilisation wherever he goes. It is only a dream: others have doubtless dreamed It, but I do not know of any place in the world where such a dream has been realised. I think "Father Dun- can" of Metlahkahtla had some such dream, but after a life-long struggle, circumstances have been too strong for him. What he has accomplished he has accom- plished, and there are few living whose memorirs gc. far enough back to grasp the whole of it, but his plan of a separate people, kept distinct from intrusion and themselves kept from intruding, working out their own future on their own island, has already lapsed. The fate of these seacoast Indians is not in much doubt. Another element of interest the Inside Passage has that will appeal with more force to most visitors than regrets over the passing of picturesque barbarians, and that IS the glimpse which from time to time is afforded of the permanent occupation of the country and utili- sation of its resources by the white man. The numer- 'M 8 COAST INDUSTRIES 1 II i ous and ever-increasing canneries where the spoil of the sea is taken with a lavishness that justifies itself by complacently assuming the spoil to be inexhaustible, yield an annual revenue to British Columbia operators alone of fourteen million dollars, as I read in the Atlantic Monthly the other day, and the Alaskan coast is quite as thickly studded with them. But the centre of interest so far as this permanent occupation is concerned is Juneau, where quartz gold- mining on so prodigious a scale is under way that it is confidently predicted by the engineers that in a few more years this district will be second only to the South African Rand in the amount of its production; with bodies of ore of sufficient known extent to maintain the production for a century. Within a radius of a few miles from Juneau, on both sides of the Gastineau Channel, are to-day gathered nearly a third of all the white population of Alaska. The visitor wl.o passes along this coast, and then goes to the westward and sees the towns of Prince Wil- liam's Sound and Cook's Inlet, will have seen what Alaska has to show of permanent white settlement. In all the vast interior there is as yet no white settle- ment that does not depend directly or indirectly upon placer gold-mining, and nothing that depends on placer- mining can be called permanent. The sea voyage begins with Vancouver and ends 'vith Vancouver and never gets away from Vancouver's courses and Vancouver's names. His charts were still in use in these waters a decade or so ago, and, as I am VANCOUVER'S ACHIEVEMENTS 9 informed, are even in use yet, when the navigation of unfrequented inlets is attempted. It is wonderful to think of the careful, exact wo'k a. nc ;; hundred and thirty years ago by the sailing vessels a.id • aip's boats under his command, threading the labyrii th of these waterways, with their tides running like mill-races, laymg down the coast-line of the mainland and of the islands, sounding the channels, determining the geograph- ical position of all important points, and carrying the survey all along the shore. He was not only a great navigator, he was a great hydrographer, and he was more than that, he was a great gentleman, as his treat- ment of the natives wherever he came in contact with them, in the South Seas as on the Alaskan coast, testi- fies. We begin with him at Puget Sound, which is named for his lieutenant, and we end with him at the Lynn Canal, which he named for his birthplace in Essex. I am not sure if it be the same Lynn, but the name al- ways recalls to me the last lines of Tom Hood's power- ful poem, "The Dream of Eugene Aram"-a poem that used to give me creepy feelings in childhood: "Two stem-faced men set out from Lynn Through the cold and heavy mist, And Eugene Aram walked between With gyves upon his wrist." I must not get upon the subject of Vancouver, how- ever, or it will be long ere we reach the Yukon. The sea voyage ends at Skagway, on the Lynn Canal, and a short day's wild ride on the White Pass Railway will take the visitor to the summit of the coast range ,o MT. DEWEY by a series of bold gradients and will drop him down again on the other side in the valley of the Lewes or Yukon River. But before leaving Skagway the visitor of any robust constitution whose baggage contains other foot-gear than patent-leather shoes, is urged to spend a day in the ascent of Mt. Dewey, a fairly easy climb of some- thing less than five thousand feet, and get the superb bird's-eye view of the country which that summit af- fords. Let him dismiss from his mind any worry about steamboat connections; he has come to the gateway of a country where he will take his chance with the rest of us of catching a boat or missing it, all schedules of sailings and confident telegraphic assurances being equally vain and void. If he must wait, then he will wait; and storming and denouncing are idle; and wait he almost certainly must at one point or another. To recognise and accept this situation will bring peace of mind; any other attitude will but uselessly disturb it. The climb of Mt. Dewey is by a well-defined foot- path through the dense woods to one bench after an- other, and each bench bears a lake and the lakes are connected by sparkling mountain torrents that fall again and again in white cascades. When the upper lake is reached, the woods are past, the climber flounders through some boggy ground for a short distance to emerge upon the rounded mossy shoulder of the moun- tain, thickly bestrewn with boulders, and a short and easy climb in the open brings him to the coastwise face. Without proceeding to the top (though that additional VIEW FROM MT. DEWEY II labour IS well repaid) he will gain, from this lofty coign, m the course of a deliberate survey of the scenes before h.m. a better general grasp and knowledge of the characteristics of this region than steaming up and down the Lynn Canal from Juneau to Skagway for a thousand years would bring him. "Why will people .magme that they have seen a country when they have but passed along a channel at the very bottom of It? asks Conway. He that has once viewed New York from the top of the Woolworth tower has cer- tamly a better conception of its situation and environ- ment than he that has viewed it only from the pavement of Wall Street and Broadway every day of his life. What a magnificent prospect of rock and ice, snow and water, spreads out before us! worth incomparably more than all the visits to evil-smelling fish canneries and deafenmg quartz stamp-mills in the world. Here we are m nature's own gigantic workshop; let us linger awhile and see what she is doing. I always sympathise with St. Peter on a mountain top; I want to build tabernacles. .u !l ^rVf "'' ^' °"'' ^'"' '^^ ^'^ '°"g"« °f the sea that looks like a river, up which we have passed in the steamship, occupies its narrow submerged valley and extends to the right to its visible termination at Dyea Across It, rise mountains as lofty as that on which we stand and the basin within their shoulders and sum- mits holds a vast snow-field. From a low place in the rim of that basin there is detached towards us a small blue-white glacier, which melts half-way down the steep Mil ' 12 SNOW-FIELDS AND GLACIERS mountainside and dissolves itself into a number of glit- tering rills that stand out like white pencifmarks against the dark moss on their way to the salt water below. But the great mass of the snow is discharged in the op- posite direction, for this snow-field, one judges, is one of the many gathering basins of the Muir Glacier, that mighty river of ice, twenty-Pve miles wide just below the confluence of its chief tributaries, which, by John Muir's estimate, contains as much ice as all the eleven hundred Swiss glaciers combined. "Though apparently motion- less as the mountains, it flows on forever,"* writes that Grand Old Man of tlic American mountains, the earliest pioneer and explorer of the orography and glaciography of these coasts, who has recently gone from the lofty heights with which he was so reverently familiar on earth, to wander amongst the mountains of the Delect- able Land. From below, the snow-field is invisible, and as the basin reveals itself to us only when we rise almost to its level, so would all the tops of all the mountains we have seen along these hundreds of leagues of travel, reveal similar basins which they surround and guard, could we stand at similar advantage to them. These are the vast reservoirs of the snow, and the glaciers along this coast exist because every winter the moun- tain basins receive more snow than is melted in the summer. The constantly superimposed and aggregatmg weight compresses the nethermost layers of snow to ice, and then forces that ice down through whatever * "Travels in Alaska," p. 264 (Houghton, Mifflin, 1915). I THE SKAGWAY RIVER ,, readiest channels of descent it can find, cutting those channels out age by age, deeper and deeper, g'indin! the.r rock beds and rock sides to powder and thu ^r d 6 k cd .cy. Here is the whole story of the glaciers aj^a glance, comprehensible as it neverTan be frorbe! Turning to the right, and perhaps descending a little to ga,n the full view, there lies the valley of the Skag^ ' R.ver, the nver itself a tiny thread visible on^ here^nd over the tidal «ats of the del^a^^ ;b?C;ar f Z much el e at Skagway, so much else that we shall see on our mland journey, merely reminiscent of bylone commercial activity. oygone of i"°'''"f "P '*"' ^''^g^^y ^^"-^y. we see the route of the railway on which we shall presently rise out of .t, and the shoulders of the barrier ridge tha must be surmounted ere the vallev nf tU, ■ . ■ be reached. ^ '^' '"*"'°^ ^""''y "" memories°"of''tV'""''' '"""''' °"" ^''^ '"°""^-'- that memories of the great migration of twenty years aeo Th trav lleT Tk -^ T"' '^«'" *° ""^^ '" "P^" town r M T^^ "'"'^ '^ ''"^ the remains of the town the gold-seekers of the Great Stampede built, and i i ,^ THE PIONEER TRAIL a few miles farther up the Lynn Canal, at its actual termination which we saw from the mountam top, he the remains of another town, now quite deserted; but Dyea was a busy populous place when the Chilkoot Pass was a rival gateway to the White Pass. I have often purposed crossing the mountams on foot from Dyea as the pioneers did, following the traces of their track and seeing for n.yself the difficulties they surmounted. It would be an exceedingly interestmg detour and in fine weathei it need not be more than a pleasant two days' excursion, reaching the railway at Lake Bennett where the boats used to be built and the water trave. begun, but on my journeys I have foolishly allowed myself to be deterred therefrom by the intima- tion that it would involve missing the lower river steam- boat, and so have hurried on-to kick my heels for a week in Dawson. To the vigorous tourist with strength of mind enough to ignore all that is told him about steamboat connections, it is commended as an attractive variation of the accustomed route with most noble views of mountains and glaciers, and the long river-like sea channel deep down at the bottom of everything. Even from the railway train the traces of the pioneers are evident. There, winding along below us may be seen the trail their feet beat out in the moss, the rude bridges they built as the trail crossed and re- crossed the mountain streams, the remains of the road- house just below the start of the steep ascent. We are whisked along and do but catch glimpses, but they suf- fice to conjure up a vision of heavily laden men toiling LAKE BENNETT ,. ht„v ^r'^'^T'^ """l" »heir burdens but their heart buoyed with the expectation of wealth. The summit and the international boundary are crossed at the same time, md proceeding dowT thi gentler slopes of the Canadian side of the range we Ire ^ready m the Yukon watershed, and within a fel mis ^ ht fl .1' ^'^"""'- ^'^"''"^"^ Schwatka gave h s lake and the one just above it, Lindeman, the names hey bear. It was on Lake Bennett that Schwatka c. n- tructed and launched the raft on which he made a famous voyage more than half-way down the Yukon. Lake BenlZT^' '" ^ ''"'"^" «^°^"P''") --^ Lake Bennett (for James Gordon Bennett) are the ZTu T '^"'°"- ''" ^^''^ «--« '^^ ^-es o the gold-seekers are thick. The town of Bennett stands on the shore of the lake, completely deserted, a church with a tower and sp.re amongst the abandoned build- ■ngs. The railway killed this place, for until the railway Yukon and would be still, and the railway would end here but for the three and a half miles of obstructbn wh.ch the Miles Caiion and the Whitehorse Rapds constitute. Steamboats plied on the lake and down the nmety-five miles of lake and river to the caiion in th «ry years of the Klondike rush. Indeed when the railway rendered this steamboat service unprofitable ^eoats were taken down through cai5on and rapid, to VVh tehorse and were used on the Yukon, though it would have been practically impossible for them to return ii i6 MISSIONS TO THE NATIVES The head of Lake Bennett is but fifteen miles from the summit of Dyea Pass, whence the first trickling tributaries of the Yukon arise. The great river is thus unique amongst the great rivers of the world, as Ogilvie points out in his "Early Days on the Yukon"* (a book full of information and interest), in being navigable within easy sight of its ultimate source, to its mouth, a distance of twenty-five hundred miles, save for the three and a half miles aforesaid; and many a raft and rude boat of whipsawed lumber passed through them, as well as the steamboats that used to ply above them. At the foot of Lake Bennett lies the little town of Caribou Crossing and in its near neighbourhood is a considerable Indian boarding-school conducted by the Church of England. Since this is the beginning of mis- sionary work amongst the natives of the interior coun- try, it may interest the reader to know that along the whole of the Canadian Yukon that work is in the hands of the English Church, and that as soon as the boundary is passed and we are in Alaska again, the work is taken up by the other branch of the Anglican Communion, the American "Episcopal" Church, and by it exclusively continued for another seven hundred miles of the river, or until Tanana is reached, after which it is divided be- tween the Roman Catholic, the Russian, and the Episcopal Churches, they alone of all religious bodies having any work amongst the natives of the interior. So we have come to the waters of the Yukon, and a ride of a few more hours, very tame compared with the •Otuwa: Thorbum and Abbott, 1913. '111 m I DISTANCES ON THE YUKON ,7 excitement ot crossing the range, will bring us to White- horse where we shall take shipping again. One hundred and ten m.les of rai s has brought us from salt water to fresh and we launch ourselves for a journey of twenty- heart of Alaska to salt water once more. Distances on the Yukon accepted ,wen,y.,„„ hundr" d mM„ of nrihl, l' '"tV"^ it' '""""""'y for there I. a stretch of but r,Zv\!.Z I' '"'="' ^'°"' Whitehorsej- Discrepancies like this wil be Z^d ^r " "^ Z"" '""' ''"««" 'h™. that any one knows he^x" c. ieZh „f . " '^l^."' ' "'" "<" >»«"= of any river ?-how i it de e „ 3 , is htr""- ^^" 'I "" '»" l'"«"> takes the axis of the river haT U to .1 J ""'?'"' '"'' ' Schwatka but the steamboats d7"ot t 'If/j ^ 'r,,'"":; ""= f?" "''''■"' "' ''• the other and always on the outer eZ J r ''^""' ''^ ""« "'<'' to fore, if Schw.tka's es"imatrh ' j '""' ''"« '° 'I" '"'■k- There- river front ,ts he d to ri„th t^a? I T/ T "^ •""'' ''<'"'' «h^ Schwatka's estimate o naZb lt,7i, t '''.' """i" '""'' '"«"'• miles. Dall estimates the dil^^nce ol' F^tt Yuk™ "oTht T' '.''■"^■"^ hundred and six miles; the ste mhmt .™„ '"„".'" ,™ mouth at nine eighty. Again, if di.,t nee , vXd " .oT"/ ""V ' '"" ''""'''«' '"^ it will differ with different craf and w-7|iffer,^ h "'" '";'" «""«'• tance travelled goms up the river h, 7 l^ r • ""'' ""'" "'"''ly if ^i*- gasolene launch ope^rated by" h" writer 'd' '"' !"""}"• "■« tunnel-stemed and can skirt sand-bars in si k Z"l" it^ad o7 "b'T '"^t" "^ """ around the curves. Again, when the riv.^rh "u'"""* '•" "channel" chatjnels. which one sholld be Taken -'he 007°," ""u" f *"" " <'''«" So the reader must expect to heL' =„J } ' "' '■" ''«'««t.' £r':s^^dS£S- ^^- --"=:: ^« -^ep.„aterorsteamra-te^^-»^— ^t^ ' I I ||i I 1 1 .Vi CHAPTER I THE IPPER YUKON Now that the adjacent copper-mines are in opera- tion, Whitehorse has promise of prosperity that could never come to it merely as the starting-point of Yukon navigation: indeed as the town has stood a number of years it has presented conclusive evidence that a rail- way does not necessarily bring business and that even the terminus of a railway may be a very dull place. The railway rates across the mountains are so enor- mously high that several attempts have been made to compel a reduction, but since it is an international road, with one end in the territory of the United States and the other in Canada, it is not easy for either government to handle it. It must of rourse be borne in mind, if one would be just to the White Pass Railway Company, that the Yukon Territory and interior Alaska export nothing but gold-dust, which does not demand freight- cars for its transportation; the "haul" is only one way, and the trains that bring in supplies of merchandise of all kinds go back empty— saving the recent output of copper ore. It must also be remembered that all the winter through the road is operated at a great loss. It is only during the season of navigation, and that is less than four months in the year, that there is any freight traffic at all, or any passenger traffic to speak of, yet WHITEHORSK ,^ the road i, kept open all the winter at great expense be readily believed, that so great was the press of traffic du....g the building o. the road, and so great the demand lor .t8 service, at any price, that section by section, as It was bmlt us receipts paid for its construction, and that for the first year or two after its completion it paid over and again for itself. Of late years, it is easy to see that Its revenues have very considerably decreased with the decay of mining on the upper river. There is little to say of Whitehorse: it has a bar- racks of the Northwest Mounted Police, two or three struggling churches, the usual row of shops along the water-front-and two hotels. The hotels have one standing joke. They live mainly upon tourists, and upon residents of the two territories going and coming, and very few people are guests of more than one night m the morning, when time for payment has arrived and room rent and meals have been reckoned up, comes' the question "Did you take a bath .V' The lady from the East bridles and perhaps blushes at the question and answers, "Why of course I did." "Another dollar tnen, is the comment on the answer. The last time I was in Whitehorse a train full of hungry tourists had been deposited in the town in the evening, the steamboat sailing being set for the next morning, and when, after attending to some affairs I went to one after the other of the two restaurants, both were crowded, so I waited awhile and walked the streets tUl the congestion should be relieved. When I had ill PROBLEMS FOR TOURISTS I ■ secured a table, came a Swedish waitress with rudi- mentary English and a bill of fare. "Roast beef," I ordered. "Roast beef is all out," she said. "Then I'll take roast mutton," I said. "Roast mutton is all out," she responded. "Then what has that cook got.'" I inquired. "I don't believe he ain't got nutting," she replied. There was no use asking why she had not told me so at first; I simply went to the other restaurant. Here it seemed there was plenty, and I ordered some baked salmor. "Full order, or a starter?" queried the brisk youth, indigenous I judged, but surely western. Now I had been living and travelling all the winter in the East, and that is the only excuse I can make for my next question, "Is this table d'hote or a la carte?" The youth gazed at me, troubled for a moment, and then he answered with a smile: "Now you sure got me; the boss is gone to a picnic and you sure got me." Then the meaning of " starter " came back to me, and rhore ashamed of my question than the boy was of his ignorance, I be- gan an excellent meal with some very excellent baked salmon — than which nothing is more delicious when first it comes in season. It is neither table d'hote nor d la carte. You may make your dinner of beef or mutton or whatever meat may be on the bill of fare, and you may have a small portion of fish as well, if you like; or, if you be hungry for salmon, you may make your whole meal of it; hence the inquiry whether you wish a "full order" or merely a "starter" of fish. The charge will be the same in either case. But it is curious how some people chance to remain in one's mind while hundreds FASCINATING ISOLATION 2t SnH I u ''?''''' °^ '"y """^ ^ho served me with f^d all that w,„ter and spring that I was at hotel after hotel m the Eastern States, but this bustling youth with h.s ranlcgnorance and his engaging smife « WhTtl trad 17' ''°" ""'■ ' '"'"'' '"^ -"- ■'-^ •'-wn H.Vt.^ . ■ .Z ^ morning were much ad- I ecall equally well was a girl in Colorado fourteen or fi een years ago I do not remember the name of the plZr\:V "" T" ""'"''' """ ^° '^^ Spanish dav ir / .1 '°'"' •'°^" ^"'" ^•'^ *°P °f »''«'" that day t.red and hungry, and when my meal was done and ak '1^ ^ '■ ■ ' ''''' ''' '"' ^ <>-«"' f- ^he had heH P"'";;" •'" attendance. "What's this for?" he demanded, holding it in her open palm. "Why it's moment looking me straight in the eye, and tL said, 1 11 ask mother," and withdrew for that purpose while "MoTer' '"""'• „'^"""^ ''' —'' -d sai Mother says it's all right, and I thank you." Think however, of a waiter in a restaurant who actually dTd not know what a tip was ! I am afraid they are grown more sophisticated, even in rural Colorado, by Z n7th V r""!^ ''' ''' '' "^" -'l-tood in Ilaska travel, .t has become as essential a lubricant on this river as on the Atlantic Ocean. The fairly comfortable little steamboat in which we I, I' I'M M'li (1 22 MOUNTAIN SCENERY ON YUKON are berthed pushes her way up the river with a laden barge ahead of her for some hundreds of yards ere she can find room to turn around and put her barge's nose down-stream, and then we are launched on our voyage. The mountains rise on either hand. All the way up the Inside Passage we have wondered what was on the other side of the wall of mountains beneath which we sailed; then we crossed them and found out. On the other side are simply more mountains; and all through this Yukon Territory and far beyond into Alaska, we never get away from them, mountains to right and mountains to left, mountains whether one looks ahead or astern; and should one climb the highest of them anywhere one chose, and secure its wider view, still more and more moun- tains would rise before one's eyes. Of course, mountains imply valleys, and the country is seamed with them, but in general they are narrow ^nd by far the greater part of it is at one steep angle or another. It is a rugged, broken, precipitous country, well-wooded with small coniferous timber, and the water of the river that winds amongst the forested crags and bluffs is clear as crystal. Here are all the elements of picturesqueness, and indeed I think there can be few more picturesque streams in the world than the upper Yukon. Slipping along with the combined speed of the swift current and the boat's wheel we should make fifteen or sixteen miles an hour were it not for the barge, which, nearly doubling the length of our craft, gives us pause as we turn the sharp corners of the narrow channel; and he who is interested in the details of such navigation JACK-KNIFING 23 will take pleasure in watching the skilful handling of the boat; the reversing of the engines that she come down slowly to the turn, the nose of the barge perhaps just on the point of touching a bar, the sharp jingle of bells, the immediate spinning of the paddle-wheel in the opposite direction, and the swerve right across the river as the steam steering-wheel is comcidentally thrown over. When the channel is further constricted by low water, the operation of "jack-knifing" is still more in- teresting. Sometimes the available space is too small for the length of boat and barge to be turned as one; then the barge is partially loosed from one of the two cables that bind it to the steamboat, so that it drifts by the force of the current to an angle with the latter such as the blade of an open knife makes with the handle when one begins to close it, and in this relation to one another boat and barge are able to pass the turn; where- upon the cable is drawn tight again, and perhaps in a few minutes more the other cable may be similarly loosed to "jack-knife" round a curve in the opposite direction. Thus, with really admirable skill, now drifting with the current, now actually for a few minutes going up- stream against it, now with "full speed ahead" adding motive power and current together, we pass thirty or forty miles of narrow river and come to the ticklish entrance of Lake Lebarge. This lake, thirty miles long, surrounded by bold rugged mountains, was named for Michael Le Barge, like Ketchum and Kennicott, of the Western Union 24 LAKE LEBARGE t. ^i 'l(!l Telegraph Company's explorers of 1866 — of which ex- ploration more will be said later. It is impossible to tell from Dall's account whether Le Barge ever saw this lake or not. Ogilvie says he did not, but that the account he gave at second hand from an Indian was so exact that his name was afterwards given to it. Ken- nicott, Le Barge's chief, died of heart-disease at Nulato without apparently leaving any narrative of his work, and Dall, who was never above Fort Yukon, has only vague notions of the upper river. Dall put the names Kennicott and Ketchum on two lakes which he describes as the sources of the Yukon, and I found it impossible to tell if they were th*- lakes that Schwatka afterwards named Lindeman ai.i Bennett or not, or if one of them were this Lake Lebarge (for Dall thought Selkirk the head of navigation). However, the matter is of interest only to those eager to know all that is to be known about the early history of this country, with whom I must class myself, and I trust that I may be pardoned this and similar excursions into the minutiae of geographical nomenclature, for at the worst, the reader's right of skipping is blessedly inalienable, like the right < f going to sleep during the sermon in church. Lake Lebarge has other interest; it is one of the prime features of the Yukon River; it is more, it is one of the prime factors of Yukon navigation. Let us take a few minutes while the steamboat enters the lake and the prospect broadens to the wide stretch of water with its rim of rocky mountains, to consider this matter. The Yukon River opens about the loth of May, and A LATE CE IN LAKE LEBARGE 25 within a few days is clear of ice from the lower end of Lake Lebarge to its mouth. But the lalie, having little current and a narrow outlet, holds its ice for nearly three weeks longer. Interposing itself between the naviga- tion and railway head at Whitehorse and the open water, it forbids the use of the river to passengers and freight coming from the outside for three weeks after the river is free to the whole interior of Alaska and most of the Yukon Territory. Now let us go down to the mouth of the river. In Bering S-a also, the ice holds, or is pres- ent in such dangerous quantity and form that ocean- going vessels cannot approach St. Michael until well into June; and it has been as late as the 4th of July be- fore the first vessel reached that place. So there is the curious circumstance that although the river for up- ward of twenty-one hundred miles of its course is open and free, it is yet closed at its head and closed at its mouch. Once this situation is grasped it is difficult to under- stand why in the heyday of traffic when the railway was built, it was not extended to the foot of Lake Le- barge— or say thirty miles farther to the Hutalinqua Landing, which would cut out the swift and narrow and dangerous Thirty Mile River connecting the two. I suppose the railway company felt sure that it had the whip-hand of the country anyway, and would not spend the necessary money to make its dominance sure. It woula have given an open season three weeks longer, and those three ear'y weeks when the people of the in- terior, having passed the long winter, are most anxious l|:i § llW i m 26 SPRING ON THE YUKON ■fl- u 1' 'I V i. for fresh things from the outside, and will pay almost any price for them. It would have been such an im- mense advantage in its competition with the lower river route that it would probably have brought the monopoly of the traffic into its hands long before it came. The time is passed now, and with declining freights and the government railway building to Fairbanks, will probably never return, but it seems a glaring instance of a lost commercial opportunity. Moreover, this three weeks or month that the navi- gation of the river is free to residents of the interior and barred to people from the outside, is, in my opinion, far and away the most delightful part of the open season. The snow still lingers on the mountain tops, great masses of pure white cloud roll upon the blue sky; there is a freshness and vividness of vegetation that belong to this period alone; every open space is carpeted with short-lived flowers, the reeking arctic moss itself bursts into myriads of brilliant blooms; under the strong en- couragement of the perpetual daylight and almost per- petual sunshine, every green thing grows with a joyous, eager celerity that shoots up blades and unrolls leaves visibly under our watching eyes. The summer heats are not yet come, nor the swarms of mosquitoes — ^they hold their densest battalions in reserve until Lake Le- barge "goes out" and the unacclimatised blood comes in. The waters are alive with wild fowl, most of which will presently resume their interrupted migration to the arctic coasts. Spending the greater part of every summer in travel f. DANGERS OF LAKE NAVIGATION 27 upon the water as I do, this earliest navigation I find much the most pleasant of all. Some small perishable freights in haste come down by water from Whitehorse, are sledded over the rotting me Itmg ice of the lake and launched again on the Thirty Mde River; and thus the first fresh eggs and fruit and the first green vegetables come to Dawson and Fair- banks and are peddled along the river generally, two or three weeks before the first through steamboats arrive and SIX weeks or so before anything can be raised from' our northern gardens; for it is not considered safe to plant anything along the Yukon until the ice has gone out; mdeed many people will not put seed or set into the ground until the first of June. Like most mountain lakes, Lebarge is subject to sudden violent storms, and it is surprising how rough and choppy it can become. A number of deaths by drowning occurred in the early days of travel, for a man cast into these northern waters, lake or river, has little chance for his life. They are so cold that the body be- comes numb and the muscles paralysed. Moreover, as a rule, they do not give up their dead. Their tempera- ture IS below that at which rapid decomposition takes place, and the gases of putrefaction, which in most waters raise the bodies of the drowned to the surface, are not formed. Every year yet, the Yukon and its tributaries take no inconsiderable toll of human life, and perhaps nothing but an empty boat half full of water drifting down the stream will remain to arouse fears which sub- sequently prove to be well-founded. : 'Si I '» i I'll m !«l it Ml** it t 28 CANADIAN POLICE REGULATION 1^ li Here a reference may be made to the admirable system introduced by the Northwest Mounted Police when first they entered the Territory and maintained ever since. Every small boat that leaves Whitehorse has a number plainly painted on its bows, and that number together with a description of the occupants is telegraphed to all the police posts on the river. If three men should start from Whitehorse, for instance, and only two arrive at Selkirk or Dawson, they must give account of the third, and should there be any suspicious circumstances, are detained until the matter is cleared up. In this way and by a corresponding trail regula- tion in the winter, and with the steamboat lists, the police keep strict account of every man who enters and every man who leaves the Yukon Territory, and it has been a great help in securing the remarkable record for the efficient administration of the law and the suppression of crime which that organisation has made for itself here. Midway down the lake the west shore becomes particularly fine, with great towers and buttresses of red rock. On a clear still day their reflection in the water is very beautiful, but the whole shore of the lake, east and west, is rock-bound and rugged and highly pic- turesque. The steamboat shoots out of Lake Lebarge into the swift channel of the Thirty Mile River, one of the most beautiful and one of the most dangerous stretches of the whole Yukon, for it is narrow and tortuous and studded with sunken rocks. First and last many a steam- boat has punched a hole in its bottom here, many a SAFETY RECORD ON YUKON 39 scow has been wrecked. Whenever we of the middle river hear of a steamboat coming to grief above Daw- son, we ask almost as a matter of course: " In the Thirty Mile?" Fortunately, so far as life is concerned, the water is shallow, and as a rule steamboats meeting with such misfortune are able to patch the holes and prcn ceed. This and other references to accidents on the Yukon must not be taken to imply that the navigation of the river is in any general sense dangerous, for it is not I cannot recall ever hearing of the accidental loss of a steamboat passenger's life. Most of the fatalities are amongst those who travel in small open boats, though from time to time the steamboats lose a deck-hand I do r ot think there can be a river in the world, used as much as this is, that has any better record for the safety of Its steamboat traffic. And for my part I am convinced that winter and summer, on the water and on the trail life IS much safer in the north than it is, let us say in the streets of New York: I think the most dangerous crossing of the Yukon is far less hazardous than the crossmg of Broadway. I often feel that I am taking my life m my hands when I cross from curb to curb of those streets, seething with swift-gliding machines, not more merciful and far more incalculably erratic than the strongest force of water. The safety of city dwellers is a safety they fondly imagine to themselves, and the insecurity of the wilderness in their minds is but its corollary, plus a plebeian dread of the unfrequented and unfamiliar. The only advantage the city has is this, \r\ 30 YUKON TRIBUTARIES m that if an accident does happen there is prompter suc- cour; but in the wilderness accidents are far more rare and the ordinary condition of life is far more secure. At the end of the Thirty Mile there comes in on the right bank the first important tributary, the Teslin, draining Lake Teslin far to the south, which itself has affluents that rise near Ptarmigan Pass in the Cassiar District of British Columbia, a well-known gold-mining region which first drew numbers of men to the north, preceding by a decade or two the excitement of the Klondike. I have no personal acquaintance with the Teslin country, nor indeed with any of the Yukon Terri- tory affluents of the great river, but on the map it has always seemed to me that if the rule should hold of count- ing the longest tributary of a river as its true head, then these waters of the Teslin, with Teslin Lake and the streams that drain thereinto, constitute properly the upper waters of the Yukon, rather than those to which that name is nowadays applied. After the junction with the Teslin the Thirty Mile becomes the Lewes River, and is commonly so called until the confluence with the Pelly; so that the Lewes and the Pelly are said to make the Yukon, but of late years the name Yukon is applied in a general way to all the variously named stretches of the river. It must be borne in mind that tb's Yukon River was discovered piecemeal, and special n«.nes were given by individual explorers to the parts they reached, usually without any knowledge or possibility of knowledge that they constituted a continuous stream. We approach AN EXPLORERS PEDANTRY 31 the region of Robert Campbell's discoveries, a capable and adventurous agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, of whom more will be said later. Coming down the Pelly in 1842 he named the river into which it flowed (or, as he judged, which flowed into it) after John Lee Lewes, one of his colleagues in the company's service. The Big ind Little Salmon Rivers come in on the right bank shortly, with an Indian village and a little mission establishment at the mouth of the former, and then comes an important tributary on the left bank, perhaps one hundred and fifty miles below the foot of Lake Lebarge, the Nordenskiold, named by Schwatka for the famous Swedish explorer who made the first northeast passage in the Fega in 1878-9. This is one of the few names given by Schwatka on the upper Yukon that survive, and we may well be grateful for the desuetude of the majority of them. Never was the pedantry of exploration better illustrated than in the medley of cosmopolitan names of geographers and nat- uralists and ethnologists with which Schwatka dis- figured the streams and mountains of the Yukon, some of them as hard to pronounce as any Inuian name could be, and totally devoid of connection or significance. Prejevalsky and Richthofen and d'Abbadie and Von Wilczek and Semenow and Maunoir were doubtless famous enough in their generation, and some of them are not forgotten to-day, but what sense of fitness, what sense of humour, can a man have had who expected English-speaking people to use such names familiarly as place-names .? A little pains to have secured from the i 1 m 1:1 il , i I 1 14 3» YUKON CROSSING Indians their own namea for the tributary streams would have preserved to us a nomenclature always appropriate, always significant; and to my mind, even the corrup- tion of a difficult Indian name into something that Eng- lish-speaking people can more easily pronounce, is far preferable to the meaningless exotic names that have been so freely applied throughout the country. But Lieutenant Schwatka on his clumsy raft was in a hurry to get down to St. Michael, lest he miss his chance to return to civilisation, and Schwatka is supercilious not only of Indians but of Hudson's Bay people as well, with a true military superciliousness. It is up this Nordenskiold River that the winter stage route proceeds to Whitehorse, crossing the Yukon on its way from Dawson about twenty miles below the ■ confluence, at a place called "Yukon Crossing," where the touriit may see the large vehicles on runners that are employed, and the stables where the relays of horses are kept. The river has already broadened considerably since the accession of the Teslin and the Nordenskiold, and begins to be crowded with islands. Indeed the multi- plicity of islands along the Yukon is one of its char- acteristic features noticed by every traveller. A score or so of miles below the Yukon Crossing the little settlement of Carmack is passed on the left bank, with its store and its mission and cabins, and two or three miles farther the Tantalus coal-mine is reached, one of the very few that are regularly worked on the whole course of the Yukon. Here, it is quite likely, the t 1 FIVE FINGER RAPIDS jj steamboat will take another barge in tow. for it i, from tim coal-mme that Dawson is supplied. The name Tantalus w.as given by Schwatka to a bold high bluff hat the w.nd.ngs of the river bring again and again nto v.ew without, apparently, any nearer approach Ld rf "'','' ""'""• """ ''■' "=""^ -" 'in- ferred to the coal-mine in the neighbourhood. We now approach what all tourists regard as the ch.ef attraction of the upper river, the Five Finger Rap.d.s, and their passage, while quite safe to careful navigation, supplies a sufficient measure of excitement and sensation. A lava dike right across the bed of the river has been cut through in several narrow gaps, leav- ■ng the jagged, tree-grown fragments sticking up very picturesquely as isolated rocks. The channel used is the one nearest the right bank and so strait is the way and so close does the steamboat approach the rock that ■t seems to the people on the upper deck that if they eaned over the rail and stretched out a hand they could touch It. The water boils and roars, dashing its waves against the rocks as if rebellious at their restraint. In going down-stream, one is swept at such speed through the narrow gut of the channel and out upon reunited but exacerbated waters that no more than a glimpse s had ere the five fingers are gone and the tumult and tossing of the rapids below are left behind also; but in gomg up-stream one has ample time to observe care- • ully the whole interesting scene. Schwatka rightly judged that a vessel with a steam windlass could pull herself up through the channel we have come down II i 1 4, •i 111 I 34 A FORTUNATE GUESS and a permanent cable attached to a rock above the narrow chute is picked up by the steamboats and passed around the windlass drum. By this means, even with a barge, they manage to get through. Schwatka called these rapids the "Rink Rapids" after "Doctor Henry Rink of Christiana, a well-known authority on Greenland," but Greenland is a long way from the Yukon, and the five rocky towers sticking up in the river appealed more to the imagination of the early voyageurs than the erudition of the Norwegian geographer. Rink, however, must have his rapids, and the name lingering, I suppose, in the memory of some traveller familiar with Schwatka's map, was saved by its brevity and ease of utterance and applied to rapids lower down. I heard two ladies discussing the n-me when last I passed through them. "I don't see any re- semblance to a skating-rink here," one of them said, "it's too rough." "Maybe the waves looked like skaters bumping into one another and knocking one another down," suggested the other. So passes the fame of the authority on Greenland and the copious writer about the Eskimos. A continuous, thin white line running for many miles along the right bank, just below its surface, at- tracts the attention of all visitors and provokes many inquiries. It is a deposit of volcanic ash, generally at- tributed to Mt. Wrangel in the Copper River country far to the west, presumably because Mt. Wrangel still smokes. The Canadian geological surveyors, however, 1 am informed, have discovered a considerable lava ^f ! ?' Blin a Ml t 1 !tti THE PELLY RIVER 35 plug and evidence of an exploded crater in much nearer mountains to the east, from which, in their judgment, the eruption of ash proceeded. It is so close to the sur- face that it must be of comparatively recent origin, per- haps within a century or two, and I have been told that the Indians of these parts still transmit tradition con- cerning its occurrence. Certainly it overspread a wide area, for it is traceable, though not continuously, for upwards of an hundred miles. In places a double line indicates that there was more than one such eruption. Now comes the most important tributary the Yukon has yet received, the Pelly, confluent on the right bank at a curious up-stream angle— so important indeed that it used to be considered the Yukon River itself, and "Pelly or Yukon River" still appears on some modem maps. Schwatka was prepared to take measurements of the flow of both streams to determine this question, but, when he came to the confluence, a glance as he glided by convinced him that measurements were un- necessary, so considerably did the Lewes exceed. Robert Campbell's voyage down the Pelly in 1843 has been referred to. From a tributary of the Liard, he struck across to this stream, which he named Pelly after the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. At its mouth he encountered unfriendly Indians and was forced to turn back. I should like to see his own ac- count of thi.s, but have had no opportunity. In 1848 he descended the Pelly again and built a fort or trading- post opposite the confluence of the Pelly and Lewes, caUing it Fort Selkirk after that Lord Selkirk, I cannot 36 EXPERIENCES OF CAMPBELL doubt, who had made a brave and philanthropic attempt to colonise the Red River country in the face of the murderous opposition of the Northwestern Fur Com- pany, the great rival of the Hudson's Bay Company. The Chilkat Indians, however, had always acted as intermediaries between the "Stick" Indians, as those of the interior were called because of the "little sticks" which took the place of the great timber of the coast, and the white traders, procuring the commodities of the latter from the ships that visited the coast, lind bartering them to great advantage with the "Sticks" for the furs of the interior, of which the white man was ever in search. The Chilkats resented Campbell's in- trusion into their preserves and the loss of their very profitable intermediation, so a party was formed that came over vne mountains and swiftly down the lakes and streams, and fell upon Fort Selkirk like a bolt from the blue. Campbell and his companions they bound but did not injure, and proceeded to the looting of the stores and the firing of the buildings. When the de- struction was complete they released their prisoners and returned up the river, and Campbell and his com- panions floated down to Fort Yukon, where Alexander Murray was already established. When Schwatka made his raft journey thirty-four years later the chimneys were still standing to mark the site, and I think some ruins of them may be seen yet. It is said, on what authority I know not, that the Russians on the coast were the direct instigators of this raid. Had the blow been aimed at Fort Yukon there FORT SELKIRK 37 would have been some justification for their interven- tion, but Selitirk was well within the British territory. However, these trading companies cared little for polit- ical boundaries, the one or the other; their object was fur, and they were never very scrupulous as to how they obtained it. The superior vigour and activity of the British company led its agents far afield, and this ven- ture of Campbell's is a shining instance thereof. Campbell was thus the first man to explore the river between Fort Selkirk and Fort Yukon, and a published account of his journeys added that much to the world's knowledge of these parts. When the great stampede to the Klondike took place, Fort Selkirk was re-established, and it was hither that the Canadian Government sent its Yukon Ex- peditionary Force in 1898. An enormous mass of men, ninety per cent of them aliens, and by far the greater part citizens of the United States, was congregated at Dawson, and there was considerable disaflfection to the Dominion Government chiefly in connection with the minmg laws, and, I dare say, some foolish seditious talk. At any rate, the Canadian Government thought it best to have a military force at hand; so it sent this body of troops. There was never any need of their services and they were soon withdrawn. Selkirk is to-day chiefly a native place, with a mis- sion church and school, a couple of stores, and not much else. During the life of Bishop Bompas, the first bishop of these pars and during the earliest years of the episco- pate of his successor, Bishop Stringer, the present bishop. VI !,' ! li 38 CONFLUENCE WITH WHITE RIVER I i title was taken from this place and they were Bishops of Selkirk. But of late the title has been changed to con- form to the political division and is "Bishop of the Yukon Territory." One of the chief tributaries of the Pelly, the Mac- millan, is famous amongst sportsmen for the sheep- hunting its mountains afford, and Mr. Charles Sheldon in his "Wilderness of the Upper Yukon" has given a graphic account of the region and the sport. The upper ramparts of the Yukon are generally counted to begin at the confluence with the Pelly. The mountains grow loftier and the channel presses closer beside them, but the whole river has been so moun- tainous that the distinction is a little arbitrary. In the writer's opinion the most charming part of the Yukon is already behind us, for the steamboat is now rapidly approaching the confluence with the White River on the left bank, a stream which changes the whole character of the Yukon water. Above the con- fluence the river is a pellucid stream, sparkling and gleaming and revealing the pebbles at its bottom when- ever it is still enough to do so. But the White River discharges so turbid a stream that within a short distance it has completely clouded and befouled the Yukon to a total loss of limpidity that is never re- covered. The White River and the Tanana River are the Yukon's two great glacial tributaries, and their head- waters drain the glaciers on the opposite sides of the same mountains. In addition to the glacial silt with EXPLORATION OF NAME 39 which the White River is charged, Ogilvie says it dis- solves out of its banics great quantities of volcanic ash, and one judges therefrom that these deposits must be heavier and deeper in the course of the White and its chief tributary, the Donjeit, than on the Yuicon. One who has seen the Tanana, which so far as I itnow was never accused of volcanic ash, will consider that glacier drainage itself is sufficient to account for any amount of oolid matter carried in temporary solution; but the distinctive colour of the White River from which Robert Campbell gave it its name, is quite different from the tawny Tanana, and may be due to the inclusion of vol- canic ash in its solid constituents. Whatever it be, the White ruins the Yukon. All the picturesque bluffs and bold craggy mountains in the world will not restore the charm of clear water, and henceforth its waters are muddy to its mouth; and far out beyond its mouth, miles and miles into Bering Sea its mud fouls the salt water. In the middle river, which I know far more famil- iarly, are many spots that I love, many reaches with the diversified beauties of ruddy rocks and olive-green trees near by, and soaring mountains beyond; there are great gloomy depths within the Lower Ramparts contrasted in the foreground with smiling valleys, dappled with spruce and birch, cottonwood and willow, through which pretty rivulets meander, making very potent appeal to the imagination. There are perspective views where hills rise beyond hills into mountains, and still more distant mountains boldly overtop one another. ll! ■■V I i i (f: UK 40 FOULING A NOBLE STREAM !l» » % 1 1 !.. i with the broad, level river sweeping a great curve in front; scenes of a more ample dignity and a more spacious picturesqueness than anything the upper river can show. Yet I never visit the upper river without falling anew under the spell of its sparkling water, nor return to my own region without lament of a lost translucence which nothing can compensate. So I have grown to a foolish resentment of the White River. But for this stream another seven hundred miles of the Yukon would open its frank depths, naked and unashamed to the delighted eye; would "lure with the light of streaming stone," as Sidney Lanier sings in the "Song of the Chattahoochee," would mirror the skies and the adjacent rocks and trees with a fidelity no turbid stream can touch. Glaciers must be drained, no doubt, but one wishes they could find some subterranean sewer to the sea; or, since the Tanana is already their special conduit, and no conceivable addition to its waters could make them fouler — the drainage of London would not affect their colour, consistency, or potability — one regrets that some slight change in the elevation of land did not discharge both sides of the glacier-bearing mountains into the same channel. But even such change would not rid us of that deplorable volcanic ash, and 'twould be a large undertaking to reorganise the hydrography of the country. In the winter the whole Yukoii flows beneath its crust of ice as clear as crystal : glaciers cease from troub- ling and volcanic ash is at rest; but the very flood that carries out the ice brings down the mud and the silt STEWART RIVER GOLD 41 and the ash, and for weeks at a time the water is un- drinkable without filtering or settling. The White River has had some temporary prominence amongst miners from time to time, but always to their disappointment. When gold was found on the upper waters of the Chisana,* a tributary of the Tanana, in 19131 the White was the most available, though very difficult, road thereto from the upper river, and a town sprang up at its mouth, but the Chisana was in general a failure, and one more long chapter was added to the northern tale of wasted labour and useless suffering. The town died. A few miles below the confluence with the White another large river is received on the opposite bank, the Stewart, which stream was noted for its gold-bear- ing gravels ten years before the Klondike was discovered. In 1884, says Ogilvie, two men "cleaned up" thirty- five thousand dollars on these bars, and the news, when it reached the outside, brought in about one hundred men in 1886, who scattered, not only up the Stewa, . and its tributary the McQuesten, but widely over the country. This was the first small "rush" to the Yu- kon and the beginning of general prospecting for its placer-gold; they are said to have averaged one thou- sand dollars apiece, exclusively from washing sand in the summer-time; the merest "skim" mining, for deep methods of handling frozen ground were not invented until later. I have been told that most of these men * This pretty name is commonly corrupted to the ugly one of Shu-shu- an na m miners' mouths. il . 1 1« t 1 \ i ^. 1 I ■■ tii 1 s lii 4a A PIONEER HROSPECIOR were experienced prospectors and miners from the Cas- »iar country of British Columbia, then declining from the first flush of its gold production. Thirty miles or so lower down, the Sixtymile River comes in on the left limit, with a small post at its mouth called Ogilvie after the pioneer government surveyor whose book has often been referred to. The Sixtymile (these distance names, for there are a number of them, will be resolved presently) has the distinction that it was the scene of probably the first successful prospect- ing for gold in the whole country, for it was on a creek tributary to this small river that Arthur Harper, the pioneer prospector of the Yukon, found pay in 1875. The creeks of the Sixtymile were famous before the overwhelming discoveries on the Klondike eclipsed everything else. As early as the year just mentioned, this same Ar- thur Harper and two others, whose names must appear in even the most cursory glance at the beginnings of things on the Yukon, Jack McQuesten and Alfred Mayo, had started a trading-post which they named Fort Reliance, about six miles below where Dawson now stands. It was from this post that the men pros- pecting above and below it secured their supplies, and it became a base for estimating distance, and the dis- tances, in their turn, became the names by which certain creeks were known. Hence Sixtymile River, which was about that distance above, and tlie Forty- mile, about that distance below. Fort Reliance, with others in between, and beyond. THE KLONDIKE RUSH 43 But as we approach the termination of the voyage on the upperTri\«;r boats, as within a few hours we swing around a bend and the great scarred mountain— a land- marlc from the earliest days— that rises behind the town of Dawson, comes into view, the thoughts of the Great Stampede of twenty years ago swallow up all lesser matters of early prospecting and mining. The story of that great gold "rush," not of course the greatest that the world has known, but certainly the most extravagant and sensational of all such move- ments of mankind, has never been written and perhaps never will be written. A great deal, indeed, has been written about it, but in a fragmentary and, for the most, merely journalistic way, and little of it will live or ought to live. The verses of Robert Service are, so far, its most enduring literary memorial, for certainly the lurid melodrama of his novel "The Trail of Ninety-Eight" adds nothing to literature or to his fnme. It is only an episode of history but it is a striking and picturesque one. Macaulay could have enshrined it adequately in a score of pages of imperishable prose, and it is not unworthy the pen of a Macaulay. It would have found its chronicler, I think, but for the Spanish War. The minds of men were more and more turning to the Klondike, the newspapers and magazines were more and more occupied by it; Joaquin Miller, in his premature senility, had visited it (I shall never forget a lecture I heard him deliver on his return); Richard Harding Davis, I have been told, was contemplating the ,'.■■ it' if; i 4 44 A "SACER VATES" WANTED journey; when, at a stroke, the blowing up of the Maine in Havana harbour violently forced the current of the world's interest into another channel, and the Klondike was thought of and talked of no more. Of the writers which the Klondike Stampede pro- duced, I suppose Jack London, news of whose death has come to me almost as I write these words, is easily first. He was in the country, he was a born story-teller: "The Call of the Wild" is, to my mind, the best story of the Great Stampede. Yet I cannot concede that Jack London has left any literary memorial of it, for he was a writer of romances only who cared nothing for the verisimilitude of his representations. His dogs are not dogs; his Indians are more ridiculously untrue to life than any that Fenimore Cooper painted; his white men are for the most part fancy characters also. The brutal animal side of life attracted him unduly, in those days of his early writing at least, and received undue prominence. The riot of drunken lust and reckless gaming was certainly there, but it was not the whole thing, and one grows weary of dance-hall and gambling- den stories after a while. The Klondike produced no Bret Harte to record with wit and with pathos its comedies and its tragedies, its sordidness and its heroism, and therein California has the advantage. The men were there, but there was no pen to delineate its Colonel Starbottles, its Jack Hamlins. On the creeks behind Dawson were a number of debating societies, but there was no one to give us a "Society upon the Stanislow"; there was some THE FIRST GOLD 45 sort of Truthful James in every camp, but no one to put the breath of life into him. When in August, 1896, George Carmack the white man, or one of his two Indian companions. "Skookum" J.m and "Cultus" Charley, panned «,me gravel on a creek of the Trondeg River, and found remarkably go k! prospects, they little knew that they had kindled a iL„K that should set the world on fire. And Robert Ho>.I r son who had told Carmack of his recent disa v..v nn C.old Bottom, and thus set him on the journey ,,, Br,- nanza on the way to Gold Bottom, went op digpJru away where he was. disdainful of the breach of n.in, r's comity of which Carmack was guilty in not. in his turn sendmg word of the much richer discovery that ha,i been made. The news soon spread up and down the river, and Bonanza Creek and all the adjacent creeks were staked from end to end immediately. The local excitement grew as the richness of the ground appeared, and in January of the next year men on the Pacific Coast began to learn of the "strike" and to start for the new gold- fields; out It was not until August when a ship came mto San Francisco harbour with something like sbt hun- dred thousand dollars on board, which the newspaper reporters at once multiplied to two and a half miUions, that the excitement became world-wide.* gathered. Ogilv.e ,, veiy detailed on the Klondike discovery lie »!, i^ cn'trSct Hfrb^r' "■ '■"'''"'/"'; "">" ->««P-"ai.le;n.rri^ dex ml h, ;!' J^ '• " "T "' ■nformavion, but .ince it has no in- ''I 'I li 1 THE GOLD-SEEKERS , i M Men of adventurous disposition and unattractive prospects, in all walks of life, began to plan their migra- tion to the New Eldorado; small shopkeepers sold their business, clerks and bookkeepers and salesmen realised their savings or mortgaged their homes or borrowed on their life-insurance policies; in many towns through- out the United States little groups pooled their resources and started out in company, or selected some member or members to go representing the rest and covenanting to share the gains with them. Professional men, physi- cians and lawyers and engineers and even, in some cases, ministers of religion, a* andoned their avoca- tions and joined the ever-increasing throng that pressed to the ports of the Pacific on its way to the north. In a less but not inconsiderable degree Europe was affected. From the British Isles, from every country of the continent, and especially from the Scandinavian countries, men crossed the Atlantic on every steamer that sailed, bound for the same goal. Close behind the army of gold-seekers, catching up with them, mingling with them, was the army of camp followers who expected to grow rich catering to them; road-house and restaurant people, tradesmen of all sorts hauling little stocks of goods with them, liquor- sellers, tinsmiths, tailors, bakers, and barbers. And the parasitical class kept the caravans close company; women of a certain kind with their bullies and managers; gamblers, crooks, confidence men — the underworld spewed them out in thousands to take their THE RUSH AT ITS HEIGHT 47 chance of fortune where laws were lax and "everything wide open." San Francisco and Portland, Tacoma and Seattle, felt the stimulus to their trade of these sojourning and' purchasing pilgrims; Seattle in panicular, which be- came the chief port of embarkation, grew rich in the business of outfitting— not entirely to its honourable reputation if the legends that still linger in the north are to be credited. The shipping of the coast was insufficient to meet the demand, and steamboats were hastily sent around the Horn, while every ship-building yard of the Pacific Coast was working at full stretch. What was the country whither they were bent.? On the verge of the arctic regions, with a winter climate surpassing in severity the regions of the pole itself, it was walled and ramparted from ingress at one end by lofty, glacier-covered mountains, and at the other end could be reached only through a fog-enshrouded, little- known sea, and then for no less than sixteen hundred miles up a great and rapid river. In the fall of 1897, and even during the winter that followed, the stream began to beat upon the barriers of the land and to pass them, but it was in the spring and summer of 1898 that the great rush came. It was not possible to make preparations to handle such mul- titudes. They started, and then swamped, the towns of Skagway and Dyea, they swarmed like black ants up the sr ow-covered passes, laden like beasts of burden. Many turned back daunted by the enormous difficulties 111 'i r I. . 48 CLIMATE NO DETERRENT ! that loomed before them, but many passed on, and with infinite toil reaching the waters of the interior, iaunched their rude craft and descended upon the Klondike. It was not in the multitude itself that the movement was unique. Thirty thousand is the most authentic estimate of those who went to the north from 1897 to 1900. Far greater numbers flocked to California during the wild stampede of the middle of the last century; eighty thousand arrived in the year 1849; and as many as five hundred ships, deserted by their sailors, tossed idly in San Francisco Bay at one time. Australia saw an even larger migration three years later, upwards of one hundred thousand gold-seekers entering by the port of Melbourne alone in 1852. It was not in the multitude, but in the conditions, that the Klondike Stampede was without precedent. Never before had a new gold region been so remote and inaccessible; never before had such masses of men flung themselves upon an arctic wilderness, devoid of human sustenance as most men use those words. There was indeed already developed amongst the hardy men who had gone in twos and threes to the north a technique of the arctic wilderness, largely learned from the Indians. Pulling their own sleds,* living largely on the game and fish the country afforded, they made long journeys up and down the frozen rivers, over rough moun- tains, through the dense fcrob forest. They left no * V. e are disposed to be a little scornful of man-drawn sleds these days, bur fur distance covered and difftculties ova-come I do not think McClin- tock's record of lourneys made in this way in 1855 on the Franklin Search has ever been surpassed by dogs or other means of traction. PRICE OK AMATEURISM 49 records, but over an astonishingly wide area there were few streams their boats had not furrowed, few moun- tain passes their sleds had not crossed, before the world even heard of the Yuiion gold-fields. Scarce a new "strike" anywhere nowadays but reveals some traces in its vicinity of early, forgotten prospecting. But of what avail was this dearly bought wood- craft and snow-craft to hordes of men fresh from a life in the office and the shop ? They had neither time nor opportunity to learn anything, and they pitted their inexperience and ignorance, their little sheltered city- bred habits and customs, against the savageness of nature in her sternest moods and most naked fastnesses. Hundreds of them perished. They died of exhaustion, of starvation, of pneumonia. They were drowned, were frozen, were smothered in snowslides; they lay in log cabins rotting with scurvy. And those that reached Dawson herded themselves together and fouled their own surroundings with such disregard for health and decency that an epidemic of typhoid fever swept away scores of them. Other routes there were, through the interior of Brit- ish Columbia and through the northwest territories, even longer and more onerous. The Stikine route had many victims, but the so-called "Edmonton route" had, justly or unjustly, perhaps the worst repute of all. Of those who entered upon it, some took two years to reach the Klondike, consuming or abandoning all they brought with them. Some of them, passing the streams they should have ascended to reach the tributaries of the ■* '-t' ^:i m "■'Af'*Wrf' ^": 5° DAWSON TO-DAY r m '<} 1^ Pelly, went so far north that there was nothing for it but to maiie the difficult Rat portage, and so descend the Porcupine, to find themselves on the Yukon three hundred and fifty miles below their destination. Here at the foot of the massive mountain with the naked scar lies what is left of the city the adventurers builr. The flat on which it stands was partly made by the landslide to which the scar dates oack; the rest of it was made, I think, by the swift little river that comes in just above, with a swampy, sandy mouth, a little river famous throughout the world. The Indians called it "Trondeg"; in some mysterious way the white men corrupted that name to Klondike. The Yukon contracts greatly just before its con- fluence with the Klondike and sweeps in its narrow bed very swiftly past Dawson (named by Ogiivic for the surveyor-general of Canada of that day). The steam- boat wharves line the lower part of the river-front, where the remaining business congregates; the barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police, the handsome residence with its beautiful grounds of the Commissioner of the Yukon Territory, and the attractive and we'1-kcpt St. Paul's Church of the Church of England, line its upper part, with an intermediate stretch of empty buildings and boarded-up stores. I know not how to describe Dawson; there are so many substantial buildings, as befits the capital of the territory (though they are all of wood), so many at- tractive and hospitable homes, so many brilliant gar- dens, that one would gladly shut one's eyes to its ». I .'J T ra^t: r-', &l ji; 3 ^m J4 J ;'-l'' A DOOMED CITY S' steady, gradual decay. I never saw it in its full pros- perity; in 1904, when first I visited it, although only seven years old, it was past its prime. That was the year of the "rush" to Fairbanks, and boatload after boatload of people was leaving for the new camp a thousand miles away, never to return. That is the sad thing about any placer-mining town. However it may grow and flourish, however comfortable its homes and however attached to them people become, however the amenities of life may be fostered and developed, however the arts and trades may be established, however, year by year, as its market-gardens and hothouses grow more and more productive, conditions of living become more and more pleasant, the whole thing is without substantial foundation, and inevitably temporary. By and by the alluvial gold will all be gone; it is not like quartz veins that extend amazing distances into the earth and by de- terminable tests may last at a given rate of extraction for a century. There is just so much 01 it, lying in the gravels on the bed-rock of certain creeks, and when the creeks are stripped and the gravels are removed and the gold taken from them, the game is up. There is a certain modem aftermath of dredgers and steam-shovels and hydraulic jets, and Dawson is living on that after- math now, but that also is temporary; and one does not see what expectation or even hope may be enter- tained that Dawson will revive, unless quartz should be discovered in its vicinity, of which there does not now seem much chance. It is a wrench to give up a pretty home with a beautiful garden, on which time ,U f 52 UNAVOIDABLE EXODUS tr« i)f,ii HI I Hi and loving care have been lavished, and many a good woman has had a heavy heart and has wept bitter tears at the necessity of it, but what are people to do when the placers play out ? They cannot live by selling one an- other cabbages and taking in one another's washing, as some seem to imagine, nor even by fishing in the Klon- dike River, as George Carmack and !.'- Indian compan- ions were doing when Henderson vd them of his dis- covery on Gold Bottom. The am ' ities would not long be preserved in a society so supported. There is only one thing to do — get out while you can; get away to other mining-camps, to fresh dis- coveries of placer-gold, where money is plentiful and business of all kinds is brisk. The man does not matter so much; he is of a restless, roving disposition or he would never have turned to this life; but sometimes he is married to a gentle little woman who longs for a home, and starts instinctively to make one wherever she may be, and then I am sorry for his wife. In the nature of things it must be so with all placer- mining towns in the north. I will not say it must be so with F'airbanks, because Fairbanks just now is in a very sensitive stage, and there would be a howl from its newspapers and I should be called the Prophet of Despair again. Fairbanks may be an exception: it may be able to live from its market-gardens and its laundries and the government railway that is building to it. And, of course, there is always the chance of quartz wherever there are placers. The placers came f.om quartz; geol- ogists are agreed about that; the question is, were all MECHANICAL MINING 53 the quartz stringers disintegrated and denuded in mak- ing the alluvial gold ? Quartz would set Fairbanks per- manently on the map; quartz would revive Dawson; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hear that it had been found near them both in large quantity. I shall nor be expected to go back into the creeks with the visitor in a book that touches mining only as mining touches history or literature. I had rather climb the hill behind Dawson again, while waiting for a boat, and get the fine view up and down the river and back to the Rocky Mountains in the distance, which it gives. But there art automobiles which will take the visitor over gootl roads out to the creeks which were the scenes of the sudden bewildering fortunes of early days, and show him the huge monsters that have superseded the man with the pick and shovel; monsters with an endless chain of buckets for a probo.scis, who thrust that snout into the bowels of the creek and dif; up sand and gravel by the hundreds of tons and search every ounce of it fo: gold. They are making money for their masters, ncrtwith-standing the millions that were expended in bringing water and electric power from afar, and will make money for some years yet. Each one does the work of a hundred men, I am told— or is it two hun- dred .'—but since they do not eat, nor need places to sleep, nor wear clothes, nor get sick and send for the doctor, they are a poor substitute for the men they do the work of, so far as maintaining a town is concerned. When the visitor returns he m.-jy spend an hour or li 1, llln 54 PALMY DAYS two looking at the deserted places of festivity where those bewildering fonunes were spent in many cases almost as fast as they were made. I met a man freight- ing with dogs on the Koyukuk some years since who in these palmy days of prodigality offered a dance-hall girl her weight in gold-dust to marry him. The girl re- fused, telling htm she would get his gold-dust anyhow. She got it I CHAPTER II THE UPPER YUKON-FOR 1 VMILE, EAGLE. AND CIRCLE Two or three miles below Dawson, by an interest- ing mountain trail, giving fine views to those who do not mind a little climb, is the native village of Moose- hide. The mountain was named Moosehide Moun- tain,* from the shape of the permanent scar it bears, long before Dawson came into existence, and presumably gave name to the village. A church and a little school- house and a number of cabins cluster at the mouth of a creek. I have said nothing of the natives of the upper Yukon because I know nothing about them save in a general way. They are not numerous and they are much scattered; I judge that in some respects their condition is worse, and in some respects it is better, than that of the natives of the middle and lower river. The salmon traverse the Yukon River quite up to its head, perhaps the most astonishing extent of fish migration in the world, but the numbers taken steadily •diminish as the river is ascended, and above Dawson this fine fish is no longer a staple article of native diet. On the other hand, the government has perhaps been more wisely alive to the needs of its Indian pop- ♦ Schwatka mentions the name, and, itrange to say, does not even try » overiay it with some German or Scandinavian or Polish scientist. 55 :^J\ MtCROCOFY RESOLUTION TIST CHART {ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 IS. " I l£ ■ iiil |Z2 1 ■•■ 1. ,. 1^ i^ m 1.25 1^ m ^^^ ^ APPLIED HVMGE In^ ^^ t6b5 EasI Uai" Sl-Ml ST^ Rocnesler. N«* 'ork M609 uS* ■jg (716) *82 - OiOO - Ohore ^E (716) 288- 5989 - To. 56 NATIVE DETERIORATION ulation than has the Government of the United States I have no wish to praise the Canadian administration at the expense of our own in this or any other matter, but it is notorious that the laws against the selling of hquor to Indians have been far more vigorously enforced on the British side of the boundary: a result again due to that efficient body-the Northwest Mounted Police. But it seems altogether impossible that a tribe of Indians should live in the near neighbourhood of a con- siderable white town without suffering degradation. There are always white men eager to associate with them to debauch the women and make profit of the men; insensibly the native virtues are sapped, the simple native customs undergo sophistication into a grinning imitation of white customs; jaunty cast-off millinery displaces the decent handkerchief on the women's heads cracked patent-leather shoes and even French heels displace the comfortable home-made moccasins on their feet; the men grow shiftless and casual, picking up odd jobs around town and disdaining the hunting and fish- ing by which they used to live. Each year a band of Indians from the Peel River (a tributary of the Mackenzie) make a long overland journey to Dawson with their furs, for purposes of trade and their stalwart vigour of body and independence of manner no less than the gay bravery of their wilderness attire impress the citizens of Dawson very favourably and much is made of the contrast which they present to the degenerates of Moosehide. Yet I have heard CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE 57 Bishop Stringer say that when first he knew the Moose- hide Indians they were in every respect the peers of their Peel River brethren. It is as true in the Yukon Territory as it is in Alaska that 1-e who would see the Indians at their best must see them remote from the settlements of the white man. More than once reference has been made in passing to the activities of the Northwest Mounted Police, and I am glad, before leaving the Yukon Territory, to speak of them at a little more length. There is a very fine illustration of the use and in- fluence of prestige in the operations of this frontier corps. Of smart soldierly bearing, of a notably unconcerned manner, clad in conspicuous scarlet coat and striped trousers, they are rarely, if ever, armed with anything beyond a little riding-crop, which, with the spurs jingling at their heels, is all that is left in the north to remind themselves and others that they are mounted police. Yet the mere presence of one of these men, though every one knows he bears no arms, will be more effective in quelling disturbance, in preventing murderous violence, in securing the persons of offenders, than half a dozen slouchy deputy marshals or deputy sheriffs would be, bristling with automatic artillery. The ruffian knows that this scarlet constable is not armed, but he knows that the Dominion of Canada m, and that the whole power of the Dominion of Canada, nay, the whole power of the British Empire, is behind that scarlet coat. He knows there is short shrift for those who resist authority, that the law is faithful and prompt, and that no cost :() il •■ i S8 VALUE TO LAW AND ORDER u I I . ; < Cm I' ' I II or pains will be counted too great in hunting down and punishing offenders. I have never seen any approach to military arrogance amongst these men, nor have ever heard it complained against them in a population that would certainly be quick to resent anything of the sort; there is no "pride in their port, defiance in their eye." So marked is the quiet indifference of their manner that I think it must be one of the traditions of their esprit de corps. Yet let need arise for their services and they are very pres- ently on the spot. They remind one of Charles II's sayir.g about Sidney Godolphin, that he was "never in the way and never out of the way." In this arctic frontier country their services are very varied. Every private in the corps has the authority of a civil constable or deputy U. S. marshal; every of- ficer has the legal authority of two magistrates (for by Canadian law two magistrates sitting together have wider jurisdiction than either of them sitting alone). They have patrolled their third of the Yukon River with police-boats in the summer and dog-teams in the winter, from the first, while the remaining two-thirds has no sort of police-boat or police-patrol to this day. It was stated in the Dawson newspapers some time ago that in the twelve years that the Yukon Terri- tory had then been organised, there had been thirteen murders committed — and twelve murderers hanged. One would not care to print the figures for Alaska in contrast. ■ Bu thes", strictly military and constabulary duties VARIED POLICE DUTIES 59 are only a beginning, and there is scarce any office of public utility that they do not on occasion fulfil. They are a rescue corps. Is some expected traveller of any sort overdue in severe weather (as they learn by telegraph along the trail), a swift dog-team is de- spatched with a couple of men to his relief; does some prospector disappear in the hills altogether, they will rake that country with a fine-tooth comb, but they will discover some evidence of his fate if they be unable to discover the man himself. Is there mail for whalers win- tering at that last remote outpost of civilisation, Herschel Island, a detail of police is despatched six hundred miles across the trackless frozen wilderness to deliver it; and on one such journey of late years the men, missing their way, perished of exposure and privation. A citizen of Alaska may be pardoned, however real his patriotism, if he look with longing eyes upon this admira' corps; if he wish that our idle military, our unpaid and often il- literate magistracy, our politician deputy marshals, our whole clumsy inefficient system, could be superseded by such an organisation as this; if he regret that the pres- tige of the Great Republic has no similar representation in the north. A detailed description of hundreds of miles of scenery into which the same elements constantly enter with only slight varip*-' of arrangement would probably prove intolerably ious to the reader, and certainly would to the writer. The irregular, tree-covered rocky bluffs rise on each side of the river; what boots it that here they are higher and here lower, here closer and here ;"/ 60 SCENERY AND HUMAN ASSOCIATION farther apart, now more continuous, now more broken ? There would not, I suppose, be anything positively il- legitimate, however much that was morbid, in a desire to have a complete description of the banks of this river, their geologic character, their altitude, their vegetation, their colour, their contour from Whitehorse to St. Michael, nothing that would reflect upon a man's antecedents or Christian character, but, under submission, the present writer would leave such task to others. Here is a stretch of forty-five or fifty miles from Dawson to Fortymile with nothing specially distinctive about it that I can remember or that the maps or my diaries recall. Fort Reliance is gone; not a vestige, I think, remains, and Dawson has taken its place as a dis- tance-measuring base; but the old place-names that de- pended on Fort Reliance survive, and Fortymile is still Fortymile. After all, it is human association upon which scenery must depend for much of its keenest interest. The Matterhorn was a splendid rugged monument of nature all down the ages, but since Whymper's pertinacious and indomitable attack its rock towers gleam the brighter in all men's eyes; even the terrible accident that at- tended his success has given it a tragic interest that would not have remained from a safe return; and that most beautiful of volcanoes, Cotopaxi, lifts its graceful cone the fairer and clearer that he spent a night on its summit. Ni man has really seen the Grand Caiion of the Colorado who did not know at the time of his visit of the daring and romantic journey of John Wesley CASES IN POINT 6i Powell, the one-armed veteran of Shiloh, who launched his boat upon unknown waters and plunged a thousand miles through cataracts and canons ere he reached the last stupendous chasm of all. I know not just what physical characteristic makes the English Lakes, at certain times and seasons, the loveliest perhaps in the world, or if it be physical characteristic or not, but Words- worth has thrown a spell upon them that one cannot analyse and cannot resist. The "Thundering Smoke" one might think had sufficient interest as the greatest of all waterfalls, but it has yet more, that, sick and weary, after long, painful search, David Livingstone at last heard the thunder and saw the smoke. It is a rich vein, but this is not the place to pursue it; let the reader pursue it for himself. Let him ask himself if Mt. St. Elias would hold so much magic in its name if the eyes of Vitus Bering and his doomed com- panions hal not caught a glimpse of its everlasting snows and knew thereby that they were hard upon the land they sought, and if to that old glamour a new interest were not added when a King's brother, disdaining soft delights, laboured for weeks to reach its summit and set the flag of Italy thereon. Even mere points in the arctic waste glow with a faint but fascinating radiance from the names men gave them in the stress of their endeavours; the "Isles of God's Mercy," where Henry Hudson found shelter from the enveloping ice on his last voyage; the "Anxiety Point" and "Return Reef" of Franklin— that Sir Galahad of erplorers whose Eskimo name means " the man who does not molest our women " ; the " Mercy ^jAJ \il fi I till' ■I P 1 I • 62 YUKON ASSCX:iAT10NS Bay" of McClure in Bank's Land, the "Thank God" harbour of poor Hall on the Polaris. Just so is this great Yukon River the richer in in- terest for the men who have travelled it, the richer for Schwatka's clumsy raft— "of all methods of navigation undoubtedly the oldest and undoubtedly the worst," he writes with pardonable irritation as its corner hits a bank and rips a log off; the richer for Robert Campbell and the other adventurous scouts of the Great Com- pany, yes and the richer for McQuesten and Harper of Fort Reliance, who followed the miners up to the Stewart River and back again to the Fortymile with their trading-post, and thus made prospecting possible; "The Father of the Yukon" is the name the miners give McQuesten. And I have tried, and shall try, to gather up such interest of association as the. river has, and beguile the reader with it in the long stretches that yet lie before us, when I have sufficiently indicated their general character. I find added interest in this very stretch of river because O. Henry speaks in one of his stories of "slipping down in a sled from Dawson to Fortymile," using it as a simile. From this and other Klondike references I am disposed to wonder if in some of the unaccounted-for years in the life of this great story-teller he may have visited the north. How else should he know about the ptarmigan in the Chilkoot Pass changing their plumage f — or was he merely quirk to pick things up from others ? The Fortymile River, which flows into the Yukon on its left bank, has its mouth in Canadian Territory, A CHAMPION NAVIGATOR 63 but about twenty miles up it crosses the boundary-line, so that the Fortymile gold camp is (I had almost written "was") partly in one country and partly in another. It was the earliest of all Alaskan camps, and, with the exception of the Stewart River diggings, the earliest of all the northern gold camps. In the summer of 1886 two men found coarse gold on bed-rock, and since placer-miners are much more eager for coarse gold than fine, and this was the first discovery of coarse gold in the Yukon country, the dig- gings on the Stewart were generally abandoned and the men flocked hither. I met one of these old Stewart River and Fortymile pioneers soon after I came into the country. It was at Circle and he had come in a poling-boat all the way from the Koyukuk, having descended that stream from the camp at its headwaters. He told me that he was going back to have a try at some ground on the Stewart River that looked good to him twenty years ago. Now, the mouth of the Koyukuk is upwards of six hundred miles helow Circle, and Circle is nearly four hundred miles below the mouth of the Stewart. And I asked him: "Why didn't you ship as a deck-hand on a steam- boat and get paid for going up .'" He answered simply, "I did," and as I looked at him and waited for an ex- planation, he added: "But I don't allow no man to talk to me the way that mate talked, so I made them put my boat in the water and I've brought her up myself." Here was a man well past sixty years of age, I judge, who had already propelled that long narrow boat tied Jfrl I FORr/MILF. CAMP m up to the beach upwards of six hundred miles by the force of Ins arms, and was cheerfully contemplating an- other four hundred miles of such progress. He told me he averaged about twenty miles a day and said he didn't mind it much except in the Flats: but "them blamed Flats is the meanest part of the river; a man don't know where to go, he ha- to cross over all the time and loses a mile every time he crosses over." I confess I was struck with astonishment and admiration at this quiet, independent old man who had rather pole his boat a thousand miles u;' the swift Yukon than submit to the hectoring of a steamboat mate. This was the stuff those Stewart River pioneers were made of, and I think the Yukon River is the richer in interest for them. I never saw him or heard of him again; I forgot to ask his name; but I hope he reached the ground that looked good to him twenty years before and that it proved as good as it looked then. Ogilvie, who came into the country the following year, says that the estimated output of the Fortymile camp that season was two hundred thousand dollars. Since this was the only base of supplies on the river, almost all the prospecting for some years to come was done around this centre, and many gold-bearing creeks were discovered. It was from the Fortymile base that the prospecting was done which discovered the gold- bearing creeks of the Circle camp a little later, and from the Circle camp the prospecting reached over to the Tanana and ultimately established the Fairbanks camp. But the Fortymile camp is almost played out. The LURE OF PLACER-MINING (>s newer camps have taken away the men until compara- tively few are left, the Iditarod stampede of 1910 taking most of them. Yet men may stil'. '•• seen "rocking on the bars" and making "better than ages" as they did thirty years ago, and I suppose there will always be some desultory mining in the region of this river, since the bars seem to renew themselves to some extent every year. I saw a couple of small dredges upon the best of these bars when I passed down the Fortymile a few years ago, but I think they are not now in operation. It is not hard to understand the lure of a life that in three months' work can "take out a grub-stake" for the whole yeai with naught but a home-made rocker and " long tom," which is a can at the end of a pole. To an artisan or factory operative — even to ' e priv- ileged workers for Henry Ford — to any man wno labours eight hours a day year in and year out, there must be a great attraction in an occupation that leads a man into the open air all the summer-time, and in that summer- time provides a sufficient maintenance for the rest of the year. There are many men so situated in Alaska, besides the "snipers" on bars, men who have claims on shallow creeks, where single-handed while the water runs they can sluice out their year's support. They have no large money in their claim, ' it there are nine months in which they can prospect elsewhere for the fortune they never cease looking forward to. To a man not dependent on the distractions and amusements of a city, not dependent on the society of others, who is willing to forego the satisfaction and comfort of a wife , II < a _»bij (yb DECAYED MINING TOWN 1} If and a home of his own, it is a life that lures. And some of them have had homes of their own, but grown sick of cities and civilisation, have cut themselves loose, honourably or otherwise, and have plunged into the wilderness and buried themselves therein. Since it is the down-river "port of entiy" of the Yukon Territory, I suppose a custom-house will be maintained at Fortymile; but there is not much else left save a little chapel of the Church of England, a police post, a store, and a road-house. I do not think the store can do anything like as much business as Harper and McQuesten did when they first established their post, thirty ye;irs ago, and one tiip a year of one little steamboat supplied the whole Yukon. Sometimes there are a few Indians here and sometimes there are none. There used to be many, and Bishop Bompas had a school here long ago, but they are a binational tribe, these Indians of the border, and are sometimes subjects of the British crown at Fortymile and sometimes wards of the United States at Eagle. The Fortymile River has many branches and trib- utaries, .-Tiad like a network over a large area, the headwaters of its south fork reaching within a few miles of the Tanana River itself at Lake Mansfield, and the rough, broken country it drains is one of the greatest caribou countrit , in all the north. On their annual migrations they cross the forks of the Fortymile by hundreds of thousands. A little below Fortymile, on the other side of the river. Coal Creek comes in, and here an English corpora- SQLAW ROCK 67 tion has apent of late years several millions of (iollars, I am told, in an ambitious but not successful attempt to generate electric power from the fuel that 1- mined and transmit it overland by wires to the creeks of the Klondike for the operation of dredges. I suppose it is the wide experience in many lands of the Guggenheim corporation that m;}kes it successful beyond all others in enterprises of this sort; enterprises in which a slight error of judgment may entail enormous financial loss. We pass a lofty detached rock that has evidently been violently split from the bluff of the left bank and transported right across the river by some local con- vulsion, a conspicuous landmark that no or could miss. Schwatka, eagerly consulting his list of .dvants, calls it after a prominent member of the Paris Geographical Society, but it was "Svjuaw Rock" before his day and it is "Squaw Rock" yet. The river is more open hen and more diversified, and gives many fine arrangements of mountain and water as the steamboat sweeps around its curves. We are now on the confines of the Yukon Territory, and as we approach the boundary-line visitors commonly crowd the decks to note the moment when they shall pass into the territory of the United States. The de- termination of this boundary-line was an interesting and not very easy matter. Schwatka's commission required him to make a rough estimate of its position, but only a very rough estimate indeed could be based upon the dead reckoning of the raft's drift, and I cannot find from his narrative that any other method was essayed. • ' 'I I ^i ■ m 68 THE BOUNDARY-LINE Schwatka placed the line just below the town of Eagle, and the bold conical bluff that rises there, now called Eagle Mountain, he named Boundary Butte; an error of about twelve miles. In 1887 the Canadian Government sent William Ogilvie to make an accurate determination of the line at its intersection of the Fortymile and Yukon Rivers, and of that undertaking we have a full and interesting account. Taking an island in the Chilkat River, the latitude and longitude of which had been determined long before, as a base, a lint was run from point to point across the mountains and lakes and down the river, until it appeared that the neighbourhood of the boun- dary was reached. Here Mr. Ogilvie with his assistants made camp for the winter and sat down to determine by astronomical observations the position of the 141st meridian west from Greenwich. Since there was no telegraphic communication with the north in those days, the modern precise method of such determinations was unavailable, and reliance had to be placed on a series of moon-culminations, or transits of the moon over the meridian of the place. Of these Ogilvie secured twenty-two, and from them was able to calculate his position with such nicety that twenty- two years later, when the telegraph-line ran along the river and modern methods could be used, the Ogilvie line was found to be only a few score of yards out. The general character of the timber along the Yukon, about which I have often encountered misconception in unexpected quarters outside, will, I think, be fixed in MARKING THE LINE 69 the reader's memory by an incident which Ogilvie nar- rates. To lighten the loads that must be packed over the pass he had left behind the massive and ponderous tripod of his transit, relying upon finding a tree that would serve the purpose, since, once set up, it would not have to be moved again. He needed a tree that should be twenty-two inches in diameter five feet from the ground. The neighbourhood of the boundary was sought over diligently for three days for such a tree without avail, and he had to make shift with a tree eighteen inches in diameter, the only one that could be found even of that girth, most inconveniently situated on the side of a bluff; most inconveniently, for the place of the tree necessarily determined the site of the per- manent winter camp, which had to be close to the ob- servatory. When Ogilvie had finished his task, a lane was cut through the timber to the summit of the hill, and car- ried across the river and up the mountain on the other side. The International Boundary Commission cut a similar lane when the final determination was made, and the two parallel lines stand out a little distance apart. Ogilvie's lane, however, begins to be much ob- scured by underbrush. Crossing this line, we are once more in Alaska. They are strange things these international boundary-lines. The rocks and trees are just the same on one side as the other, the shore-line is continuous, there is nothing but this artificial vista through the forest — yet one side is subject to one set of laws and the other to another. Cut f I If!;- 1 1 ■ 70 CUSTOMS ABSURDITIES (-1 1 ■^■ some trees down on the Canadian side, whipsaw them into lumber, build a boat with the same and launch it on the water, it is a "British bottom"; when it reaches Eagle it can proceed no farther. Tear it to pieces, it becomes merely "Canadian lumber," on which there is slight, if any, duty. It may now be built into a boat again and the voyage resumed. This does not apply to skiffs and such small craft, but it does, or it did a few years ago and I think it does yet, to anything larger. I dare say the reverse is true and that a similar impedi- ment bars the entrance to Canadian waters, but I do not know, for there is no passage of such craft up-stream. It all seems very foolish and petty; indeed, a man who reflects upon things must see much that is foolish and petty about the whole system of customs; there is, more- over, an unavoidable sense of the invasion of personal right and dignity whenever a customs officer in New York rifles a trunk in search of what it is thought may be concealed; there is an even stronger feeling of the same kind when the Canadian officers at Whitehorse pass their hands, however gently, over the bodies of out- going travellers to detect the smuggling of gold-dust, on the exportation of which a royalty is charged. The whole business seems an anachronism; it seems to be- long to the times when a man could not go from one place to another without a passport; when every pos- sible hindrance was thrown around the movement of men or merchandise; when every little stretch of the Rhine had its own exaction, with a chain across the river and a castle on a rock, to enforce it. MAINTAINING A PRINCIPLE 71 Some day the world, however much it seems going backward to-day, will resume its march, and reach a point of comity and common sense where it will sweep all su'-h vexatious restrictions away; some day the time w ■ ' come when a boat may navigate what waters it pleas, and touch at what points it will; when a man may sell whatever he has to sell wherever he can sell it, may buy what he wishes and take it where he likes. I have wondered whether the customs collection at Eagle pays for itself nowadays, or whether the salaries and other expenses of collection do not exceed the revenue. I am certain they do on the Fortymile, for twenty miles or so up that stream, where the 141st meridian cuts it, there is a little American custom-house that does vir- tually no business at all. Yet lest some miner from the American side should go down to the mouth for his "outfit" instead of crossing the hills to Eagle, that lonely little post with its exile of the internal revenue is still maintained. Sometimes the grand old English lexicog- rapher's famous definition of "excise," on which the commissioners of excise took counsel's opinion, and were advised that though they could prosecute him for it they had better not, appears to apply almost as well to "customs." But we are in an "American bottom," and we go slipping by American trees and American rocks, through American waters, to the first American post on the Yukon, the town of Eagle, and here we lie some hours while the customs examination takes place. Immediately upon Mr. Seward's purchase of Alaska 72 EARLY AMERICAN RULE in 1867 a detachment of troops was sent to Sitka and the army took charge of the country. But in 1877 the troops were entirely withdrawn and for seven years there was no sort of government in Alaska or of Alaska whatever. I do not know that such large territory be- longing to a great civilised power was ever before, in modern times at least, left utterly without any attempt at government. The white people of Sitka had to call upon a British mar^-of-war to rescue them from an Indian uprising during this time. When Lieutenant Schwatka came down the Yukon in 1883 he says that it was a debatable point whether his expedition was not strictly an illegal one and in direct violation of the President's order, since the executive order of with- drawal had provided that the military should thence- forth exercise "no control whatever" in the Territory, and it was impossible to send in a military party that should not exercise control over its own members. In 1884 a governor without any power was appointed by the President and the laws of Oregon were spread over the Territory, but without any attempt to enforce them. It was not until the Klondike excitement that government attention was drawn to Alaska, and then two officers. Captain Ray and Lieutenant Richardson, were sent in to select suitable sites for forts in the in- terior. Two such were built. Fort Egbert at Eaple, in 1899, and Fort Gibbon at Tanana, in 1900, garrisoned each by two companies of infantry, of which the former was abandoned twelve years afterwards and the latter still reu.ains. THE TOWN OF EAGLE 73 The first United States district court in the interior was established here with its officers shortly after, and Eagle remained for a few years the centre of the newly erected civil administration. With the building of the much more considerable town of Fairbanks in 1904, howevti, the court and its officers were transferred thither, and the town declined, and with the abandon- ment of the army post in 191 1 it declined still more. Eagle is pleasantly situated, about a hundred miles from Dawson, on the left bank of a picturesque portion of the river, with an attractive view up-stream and the fine mountainous bluff that has been referred to, rising right out of the river just below. It has its custom- house, its court-house, two stores, a post-office, and an Episcopal church (for we have left the Church of Eng- land behind us and are entered upon the portion of the Yukon served by her American daughter) — and contigu- ous to the town, just below it. Is the military compound with Its gaunt, deserted buildings. Three miles up- stream, on the same bank, we passed unmentioned an Indian village With its school and church. This native mission and the white town are served by the same missionary. There is still some mining on the Fortymlle and on the Seventymile below, and still some prospecting, though this is probably the best-prospected region of Alaska, and as a port of entry Eagle has some official business; enough, altogether, one hopes, to maintain the town at Its present stage. Soon after the building of Fort Egbert much govern- J 74 CALICO BLUFF ment interest and activity were aroused in favour of an "all-American route" to the interior of Alaska, and a trail was surveyed from Valdez on Prince William's Sound across country to Eagle. A "strategic" military telegraph was afterwards constructed along the line of this trail and was maintained for a number of years at great cost, the stations being provisioned by pack-trains. But no one ever used the "ail-American route," and there was no one living on it to send telegrams, nor any strategy that was served by its existence, so at length both were abandoned. The line still stretches across all those hundreds of miles of wilderness, but gradually the wire will rust and the poles will rot and fall, and the forest will close in on the right-of-way clearing. Ten miles or so below Eagle a high bluff is passed that has a very remarkable exposure on its face of hun- dreds and hundreds of narrow parallel layers or strata of varying colour, folded ziuf crumpled until they roughly suggest a wavy pattern of fabric, from which appearance the bluff is known as the "Calico" bluff. When one remembers that each of these layers represents a separate, slow deposition of sediment from water, and that some geologists, working back from the measured rate of present denudation, or removal of earth-surface by water, to a corresponding rate of deposition, reckon six thousand years as the average time required for the accumulation of one foot of sediment, we get some slight hint from this bluff of the age of the crust of the earth. I never pass that bluff without fresh conjecture as to its history, without wishing that I knew enough about A RIDDLE IN STONE 7S geology to read the riddle of this writing. How came these layers of different material, imposed one upon the other with perfect uniformity and precision from the top to the bottom of this great rock, and heaven only knows how far beneath the present visible bottom? That it was a continuous deposit the sharp division between each layer forbids us to believe. Was it, then, an ancient sea-bed that by some mys- terious plutonic clockwork rose above the water when it had received a stratum, and then sank again to re- ceive another .'—rising and subsiding as many times as there are individual layers? That is a pretty heavy tax on one's credulity. And if so, whence these varia- tions in its colour, and therefore, one supposes, in the nature of the deposit 1 I think there is a great field for some one with ade- quate learning, and with brains and imagination (which are quite other matters) to occupy with books about geology. Is there any other subject of which the average man of education and culture is so ignorant ? — any other subject the books on which are so generally dry and technical and lifeless ? I remember with pleasure Hugh Miller's "Old Red Sandstone" and "Testimony of the Rocks," as a boy devouring what I could lay hands on, but Hugh Miller was a man of letters as well as a geologist, and there have been few such. It is not al- together the average educated man's fault that he is so ignorant of this great subject. And there have been all sorts of government geol- ogists sailing up and down this river for the last twenty M ^\ 76 AN EXTINCT "CITY* ■'■I yean, and printing all lorta of reports; yet lo far ai I know, and I try to keep the run of their writings, though I certainly do not pretend to read them all, not one word about this striking geological feature that attracts the notice of even the most unobservant visitor, the Calico Bluff, has ever been published. One would th nk they would glue themselves to that rock until they had, if not decipherci' its story, at least exhausted Wiiat they could learn from it/ If I were a wealthy man I would offer a considerable prize for the best monograph on the Calico Bluff. Fifteen or twenty miles farther, on the left bank, we pass the mouth of the Seventymile, which of old was counted seventy miles from Fortymile. 'Twas a vicious custom this place-naming by miles, and the cause of much confusion. Even Ogilvie falls into the obvious error of calling this place seventy miles from Fort Re- liance. At the mouth of this stream Star City was built upon the occasion of a stampede in 1899 or 1900, but even the few deserted cabins I knew ten years ago have fallen and gone, and Star City has no place at all, except upon some of the maps that are reprinted without revision. *ThU passage must not» however, be taken as though stricture upon the members of the Alaskan Geological Survey were intended; their de- partment has its policy and they have their instructions, and I recognise, even though I may regret, that both must be concerned primarily with the "economic development" of the country, and that metalliferous and car- boniferous formations engage their attention almost exclusively. In pro- portion to its stinted resources, the Alaskan Geological Survey is probably the most eiScient department of government service in Alaska to-day. If I had the power I would turn over to its chief. Doctor Alfred Brooks — say the cost of maintaining the army post at Tanana; then we would have maps and surveys i— and perhaps a monograph on the Calico Bluff a> well. SHEEP CREEK MOUNTAINS 77 Now we come in sight o the bold, rugged .nountaini of Sheep Creel;* on the right hand, mountain! that retain snow upon their tops well into the summer, and are conspicuous by their height for a considerable dis- tance up and down the river. The international bound- ary is very close to the 'iver along here, and it is cer- tainly fortunate that it dovi, not actually cross it again, or we should have double rows of custom-houses to deal with; and what the two nations would have done had the Yukon wound back and forth along the 141st meridian instead of conveniently drawing away from it to the westward, is an amusing subject for speculation which the reader may pursue if he wish. No white man knew anything about the course of the Yukon when that boundary-line was agreed upon, though Sir Alexander Mackenzie, it is said, missed knowing it only through the timidity of an Indian guide as far back as 1789, when he explored the river that bears his name. So far as imposing mountain masses are concerned, the finest portion of the Upper Ramparts lies just be- fore us now. I think the one hundred and seventy-five or one hundred and eighty miles of river from Eagle to Circle would be counted exceedingly picturesque anywhere in the world. Each bend brings a change in the composition; now the sharp peaks of the Sheep Creek mountains dominate the scene, now the enormous bulk of the cliffs below Nation, now the lofty table- land of the bluffs opposite Washington Creek. • It! aty Indian name of Tatonduk hai, I am lorry to iay, almoit en- tirely lapied. '1^ " ;n _i 7« DRIFTWOOD AND NAVIGATION Y ThcK name*, Eagle, Star City, Nation, Wathington Creek, Fourth of July Creek, are relict of the patriotic exuberance with which citizen* of the Unitrd State* who had felt thein*elve* cramped in Daw*on, gave ex- pression to their emotion* when once more they were settled in United States territory. "Nation" puzzled me fo a while, but I think it belongs to that group; there \. .e other nations, I suppose, but only one Nation. Every river of considerable length must in time of freshet gather a large amount of driftwood, but in the great rivers uf the north, draining hundreds of thousands of square miles of dense primeval forests, it is a more striking feature than in those which flow through oc- cupied and cultivated lands. At any high level of water the visitor will find the river burdened and its navigation hindered by forest debris in immense quantities, and in every stage, from trees in full leaf to bleached and rotten logs. Sometimes the driftwood is so thick that steamboats are unable to proceed and must tie up to the bank until the water subsides and the hindrance abates. At first sight the visitor is likely to be impressed with a feeling of the great waste of wood that is going on; but when he pursues his voyage to the barren regions of the mouth of the river and of the adjacent shores of Bering Sea, he will see that there is no more v'^iste than necessarily accompanies the great operations of nature. This driftwood of the Yukon is the only wood th" Eskimo knows; thrown up in piles upon the desolate beaches of treeless seas, the Eskimo makes his igloo beside them. ITS QUANTITY EXPLAINED T) Juft as the lalt water aendt up iti myriads of fish to feed the people of the interior, so the interior sends down its myriads of logs to warm the people of the coast; and to some it will seem merely the accidental philan- thropy of the blind forces of nature, and to others the loving providence of an all-seemg God working through those forces. Not all at once does the driftwood reach the sea; the first freshet may no more than lift it from its bed and carry it down some tributary of the great river. So soon as the water drops the driftwood lodges on a sand-bar and lies there until another rise comes to trans- poi it a little farther. It may take several years to complete the voyage, hence the great part of the wood upon the arctic coast is much weathered and bleached. The reader will consider that, while an ordinary rise in the river gathers little more wood than lies close around its banks, any unusually high water reaps a much richer harvest. The innumerable little creeks and -ivuLts are swollen far beyond their usual size and reach bark deep into the heart of the forest, floating old windfalls and moss-grown trunks that have lain prone for years. When the rise is gener'il throughout much of the drain- age-basin of the river — an unusual occurrence, since that basin is so great — the quantity of driftwood brought down is prodigious, and for a while any use of the river for navigation is impossible. Collecting on sand-bars and on the shores of islands, the driftwood is an ever-present and unhandsome feature of the Yukon in every part of its long course. m I', ' So AN UNKNOWN LAND The Yukon River is now flowing between two other important rivers, its tributaries at later stages of its course. If we went up Sheep Creek, forcing our way through the difficult caiion near its mouth and into the heart of the fine craggy mountains that have been referred to, and so out beyond, some fifty or sixty miles altogether, we should come to the Nahoni Lakes, from which the Porcupine River takes its rise. This river flows a little east of north until it is well past the 67th parallel, and then makes a great sweep to the south- west, falling into the Yukon at Fort Yukon just on the arctic circle. The country thus enclosed is one of the least known parts of the continent. The 141st meridi?n passes through the middle of it, and the line of that meridian has been run with the utmost exactness from the Gulf of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean by a joint commission of Canadian and United States engineers, a vista being cut through the forest the whole way and bronze and concrete monu- ments set up at prominent points; altogether, it is said, one of the most difficult and creditable pieces of survey work and frontier delimitation on record. For a few miles on either side of that line the country is of course known; the rest is quite unknown and unmapped, any details on the maps in use being conjectural. In the Geographical Journal of the Royal Geograph- ical Society for September, 1916, Charles Camsell, of the Canadian Geological Survey, classes the Canadian portion of this region amongst the "unexplored areas" of continental Canada, and the part belonging to Alaska is in the same category. NATION SETTLEMENT 8i Sparse bands of Indians live along some of the tribu- taries, notably on the Big Black River, fishing them and hunting over the adjacent hills; there is a quota of white men, as well as of aborigines, trapping over a consider- able part of this country — much of the best Fort Yukon fur comes thence — but it has never been even roughly delineated and geographically it is unknown. It is said to be particularly full of bears and wolves. In the opposite direction from the Yukon, that is, looking west instead of east, the Tanana River flows parallel with the Yukon for several hundreds of miles, one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles away, taking its bend of approach just below Fairbanks. In contrast with the country to the east, this region west of the Yukon is one of the best known in the north. Reconnaissance surveys have been carried almost all over it, and the maps of the " Eagle Quadrangle," the " Fortymile Quad- rangle" and the "Circle Quadrangle" are careful and useful pieces of work. The settlement at Nation has dwindled to not much more than a road-house and its appurtenances, though some small store may still be maintained; it was de- pendent on mining on the Nation River and some neigh- bofving creeks, of which little remains. The headwaters of the Nation River (it is no more than a large creek) interlock with the headwater streams of the Fishing Branch of the Porcupine, and at this point I undi'r- stand that Porcupine water can be reached in about twenty-five miles from the Yukon. Washington Creek, on the opposite (left) bank some twenty miles below, is chiefly notable as the scene of '■< ^?l < 1 )| 1 Ik 1 i 1 I; i ' 82 AN ALASKAN DIANA useless expenditure in coal-mining by eastern capitalists about 1900. A track was laid across the flats back to the coal-measures, and the visitor who scans the bank narrowly as the steamboat swings around the bend will see what the elements have left of a locomotive, or trac- tion engine standing near the bank. There was a road- house there in my time, kept by a lady who is said to have had the interesting habit of taking shots with a rifle at people who went along the river trail in winter and would not stop at her road-house, biit I cannot speak of this from personal experience, though I well remember the intimidating and cajoling placards she posted on the trail, a rival road-house nine miles below being the excit- ing cause. The gradual decay of winter travel on the Yukon has put an end to such amenities of competition, and Washington Creek is quite deserted. Eight miles below, Charley Creek comes in on the right bank, and I am sorry this stream has lost its native name of Kandik, because there is a Charley River a few miles below, on the opposite side, with which it be- comes confused. Just above Charley Creek was a native village named from the same "Chief Charley" who was sponsor for the stream. It was there in Schwatka's time, though he puts it on the western instead of the eastern bank, and it stood until the phenomenally high water of the "break- up" of 1914 washed it completely away, whereupon the handful of natives removed to Circle. Just below the mouth of Charley Creek, where the river takes a sharp bend to the right and then to the left, is the rival road- » (f THE CHARLEY RIVER 83 house referred to. This part of the river is much subject to flood, owing to the configuration of the channel, which lends itself to the jamming of the ice, and this particular road-house keeper is not infrequently camped upon the roof of his road-house during "break-up" time. A mile or two below the road-house the steamboat passes close beside the narrow opening of Caiion Creek, a mere slit in the mountains which has such a mysterious look from the river that I have long wanted to explore it, but have never had opj rtunity of leisure. The Charley River, which enters on the left bank some ten miles below, though it approaches its con- fluence by meanders through flat land so inconspicuously as to be easily missed, is one of the most picturesque streams tributary to the Yukon. It is navigable for some considerable distance by poling-boats and has sev- eral creeks on which a little desultory mining is done. Tis walls are sheer lofty mountains of much rugged ir- regularity of form, frequented by wild sheep; and. bend by bend, coming down seventy-five or eighty miles of it on a cross-country journey from the Tanana a few years ago, I was struck with its ever-varying beauty and romantic charm. I am not willing to say it is the most picturesque river in Alaska, because I do not know all the rivers of Alaska; but I know a good many and I know none that surpasses it. The whole region between the Yukon and the Tanana is in the path of the migra- tion of the caribou, and its greater elevations all harbour mountain-sheep. On the journey just referred to we found the entire bed of the Charley River, from bank ' M 84 AN.MAL LIFE ■I i' to bank, and even up to the first mountain benches on either side whenever they were accessible, for fifty miles, trodden hard and solid by innumerable hoofs of caiibou, while every here and there lay a dead one, killed by a band of wolves, full-fed and wanton, that was evidently following the herd and polling down the stragglers. In some cases no attempts had been made to eat the ani- mals, their throats had been cut and the carcasses left, and we chopped off frozen hind quarters and cooiied them for our dogs. I am of opinion that every year the wolves kill more caribou in Alaska than all the hunters put together. At any point along the Yukon it is not uncommon to see bears prowling along the bank, or picking a way amongst the driftwood of the beach. Sometimes a she bear with a cub or two will be overtaken and it is inter- esting to observe that the bear usually takes no notice whatever of the steamboat, appearing not even to see it unless the captain attracts her attention by blowing the whistle. I have watched such a family group through the field-glasses, amused by the pranks of the cubs and the smart cuffs by which their conduct was regulated from time to time. The sight of moose swimming the river is even more common, and from my own experience I should judge that the region we are now passing through is more used by them for water passage than any other. In- deed I am convinced thac the big game of the region be- tween Eagle and Circle has greatly increased of late years, perhaps owing to the decay of population, and IS ARCHDEACON McDONALD'S DISCOVERY 85 with it has come a great increase in the number of bears and wolves. Woodchopper Creek, on which there is profitable mining, Webber Creek, and several others on which gold has been found, though not in paying quantities, are passed on the left bank, and in this region are some fine mountainous reaches. We approach, however, an end of all mountains for the first time since our journey began. Let us first notice for a moment a curious important creek, much more er "tied to the name river ihan many that bear it, that began to run parallel with the Yukon a little distance off, ever since Charley River was passed, and will con- tinue its parallel course for another hundred miles, with meanderings that will double that distance, until it dis- charges itself forty mile below Fort Yukon. It is called Birch Creek. Now there was a Church of England clergyman at Fort Yukon in the early sixties, when the Hudson Bay post flourished and fur was king, who in his jour- neys across country ministering to his scattered Indian flock, found gold on one of the tributaries of Birch Creek. The Reverend Robert McDonald, afterwards Arch- deacon of the Yukon — and his name is still held in the highest veneration by the natives — told of his discovery, and letters exist to^ay in vhich it was written about, but no one at Fort Yukon cared about gold-seeking much more than Archdeacon McDonald did himself. The Hudson's Bay Company left and the post at Fort Yukon changed hands and decayed, and McDonald returned I M 1. / 1 \ \([ \ , i 86 THE FIRST GOLD-SEEKER to the Mackenzie, but the story lingered and passed from mouth to mouth, and "Preacher Creek" on the map, which is certainly not the tributary of Birch Creek on which McDonald scooped up gold with a spoon, stands as evidence of it. In all probability, as I am told by those familiar with that whole region, it was the creek now called Mastodon on which the discovery -• as made. Arthur Harper (the first man who ever came to the Yukon country seeking gold*) reached Fort Yukon from the Mackenzie by way of the Porcupine in 1873 and heard the story; although he was not then able to follow it up, it stayed in his mind, and while he was running the store with McQuesten at the Fortymile came the opportunity to investigate the region it con- cerned. So he grub-staked tv/o Russian half-breeds, Sarosky and Pitka (Dall had brought up Pitka from . Nulato to cook for him in 1867— I mention this not be- cause I suppose it will interest the reader but because I am gratified at being able to identify him, for I know the man), and these two men found gold on Mastodon in 1893, and from that strike arose the Circle City camp. I hope this has not been tedious but I could not make it clear in fewer words, and the connection is exceed- ingly interesting to my mind. We approach Circle City: the mountains have al- ready receded on the left bank and will presently cease abruptly on the right, and we shall swing out clear of * Ogilvie. CIRCLE CITY 87 al! elevations of the earth into the Yukon Flats. At the very beginning of them. Circle City raises its graceful wireless-telegraph tower and spreads its line of build- ings along the water-front. The town was built in 1894, on ne nearest river- point to the diggings, for Birch Creek is only six or seven miles from the Yukon here, and there were some seventy- five men building cabins that summer. It received its name because it was thought to be on the arctic circle, from which it is in reality distant some eighty m;les by the river and about fifty in a straight line. Creek after creek was found that bore gold and at the end of the next season good pay had been found on nine, so that there was a rush to Circle from the interior camps and from the outside as well, and the town grew until it boasted itself the largest log-cabin town in the world and claimed a population of thirty hundred.* There must have been some active and intelligent men in that camp. A Miners' Association was formed with constitution and by-laws, and a gorgeous painted silken banner and a circulating library of several thou- sand volumes procured, many of which still remain at the place, though most have been scattered since the association lapsed. I was struck when I first examined the library (it was then almost intact) by the wise and comprehensive choice that had been exercised. Some one familiar with many fields of literature had a hand in selecting those books. In 1896 when Bishop Rowe came over the Chilkoot • Ogilvie. 88 SHORT-LIVED FLORESCENCE tV Pass with a pack on his back to undertake the super- vision of the missionary work of the Episcopal Church in Alaska, and visited Circle, the place was at the height of its prosperity and a church and a hospital were started. But the florescence of Circle was short-lived. The first news of the Klondike strike did not cause much stir, but when reports of the wealth beyond the dreams of avarice that had been discovered came one upon the other, and then sober confirmations of tiie jnost fabulous of them, there was a stampede up the riv<;r that left most of those multitudinous cabins empty. They were never reoccupied. The extent of the Circle diggings had already been reached and no more discoveries were made in the district. Those who outstayed the Klondike stampede joined the stampede to Fairbanks five or six years later, and to-day Circle shares the fate of all placer- mining towns, which after their brief period of expan- sion and feverish prosperity, sink into a steady decline from which there is no revival. The last time I was there the gorgeous silken banner stood, covered with dust and mildew, in the corner of a disused mission building, the constitution and by-laws hung cobwebbed in a broken frame on the wall, the books, injured by flood-water, were anybody's that cared to take them away. The empty cabins are gone: in this country of extreme winter cold, and roaring stoves, there is always a useful way to dispose of empty cabins. Circle City may now have a resident population of twenty-five whites, with perhaps ten times as many I NOCUOUS DESUETUDE 89 working out on the various creeks, some of them fifty miles away, and drawing their supplies from the town. It has also some sixty or sixty-five Indians, in a village that adjoins, with the usual unfortunate result of such adjunction. These little, decadent, bi-racial places present very difficult problems to those concerned in the effort to supply their religious needs. Here are a commissioner, a deputy marshal, a govern- ment native school, a native Episcopal church served by a native catechist, and a group of mission buildings not in present use, besides a couple of stores, a road- house, and a saloon. Add a few residence cabins and you have Circle City. M .til i i m< ii I li CHAPTER III THR YUKON FLATS Just before reaching Circle City the river enter* the wide level region known as the Yukon Flats and for t.early two hundred and fifty miles pursues its tortuous course therein. This curious valley has its greatest stretch in a N. E. and S. W. direction from the lower ramparts of the Yukon to the lower ramparts of the Porcupine, a distance in a straight line of about two hundred miles, and its greatest width in a N. W. and S. E. direction from the Chandelar Gap to Circle City, a straight-line distance of about eighty miles. It is roughly triangular in shape, its longest line being its northerly boundary, and it emb.aces an area of about thirty thousand square miles. The river enters this triangular area at the point of its southern angle, pushes its way N. W. almost to the middle of the triangle (where For* Yukon is situated) and leaves the area almost at the point of its westerly angle, where the abandoned post of Fort Hamlin is perched on the hillsic in nearly the same latitude as Circle City, where it entered. So much any geography book would furnish; but the abrupt change from the steep bluffs and high moun- tains which have lined the river ever since its navigation was begun at Whitehorse, to the boundless horizon of the open level country, from the narrow, confined stream of the river flowing betwixt its immovable barriers, to SWIFT CURRENT IN FLATS 9« the multitude of channels and aloughs s">t with innumer- able islands, this sudden change never fails to surprise the visitor on his first voyage. Since entering the coun- try a thousand miles back he has seen nothing but moun- tains, now he will not see even a hill for two hundred and fifty miles. So closely does this region resemble the approach to the delta country of many rivers, that it is hard, on a first visit, to get rid of the feeling that beyond the maze of low islands ahead must lie the sea. It would naturally be supposed that a river thus suddenly poured from narrow confines upon a wide plain and spreading itself out into many channels, would lose its swift current and meander sluggishly. No less an authority than Major-General Greely, in his generally excellent "Handbook of Alaska," states this to be the case; but the reverse is true. So long ago as 1883, Schwatka, floating down the Yukon on the vyage ihat has been so often referred to, but will not be referred to much more, notices with surprise that the current in the Flats does not slacken, and deduces therefrom the great depth of the river in the ramparts f'om which it has just escaped. Some of the swiftest reaches of the whole river are indeed in the Yukon Flats, and, in addition, this region has special difliculties of navigation of its own. The soil being almost entirely frozen muck or sand, the swift water, sweeping along the banks, thaws the ground it comes in immediate contact with and undercuts it so that great masses are continually falling into the stream. III 92 DIFFICULT NAVIGATION i bearing their growing trees with them. Sometimes one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet will be removed at one place in a season. Moreover, the speed of the river scoops out its bed and shifts great bodies of sand and gravel from place to place. The steamboat channel is thus continually changing, for of the numerous channels there is always one that carries the depth and volume of water, and this one is the steamboat channel. In twenty-four hours the steam- boat channel may change, may pile up a new bar, may forsake a bank that it has been cutting and throw its water upon the other side, may abandon one branch of the river altogether and pour itself into another. It is thus necessary to maintain a pilot who goes nowhere else than up and down between Fort Yukon and Circle; coming up in his little launch, sounding as he runs, ship- ping his ^raft on board a steamer at Circle and guiding the vessel down through the channel he has just veri- fied. Sometimes he takes a steamboat up, but more commonly takes it down, for it is always on the down- stream trip that the greatest danger is met. A steam- boat cautiously picking her way up-stream will not hit a bar very hard, and has the force of the current to help her get off should she strike, but a boat that hits a bar going down-stream is piled upon it and held there by the same force. The present pilot, Julius Stankus, has been engaged in this one occupation for a great many years, and knows the eighty or ninety miles of river under his charge with a minuteness of detail that would certainly be called "meticulous" by any newspaper il FLATS SCENERY 93 man who should write about it nowadays, for to most of those who pass through it, the country from one end of the Flats to the other "all h k? alike." It is in truth a most moi. /.onous, virf j-y, featureless region; level, winding bank? covered viii i dense spruce- trees all about the same height, -Tr'.^ch away as far as the eye can reach; and these banks, continually under- mined and falling, have usually a fringe of overhanging moss and trees drooping at every angle from the per- pendicular to the horizontal, the boughs of those that are prone gathering and detaining an evil-looking scum from the turbid, swirling waters. There is something very melancholy about a live, prone tree, and as they switch back and forth in the water they seem to be waving their leafy arms as though to summon aid in their hapless plight. Vast, shapeless sand-bars, piled with bleaching driftwood, sometimes occupy most of the view and show how the river continually deflects and changes its own channel. Usually the sand-bars lie away from the deep water, but sometimes the river is seen returning and eating away a bar it has thrown up, like a dog returning to his vomit. Even those with an eye for locality find it difficult to identify points in the Yukon Flats after repeated jour- neys; there is a total absence of salient landmarks, and a persistence, through all the two hundred and fifty miles, of the same general appearance. The thoughtful traveller, gliding smoothly down- stream in perpetual sunshine, and, it may be, in weather uncomfortably warm, should yet be able to entertain ( : In. 94 SHORT-LIVED COMFORT conjecture of the difficulty and danger of winter travel in this region, when the river is frozen and the ice and the banks are covered with snow, when fierce storms rage and obliterate the trail, or the "strong cold" set- tles down with iron grasp upon the earth, when the sun does but rise to the horizon to disappear again, when here and there open water, so swift that it cannot freeze, sends clouds of steam into the air, or thin ice, with the steam- boat channel underneath, sets a trap for the unwary. It is indeed well for the traveller from temperate climes who passes down this river in the heyday of summer and would gather some just and general im- pression of the country, to remind himself frequently how brief is the season which he is enjoying; to remmd himself that navigation of any sort is possible durmg little more than four months; that by the middle of October ice is running freely in the river, and by the ist of November at the latest the river is frozen over, not to open again until the middle of May; to remind himself that by just how much the measure of daylight and sun- shine overpasses that to which he is accustomed, by just so much is it lacking at the other extreme of the year; that the scrubby, stunted spruce forest that lines the bank everywhere is the growth probably of a full century, and that here in the Yukon Flats is experienced every winter a greater degree of cold than any that Peary registered on his whole journey to the North Pole.* .Every winter temperatures lower than-6o F. (""^ '"■J"""'".,"";^^. lower) a e recorded at the meteorological s,at>on at F°« \">L°"' ^'^''1^'' kw temperature I can find recorded in ^"'^"^XL^uVouihu I have myself recorded -7J F. on the northeastern edge of the Yukon Hats. Tn[. ^■^Kll^ [■'r.vT':. 4 ■ [-1 4 ii Pl.AY EMAMPMKNT (IF I\t)I\\ ( Fni.DRKN AT ioRF \l K(t\, SOME COMPENSATIONS 95 The impression which the Yukon Fiats made upon the first white man who ever voyaged through them (so far as there is record or reason to believe) is commonly the impression they make upon the trnveller to-day. " I must say that as I sat smoking my pipe, my face be- smeared with tobacco-juice to keep at bay the mosqui- toes still hovering in clouds around me, my first impres- sions of the Yukon were anything but favourable. I neirer saw an uglier river, everywhere low banks, appar- ently lately overflowed, with lakes and swamps behind, the trees too small for buildiiig, the water abominably dirty, and the current furious." So wrote Alexander Hunter Murray,* tLe Hudson's Bay Company's factor who came across from the Mackenzie River, by way of the Porcupine, in 1847, and built the trading-post at Fort Yukon. Yet the Yukon Flats are not without attractive phases. The low, level horizon leaves an immense ex- panse of sky, and almost the summer through this sky is filled with great masses of bold cumulus clouds, of a lustrous whiteness, that pass along in a stately panorama. It does not require a very vivid imagination to see ro- mantic Alpine landscapes, with peaks and glaciers and vast, dark, cavernous recesses; to see celestial cities with domes and walls of pearl, and palaces of marble; to see colossal similitudes of prancing steeds tossing their flowing manes, issuing forth to "fulmine , er the field"; and "fulmine" indeed they are very likely to, for at • "Journal of the Yukon," 1847-8; publication of the Canadian Archives, No. 4, Otuwa. ■Mi !'"'] !;i I J i I/; I 96 FORT YUKON '^)>i ft ■ any moment there may be a brief, violent thunder- storm with drenching rain. Where there is little to look upon below, the eye naturally turns above, and it is rarely in summer that the skies in the Flats have not some glistening pageant to display against the back- ground of a deep-blue sky. The clouds are the chief feature of the summer landscape in the Yukon Flats, and sometimes they give it a dignity and a beauty that will long be remembered. Fort Yukon is situated at the most northerly point reached by the Yukon River, in the very midst of the Flats, and just before the river leaves its general north- west course to pursue a general southwest course to its mouth. To the ordinary tourists it is rather a squalid- looking little place of many native cabins, a church, a hospital and two or three stores where the best furs and the best beadwork on the river may be bought. It is chiefly notable to them for the multitude of native dogs that flock hungrily to the bank and take up their posi- tion exactlj' opposite the galley as soon as the boat ties up, and there fight and scramble for the scraps that are thrown out by the cooks. The dogs are half-starved in the early summer and their owners themselves are. none too well fed, for the salmon have not yet com- menced to run and the winter stores are pretty generally exhausted. Ducks form the staple Indian food at this season, and dogs will not eat duck unless they are very hard pressed for food indeed. If the place have other interest for the ordinary tourist it is because of its geographical position. Lying li / III i h \ THE MIDNIGHT SUN 97 about a mile north of the arctic circle, a visit during the end of Tune will permit those who are favoured with clear weather to see thr sun at midnight. Annually, for the last few years, special boat-loads of tourists have come down the Yukon as far as this point with no other purpose than to see this sight; they are locally known as "sunners." Almost anywhere in the Yukon Flats the sight may be seen, for although by bald astronomical theory it is confined to regions within the arctic circle, yet the refraction of the atmosphere, which raises the sun's disk in appearance a degree or so above its real position, extends it to the regions immediately adjacent also, where there is sufficiently low horizon. Part of the sun's disk may even be seen at midnight on mid- summer day at Circle City, which is below the 66th parallel, by standing upon the top of a two-story house. Beyond Circle City the mountains interfere. Strange as perpetual daylight and sunshine are to those from lower latitudes, they soon become matter of course to the dwellers in Alaska, and it is '^ard to escape a certain demoralising influence which the suspension of the dis- tinction between day and night seems to exert. When all the hours are bright, there is no particular reason for going to bed at one of them rather than at another; when work may be carried on in all of them indifferently, there is no necessary time for beginning or ending. And since the mosquitoes are not quite so bad when the sun is low upon the horizon as when he has climbed higher in the sky, the midsummer usage of the Indians, which tends to become the usage of the scattered whites also, * Hi *,; j 'i i 98 THE JAMESTOWN OF THE YUKON is to sleep during the hours that would be the daylight hours elsewhere and be up and about during the hours that elsewhere would be the hour of darkness. Like the Snark, they "frequently breakfast at afternoon tea. And dine on the following day." But to the traveller who is conversant with the his- tory of the country. Fort Yukon has other interest than its dogs and its daylight; it is the site of the oldest Eng- lish-speaking settlement on the river, and thus has a certain Jamestown sentiment about it. True, the Rus- sians made a settlement five hundred miles down-stream at Nulato some ten years earlier, which is like the Spanish settlement at St. Augus.-ne in Florida, and they, like the Spaniards, are long • t.ce gone. So Fort Yukon is in some sort the Jamestown of the Yukon. A mile away from the village-and a pleasant walk if the mosquitoes . be not too bad-is the old Hudson's Bay burying-ground, where graves still bear headboards with dates in the So's and 6o's; certainly amongst the first white men s graves in the interior of Alaska. The post at Fort Yukon was the farthest-flung of all the Great Company's agencies, and it was known at the time it was built that it was beyond the confines ot British America, intruding into Russian territory. One of the best-built and most complete of all the company s posts, "its commodious dwellings for officers and men had smooth floors, open fireplaces, glazed windows, and plastered walls; its gun-room, fur-press, ice and meat wells were the delight and astonishment of visitors. . Beetles Wilson, "The Great Company" (Dodd, Mead and Co.. New York, 1906). P- 50J- YUKON'S COURSE FIRST UNKNOWN .^g It is certainly interesting to recall that when Murray built Fort Yukon he did not know, nor did any one else know, that the Yukon River was identical with the river at the mouth of which the Russians were seated. Murray thought the Yukon turned northward and discharged into the Arctic Ocean, and he conjectured that the Col- ville River, the mouth of which the Hudson's Bay Com- pany's explorers, Dease and Simpson, reached and dc- scribed in 1837, was in fact the mouth of the Yukon, finding support for his conjecture in the confused ac- counts, brought to him by Indians at second hand, of the great northern tributary of the Yukon, the Koyu- kuk, some of the headwater streams of which do ac- tually interlock with tributaries of the Colville. It must be remembered that the Russians at St. Michael and Nulato did not know the name "Yukon" at all, but used the Eskimo name for the river, the Kwikpak, and Mur- ray thought th.n the Russians reached their depots on the lower river, not by the mouth, but by a tributary stream even as he had reached the Yukon. As late as 1865, when the first exploring party of the Western Union Telegraph Company reached St. Michael, Robert Kennicott, its scientific director, and his col- leagues used to have great discussions as to whether the Yukon and the Kwikpak were one and the same river, or the Yukon and the Colville one and the same. Within a few years of the establishing of this post, however, the venturing of trading-parties from Fort Yukon down the river as far as what is now Tanana, where they met trading-parties coming up from the li'] • • i' 100 FORT YUKON BECOMES AMERICAN Russian post at Nulato, made known to those most interested, though not to the world at large, the course and extent of the Yukon River. The printed narrative, give credit to a half-breed Russian, Ivan Simonson Lukeen, sent by the Russians from St. Michael to m- vestigate the intrusion of the Hudson's Bay Company, for the first journey up the river thus far. This was m When the United States bought Alaska from Rus- sia, in 1867, it became necessary to determine whether or not Fort Yukon were within the purchased territory, and. early in the summer of 1869, Captain Raymond of the engineer corps of the U. S. army was despatched from San Francisco for that purpose, and travelled up the Yukon from St. Michael in a steamboat belongmg to some San Francisco traders who were patriotically resolved to supplant the Hudson's Bay Company shou d they prove to be intruders. Tourists today can scarcely fail to be interested in knowing that this steamboat, the Yukon, was the first ever to disturb the waters of the great river. There are yet old Indians who remember the consternation it caused amongst the native popula- tion, u r » Finding by his astronomical observations that tort Yukon was well within the newly acquired territory, Captain Raymond raised the American flag and served notice upon the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company that they must immediately retire. The company s representatives thereupon abandoned the post and with- drew up the Porcupine River, but so difficult is the de- . (fi QUEER BOUNDARY MAKING loi termination of position in the wilderness without ai- tronomical instruments that the post was removed three different times before the border was reached, and on the recent exact running of the boundarv-line by a joint American and Canadian commission it was discovered that the New Rampart House, the third and last of their establishments on the Porcupine, was no more than a couple of hundred yards or so within British territory. The story is eloquent chiefly of the little value at- tached to all this northern country in the early decades of the last century. The Russians certainly had no sort of claim to the interior of Alaska based upon occupation or even discovery; but it was not thought worth making any to^o about; and having regard only to the settle- ments along the coast, Mr. Stratford Canning for the tnghsh crown and Count Nesselrode for the Russian crown ruled a line across the blank space of the map and England took to the east thereof and Russia to the west. Count Nesselrode is remembered by most people if he be remembered at all. in connection with a rich frozen pudding, just as the great Hungarian patriot and harrier of the Turks. Hunyadi Janos. is remembered m connection with an aperient water, but Nesselrode was a very important man in his day, and his day was a long one. To the historical student there is much interest m the tie that connects the diplomatist of the peace of Tilsit, the colleague of Talleyrand and Met- ternich, the reactionary manager of Russia's foreign affairs for the forty years from Waterloo to Sebastopol with the future Alaska. If Nesselrode's ruler had slipped H I \,r> 1 102 GEOGRAPHICAL CENTRES a little, the Northwest Mounted Police might have had a post at Fort Yukon in the days of the Klondike rush, which is the next important period in the history of the place. For when the Great Company withdrew, the place declined in importance; other traders came, but they did not understand native traffic and were not able to hold the people together. Much of the fur catch went up to the Rampart House, and while the point never ceased to be occupied by natives and never failed of a certain amount of trade, it lacked the systematic working of the company and its corps of experienced servants. Maps of the last decades of the nineteenth century (and even some of to-day that ought to be ashamed of them- selves) mark Fort Yukon in its place at the junction of the Yukon and the Porcupine, and write the word "abandoned" after it. It is curious to consider what it is that determines the inclusion of a place in a map. I have often seen maps of the world that included Fort Yukon, and vir- tually every map ever made of the North American continent marks the place even though it omit populous cities in the United States and Canada. I have an ex- cellent map of the continent before me as I write that includes Fort Yukon, but does not include Fort Worth in Texas or Fort Leavenworth in Kansas— for instance. The reason in this case is partly the wide expanse of country with no other name that can possibly be inserted, and the traditional dislike of cartographers to blank spaces, and partly the geographical position of the place, KLONDIKE ANARCHY ,03 right on the arctic circle and at the confluence of the Yuicon with one of its chief tributaries. But that legend "abandoned" written after the name Fort Yukon al- ways amused me; it is like writing a word and striking It out again, and yet inserting the word and the erasure both in the fair copy. The great stampede to the Klondike of 1897 and 1898 brought nothing but harm to the native people of Alaska, and to those of Fort Yukon in particular. The naviga- tion season of 1897 came to a close with many steamboats far short of their destination. Boats of a draught too great for the shallow waters of the Flats, tied up for the winter at this place, and Captain Ray, of the U. S. army, who was sent with Lieutenant Richardson to investi- gate conditions, reports three hundred and fifty white men wintering at Fort Yukon and is not at all com- plimentary in his references to the character of many of them. At one time he had to seize merchandise left here en route to Dawson, in the name of the United States, to prevent the looting of it. These were the days when there was no government at all in Alaska. Although the country had been for thirty years in the possession of the United States, our inelastic system had not per- mitted the setting up of any attempt at governing the Territory. No extraordinary insight is necessary to realise the situation during that winter and the next. Given a large number of white men with little or nothing to do, quantities of whisky (and there were quantities, though at that time its importation into Alaska was nominally m h., I 104 A GREAT MISSIONARY forbidden) and a timid and docile native people, it is not surprising that there was gross debauchery and general demoralisation. It took Fort Yukon a long time to re- cover from the evil living of those winters and the evil name that followed. But it has recovered; and the place has much present interest to those who are concerned with the condition of the native people of Alaska. Missionary work has been carried on here from a period a few years after the original Hudson Bay settlement. When Captain Ray- mond came, in 1869, he found a clergyman of the Church of England in residence, the Reverend Mr. Bompas, afterwards Bishop Bompas of the Yukon Territory. Those who still enjoy the Pickwick Papers will like to learn that the father of Bishop Bompas was the dis- tinguished English lawyer, Sergeant Bompas, from whom Dickens drew the character of Sergeant Buzfuz, who "with a fat body and a red face" represented the plain- tiflF in the famous case of Bardell v. Pickwick. But the name that will never be forgotten at Fort Yukon is that of Archdeacon McDonald, who translated the whole Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Hymnal, and other devotional literature into the In- dian language of this place, translations which are still in constant use. For the last eight or nine years a mis- sionary physician has been maintained here, and in 1915 a commodious and well-equipped native hospital was built (after long, vain efforts to induce the govern- ment to pay some attention to the health of the Yukon natives) by the efforts of Bishop Rowe and his clergy. ll I SPARSE POPULATION ,05 It is exceedingly gratifying to be able to state that these persistent and intensive labours for the upbuilding of the native people have not been without result. Fort Yukon is not only the largest native village on the Yukon River, but it is also the healthiest. While at most other villages the death-rate exceeds the birth-rate, at this place the balance is ;;reatly the other way. The steadily diminishing death-rate in the following table is evidence that the Yukon Indian, as a race, still has vitality. DEATHS BIRTHS 1914 14 II 8 7 4 20 18 20 20 27 I9I3 I9I4 I9I5 I9I6 While the figures of the last-mentioned year are much too good to be maintained, its extraordinary pre- ponderance of births will help to raise the average. The observant traveller thus far down the Yukon River must have been struck with the exceeding sparse- ness of inhabitants, and will understand that the land in general is still an arctic wilderness, with no immedi- ate prospect of becoming anything else. There is no reason why the" interior of Alaska should not support two or three times its present native population; it is as good an Indian country as ever it was and does not, of late years, certainly, even tend to become otherwise! In the last decade the white population of the interior has sensibly dwindled, as one placer-mining camp after iif^ io6 RIVER EROSION if III*; another has decayed, and this is particularly the case in the upper half of the river. The big game of Alaska is not seriously invaded, if it be not actually increasing as I believe to be the case: the salmon still swarm up the streams, the fur-bearing animals are still to be had for the trapping; yet on the whole the natives diminish. It will be understood, therefore, how very encouraging the results that have been attained at Fort Yukon are to those who have the survival of the native population at heart. One drawback the place has, as a place for the erec- tion of permanent expensive buildings such as this hos- pital: it is -ivbject to constant, and, at times, rapid and violent, ep L-^on of the bank. In the summer of 1916 the river-channel changed in the capricious way it uses in the Flats and threw the whole force of the rapid stream against the bank on which the town is built. More than a hundred feet was cut away during that summer, and the stores, the warehouses, the road-house, the mission house, and many cabins had to be torn down and rebuilt farther back. It should be understood that, speaking broadly again, the whole soil of the interior of Alaska i: frozen solidly from the top to bed-rock, however deep that bed-rock may be, save for the three feet or so that thaws beneath the moss that covers the surface during the summer. This solidly frozen soil of Alaska (and the same is true of northern Siberia) is a puzzle to the geologists. How came these enormous bodies of gravel and sand and muck, deposited by water in the course of ages, some- f :■{. \ I.ITTl.l: Mi.TFMj; ' i EFFECT OF THAWING 107 \ it times three or four hundred feet deep, so solidly frozen ? If the layer brought down by the floods of the summer froze during the following winter, why did it not — free of moss covering as it must have been — thaw out in the next summer ere is received another deposit ? The streams have no power until long after the snow is gone, and the flowers are blooming before the ice goes out. Even the superimposition of a glacial ice-sheet will hardly account for such deep-seated gelation, and it is found in areas that give no sign of glacial activity. Whatever the cause, the reader must think of the Yukon Flats in particular as solidly frozen ground through which the river has cut a way by thawing, and in which it is still continually cutting by thawing. The most casual observer must have noticed the black, glistening, dripping banks, in some places undermined into cavernous recesses here and there along the river's course. The, level at which the rapid water impinges upon the frozen soil, is the line where the great cutting is going on, al- though all exposed bank is, of course, thawing in the sun's rays and the warm atmosphere, and when this circular saw cutting at the water's level has gone far enough, the whole mass topples into the river, with its trees and its moss. Nothing seems to stop it; the frozen gravel or sand has no cohesion save that which the frost gives; when it thaws, it becomes loose gravel or sand again, and is quickly swallowed up by the river and transported by its swift channel to the nearest point at which it happens to be depositing a bar or sand- bank. >y io8 FORT YUKON'S IMPORTANCE ii i I The frozen soil makes any sort of revetment work exceedingly difficult, for piles cannot be driven without first thawing each hole by steam the full depth to which the pile must go down. And the massive character of the ice that the river carries out in the spring and the high water that always accompanies it, would probably tear away any such work that was attempted.* Besides being the most considerable village of natives on the Yukon River, Fort Yukon is a metropolis and trading point for many outlying settlements. The Porcupine, the Chandalar, the Big and Little Black Rivers, Birch Creek, the Christian River, are all con- fluent with one another or with the Yukon in this neigh- bourhood, and all have a certain Indian population, which resorts to Fort Yukon on the great festivals of Christmas and the Fourth of July, and brings its furs to the stores to exchange for "outside" grub, ammuni- tion, and the white man's wares generally, on which it tends to grow more and more dependent. A number of white men, the greater part married to native women, also engage in trapping upon these rivers and their wide- spread tributaries, and use (and sometimes abuse) the town on their occasions of conviviality and business. Thus it has come about, to close the account of the •We are, however, undertaking banL-uving work at Fort Yukon of another kind with some confidence in itf success; building out at intervals into the river triangular piers of logs by means of which we hope to deflect the current away from the bank. Such device has proved effective on other rivers, and by seeking to control only the lower stages of water (at which the rapid cutting always takes place) we hope we can so construct the piers that the flood-water carrying out the ice will pass over them, without injui^ ing them. BEAVER CITY ,09 place, that Fort Yukon is the most important fur mart in Alaska. Upon leaving Fort Yukon the river takes the south- west as its general course, instead of the northwest, which direction it has hitherto steadily maintained. For another one hundred and seventy-five miles or thereabouts it flows through the Flats with many channels and amidst many islands, though there are not so many of either as between Circle and Fort Yukon. The same general characteristics are maintained, the same monot- ony is displayed. About five miles below Fort Yukon the river re- ceives one of its important tributaries, the Porcupine, from the northeast, which brings from its tributary the Old Crow perhaps the most northerly water that reaches the Yukon; and twenty miles or so below this con- fluence, the Chandalar is received from the northwest. Like all the tributaries received in the Flats, these streams discharge into sloughs and not into the main channel of the river, and their mouths will be unnoticed unless they be specially pointed out. The Porcupine and the Chandalar will receive special attention later, and need no ruore than mention here. Some eighty miles below Fort Yukon on the right or north bank of the river, an abortive attempt at a town is reached, named Beaver, or Beaver City. This place owes its existence to the gold discoveries on the Chandalar River, and particulariy to some quartz prospects in which a New York congressman was interested; its decay fol- lowed the abandonment of those prospects (temporarily. ^. i H no FISH-WHEELS at any rate) after a good deal of money had been ex- pended upon them, and the Alaskan Road Commission had been induced to grade a road to them. It still main- tains a little store, and a few men prospecting on the Chandalar and its tributaries procure their supplies here, A forlorn, aged Eskimo couple, related to the wife of the storekeeper, are sometimes all the rest of the population. During the summer one or two dog ranches are main- tained along the bank by white men and the animals are boarded at so much a head and fed upon salmon. The visitor will see a number of such dog ranches as he travels the Yukon. Hard by is a fish-wheel, slowly turning in the current and groaning as it turns, its net- work arms, or "buckets" as they are called, seining the little patch of water into which they dip for the salmon laboriously pursuing their way up-stream. A tent stands on the bank, or maybe a cabin; long racks are covered with dull red salmon; at the water's edge is a rough blood-stained table where the fish are cleaned; a skiflF is moored near by or drawn up on the shingle, and all along the earth of the bank, sometimes to the number of several hundred, the dogs are tethered, each one bound to a stake from which, it may be, he will never be released until his master comes for him in the fall. In many cases a dog has dug himself a hole in which he may partially 'scape the persecutions of the mosquitoes and flies. The lot of the Alaskan work dog is, in general, a hard one. When the snow is gone and his winter's labours are over, he might, one would think, look forward to a HARD FATE OF DOGS m period of rest and comfort until the return of winter renders sled travel possible again. His summer should be a time of "sweet-doing-nothing" as the Italians say, that should repay him for the aching shoulders and sore feet and whip-lashed flanks of the winter trail. But, indeed, the ordinary Alaskan dog, had he power of pro- spection, would look forward to the winter during his summer purgatory. Chained to a stake, month after month, all through the summer heats with their venom- ous insect pests, the length of his chain the measure of hi3 movements, his heavy coat a source of continual discomfort, the natural eager, active disposition of the animal is curbed and goaded into a sullen ferocity by this unmitigated restraint, this ceaseless irritation. If the needle of the mosquito cannot penetrate the dense coat of the dog, it finds a vulnerable point around the eyes, and it is no uncommon thing to see a dog's eyes so swollen from their stings as to be almost closed, and raw and bleeding from constant rubbing with b^^ paws. The greater part of the dogs that are "boarded" at fish camps in the summer are the mail dogs, the dogs who carry the U. S. mai! up and down the river and across country. They are probably the hardest worked, and, on the whole, the hardest treated of all our dogs. Where one driver will be thoughtful of them and kin 1 to them, another will be careless and brutal, and the driver, in either case, r ust exact from them the re- quired task. An ordinary sane traveller will not venture out if fir III SOME DOG PROBLEMS the thermometer be below -50' F.; but whatever the temperature, the mail muit go; and whatever the con- ditions, the full day'§ journey mu«t be made. Early in the season and late in the teaion— before and after all other travel— the mail must move. It is all very line and efficient and bureaucratically inexorable— but it is very hard on the dogs, and on the drivers too, and there is no commensurate gain to any one. In the summer the contractor sends them off to a fish camp where they remain until he requires them again. But even the dog owner who is most considerate of his animals finds himself embarrassed by them in summer. To keep six or seven big dogs round a house all the summer is a nuisance; they must be chained or they will fight and maim one another; and however much a man may love his dogs, if he has spent the winter in their com- pany he is glad to be rid of them awhile. " Absence makes the heart grow fonder" of dogs whose chief recreation is howling. Moreover, dogs are a great expense, and the only cheap way of feeding them in the summer is with the refuse of the fresh fish as they are caught for drying, and this can only be done at a fish camp. So the private owner of a dog team, also, is very likely to board them out for the summer, however reluctantly. The native fishing camps are picturesque and not infrequent sights along the river. Virtually the whole Indian population scatters out at this occupation so soon as the salmon begin to run early in July, to the great benefit of the general health. Individuals, ap- parently in the last stages of consumption, pick up won- P FISHING METHODS ,,3 derfully in the freih air and iunshine of camp life, and children seem to get the greater part of their year's growth in the two or three months of the fishing season; the native dogs become fat and better favoured, and the staple food for man and beast is put up in quantities sufficient for the winter. Occasionally an Indian in a birch-bark canoe may be seen in midstream, fishing in the old way. scooping up with a dip-net the salmon who betrays his presence beneath by a ripple on the surface, but the fish-wheel has almost entirely superseded the more primitive method. The fish-wheel on the Yukon dates back no farther than the last twelve years and came as an incident of the stampede to Fairbanks. The waters of the upper Yukon are too clear for the employment of this device; the fish can see, and avoid, the netted arms that dip into the stream, but in the middle Yukon, and particularly the Tanana, are very dirty streams, in which fish-wheels do well. So soon as the settlement at Fairbanks created a large demand for dried fish, wheels were set out in the Tanana, and the Indians, beginning to copy the im- provement when they realised its advantages, have adopted it almost everywhere it will serve. The tribu- taries that are not fed by glaciers, and are therefore clear, however, will not yield their fish to the wheels and in their waters the old methods persist. Nine or ten miles below Beaver a swift side channel that takes off from the main stream to the right, re- turns to it again about five miles below at such an angle of re-entrance as to create a whirlpool, which at certain '' I'll li'i 114 AN ALASKAN TRAGEDY n stages of water is quite violent in its action. Since this "WTiirlpool Slough" is practicable for small craft, and saves a considerable distance, rowboats often blunder into the whirlpool at its mouth, tc the dismay, and even the actual peril, of their occupants, and the entrance to the slough would be marked with a danger-signal were any attempt made by the government to facilitate and safeguard the navigation of this great river. A couple of miles or so below the wliirlpool we come to "Victor's Place," as it is still called, although Victor died some years ago. Since the story of his death is not without interest, and it has never been put into print, and garbled versions are about, it may be worth while telling it here, though it is a winter story. In January, 191 3, while travelling down the Yukon with a dog team, and lying over Sunday at Beaver, word was brought there by a neighbour that he had found Victor dead in his bed. Every one who knew Victor knew that he had heart-disease, so while the news was a shock it was not a great surprise. Procuring some planks for a coffin and putting them on the sled, we went down the next morning. We found the body as the neighbour had found it, lying frozen on the bunk, with every appearance that death had come in sleep. The weather was intensely cold; it was 50° below zero all that week, and at such temperature when the fire goes out in a cabin it does not take long to freeze everything freezable. While the neighbour who brought the news was busy making the coffin, and my half-breed attendant started to dig the grave by building a huge VICISSITUDES OF LIQUOR TRAFFIC 115 fire over the selected spot (only so may we go down through the flint-like frozen earth), I prepared the body for burial, examining it carefully to be sure that death was due to natural causes. While thus engaged, there came an old Indian and told my boy a story of an assault upon Victor by an In- dian named "Beaver Creek William," and I set his name down here for reasons that will appear. That night I took the old Indian's narrative at the mouth of my half- breed interpreter. It set forth that nine or ten days before Victor's death, this Beaver Creek William, having exhausted a supply of whisky at Stephen's Village brought up from a r-stilent liquor shop at Rampart, had come hither, two long days' journey, and had de- manded whisky from Victor, and upon being refused had knocked Victor down and dragged him about the floor. Now three or four years before I had found it my unpleasant duty to prosecute Victor for selling liquor to Indians, and though he was acquitted, as is usually the case, yet I knew and, I think I may say, every one concerned in the case knew, that the man was guilty. It put Victor to some expense and trouble, which is about all the good these prosecutions do, commonly, but they are not to be condemned on that score, since expense and trouble are in the nature of punishment, and it is sometimes possible to stop offences by ac- quittals as well as by convictions. At any rate, Victor took warning, and I do not think he had been guilty of the offence since, and as he knew that there was noth- ing personal in my action against him, amicable relation- I |.; 'i ii6 A SAD ENDING f I; ship had long since been restored. But it gave colour to the account of the old Indian, and was not incon- sistent with what I knew of the sinister character of Beaver Creek William. When I had carefully written out the old Indian's account of what he had seen, had read it over to him through the interpreter and had sworn him to it, the body was again carefully examined from head to foot in the presence of my companions, but no marks of vio- lence were found upon it at all, save a slight abrasion of one elbow such as might have been made by striking it accidentally against a tree or a door-post. I drew up another affidavit to that effect and swore them to it. By our Indian's account, the assault had taken place nine or ten days before the death; it must have been slight since it left no marks; Victor had been going about, cooking and attending to his household affairs until the day before his death; it was known that he had heart-disease. Now it was in my mind that William should be punished, but we all came to the conclusion that the assault could have had nothing to do with the death, and that common assault and not murder was all he could be charged with. The funeral, in the twilight of the shortest day of the year, at a temperature of 80° or more below the freezing-point, in the dead stillness that always ac- companies the "strong cold," was one amongst many such that I shall never forget. Putting my vestments on over my heavy apparel I said the burial office, and hastened back to the warmth of the cabin; while li LEGAL COMPLICATIONS 117 the others quickly filled in the grave they had so labor- iously dug, and set up a headboard I had inscribed. Before we left the place I gathered up all money and valuables and papers I could find and carried them down five days' journey to the United States com- missioner at Rampart, in the same weather all the way; and when I had taken a receipt from him for the money and valuables, / swore out a warrant against Willic-n, charging him with assault, and turned over to the com- missioner the depositions I had drawn up. Then I resumed my journey far afield, and it was not until next June that I heard the sequel. Beaver Creek William was arrested and taken to Rampart. There he secured by some means the services of a lawyer of sorts, who persuaded the commissioner that by statute no man could be tried for assault unless he were confronted in court \,ith the person assaulted; and the case was dismissed. The commissioner was an old retired physician, a good man and a just, but knowing nothing whatever about law; and the case is a commentary on the whole system of the Alaskan unpaid magistracy that must live upon fees even though the fees be insufficient for a living, so that capable men cannot be found to take the office. But this was not the end of the affair. Certain resi- dents in the Yukon Flats, hearing wild rumours that Victor had been murdered, addressed the district at- torney with a demand for an inquest, and charged me with shielding the Indian murderer. At the opening of navigation, therefore, the district attorney sent the 4|% 1 t I < i 1 r* I \ 118 INDIAN CHARACTERISTICS army surgeon from Fort Gibbon to exhume the body and perform an autopsy. The steamboat that took him stopped at Rampart and picked up a coroner's jury, and the company proceeded to Victor's place. When the autopsy was performed and all the evidence was presented, the surgeon told the jury that Victor had succumbed to an organic disease of the heart, and that the assault, a week or more before, could have had nothing to do with the death; the jury returned a verdict of "Death from natural causes," the body was reinterred and the company departed. And yet the story is on the river to this day, with most circumstan- tial details, that Victor was murdered and the murderer shielded by the missionary. Since Beaver Creek William was never punished, I hnve set his name down in the unenviable notoriety of being the only Indian I have ever myself known to be guilty of an assault upon a white man. They are a gentle and even timid people, not given to brawling among themselves nor to acts of violence of any kind; but there are occasional morose, churlish individuals amongst them, who, under the influence of liquor or the craving appetite for the same— and under that influence alone, so far as my observation goes— may be capable of ruffianly conduct. And I take credit that I did unhesi- tatingly set the law in motion against the only one I have mys ^If known to be thus guilty. There are circumstances of mysterious interest in Victor's story that do not enter into the account of his death. A year or so before, a steamboat had been robbed ELEMENTS OF A ROMANCE 119 of a large shipment of gold-dust in this immediate vicin- ity; the night-watchman had dropped overboard and swum ashore after (as it was conjectured) sinking the boxes of gold with a float attached. He was captured at Victor's place and tried at Fairbanks and convicted, but obstinately held his tongue, nor could be induced by any offers of leniency to disclose what had been done with the gold. Did Victor know anything about it ? Some have held that the prospecting he was carrying on by proxy back on the Hodzana was intended to furnish a pretext for the production of the gold-dust by and by. Many people believe that it is buried somewhere near his cabin, and now and again surreptitious digging takes place. So here are the elements of a romance of the far north, presented, with my compliments, to the writers for the ten-cent magazines, whose sensational Alaskan stories, of late, show signs of languishing imagination without any signs of increasing knowledge. In the last one I read, a man travelled fifty miles in a day on snow- shoes, with twenty thousand dollars in gold-dust belted around him, which would weigh in the neighbourhood of an hundred pounds. Let us drop down the river twelve or fifteen miles more, in the course of which the Yukon receives the Hodzana from the north and Beaver Creek from the south. But the Flats are so devoid of natural interest to the cursory eye of the traveller that its place must be supplied with human interest when possible. And certainly, here at "Purgatory," as he calls it, is a most interesting personality. i;. 1 120 GLENN'S EXPEDITION When Captain (now Colonel) E. F. Glenn conducted an expedition in 1898 that sought to penetrate from the coast through the Alaslca Range to the waters of the interior, he had with him Sergeant William Yanert, of the 8th Cavalry. This man was sent out on a detached party and reached a tributary of the Nenana River that interlocks with tributaries of the Sushitna in the neigh- bourhood of Broad Pass, which tributary was named the Yanert Fork by Alfred Brooks, head of the Alaskan Geological Survey. He also mapped the Sushitna River, and was evidently, from the terms in which he is men- tioned in Captain Glenn's report, a most valuable mem- ber of the party. There is a lake on the right bank of Birch Creek named Yanert Lake by Lieutenant Erick- son, U. S. A., in honour of explorations by the same man, and again a mountain not far from Fort Hamlin, named Yanert Hole (because it probably has a crater on top), named after the same man by the same man.* So here is one of the few men living with a river, a lake, and a mountain in Alaska named after him; whom the military and the scientific authorities have alike been pleased to honour. And it were well if all the long list of personal names given to places in Alaska had been as appropriately bestowed. t When his soldiering was done William Yanert built * "Geographic Dictionary of Alaika" (Waihington, 1906). 1 1 know of only one man who excels William Yanert in the number of different natural Alaskan features named in his honour, and that one is the late John Henry Turner of the Coast and Geodetic Survey; who has a river on the arctic coast, a glacier near Mt. St. Elias, a lake that falls into the Taku Inlet, a mountain near the Stikine River, and an island of the Shuma- gin group, all named for him. SKILLED CARTOGRAPHY 121 himself a cabin in the Yukon Flats and called the place "Purgatory," and here he has resided with his brother Herman for the past fourteen or fifteen years. What particular expiation he is working out I know not, but if he be in torment it is not noticeable to the outward eye. Few men more content with their lot it has been my fortune to meet. He catches enough fur every winter to suffice for the supply of his simple wanrs outside of the game that falls to his rifle, and has ample time left to gratify his deep interest in the topography of the country and its animal life. His cartographical abilities have not been idle; for his own pleasure he has made a careful map of about ten miles square of the Yukon Flats, the only map of any part of the Flats, so far as I know, that has ever been made; and he has been kind enough to permit me to use it as an illustration for this volume. His ingenuity and manual dexterity are con- stantly exercised in the production of quaint and gro- tesque carvings. The exterior of his cabin is adorned with admirable reduced imitations of the totem-poles of the coast Indians. Having no master but his own purposes, he leads as free and independent a life as any man I know. His station is either above or beneath envy — as you please; he is not touched by cupidity or ambition, and the rage and the rascality of the world of men pass him altogether by. The grim humour of the man was displayed a few years ago in a way that shocked the passengers on steam- boats tying up at his place for wood; for that was before the ordinary boats burned oil, and Yanert had a wood- I I r i m . 122 A GRIM HUMOURIST yard. The Northwest Mounted Police had been ex- pelling undesirable characters from Dawson, and many a man drifted down the river in a small boat, preying upon the "camps" he passed, if he found the owners absent. Yanert's place had been robbed of grub in this manner. It is u most exasperating thing for a lonely dweller on the Yukon to come back from some brief journey and find his cache broken into and the supply laid up for the winter invaded, perhaps late in the season, when it is difficult to procure more, even if the where- withal were at hand; perhaps to find rifle or shotgun gone, or even the stove looted bodily out of the cabin, as I have known, and the blankets gone from the bed. It is hard to think of more cowardly and contemptible stealing. So Yanert designed a warning against any who should visit his place again with such intent. He shot a whisky-jack (Canada jay is its right name, I think, though it is generally known in Alaska as "camp- robber"), that had been pecking at some bacon, and buried the bird in a full-sized man's grave, rounded into the usual shape, and set up this legend conspicuously on the headboard: "He Robbed my Camp and I Shot Him." I know not into what lurid stories of lawlessness in the far north this incident has been woven. It is good to think of a lonely dwelling on the bank of the Yukon which is more than the abode of hard labour and mere animal (existence; which, on the con- trary, harbours intelligent thought and even zealous, disinterested enterprise. With rugged health and a readily procured, though modest, subsistence, with leisure i! « ., -^^sS'sc/'.oji^q^^/i, MlCiOCOPV RESOLUTION TiST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 ^^ Ki ^= ..^ 12.2 I.I : ^ iss ^ /APPLIED irVMGE Inc S^^- >6S3 Eail Main ;ir#et S'.a Rocn«l»r, Nao 'orfc U609 uS* ■■^ (716) 482 - 0300 - PKone =a (716) 288 - 5989 - Fa. M y i;e. Ill ■I < TYPICAL YUKON TOPOGRAPHY 123 to follow congenial pursuits, with peace and quietness, there are less desirable, if more comfortable, lots than that which William Yanert has chosen. The map which is here presented, on a sufficiently large scale to show plainly every minute feature, will repay more than a glance. Just as the particular study of a certain period of history throws bright light upon history as a whole, and frequently explains what had before been persistently obscure, so is topography es- sential to geography; and this area of about one hundred square miles, displayed with almost domestic detail, will convey more understanding of the nature of the whole country than a comprehensive presentation of it could possibly convey. It covers an interesting section. The Flats draw in, the foothills are now not many miles distant from the river; on the right bank, and again nearly opposite on the left bank, a tributary of some importance is received, and just as these streams meander with an elaborate tortuousness towards their discharge, and fall, not into the main channel but into some con- necting slough, so do all the tributaries in this region approach their confluence with the Yukon. The broad, sweeping sinuosity of the great river itself is shown even more strikingly by the broken connections to the east of the map, than by ife continuous course laid down in the greater part. P..,t what a maze of lakes and swamps and watercourses the whole valley presents ! And the area delineated is broadly typical of the whole region we have lately been voyaging through. The little lakes and creeks so carefully bounded and Dl If >Y f' iff' ' I 124 A LAND OF LAKES AND SWAMPS named, must stand for thousands and thousands of un- named ones all over this wide basin. Leave the steam- boat anywhere and force your way through the scrub forest and the dense underbrush, and ere long you will reach the bank of another channel or slough. Cross it and you will come to yet another, or you will find your- self on the shore of a shallow lake. Skirt the lake and you will reach an impassable swamp. Indeed, the gen- eral characteristic of the whole region is wetness; nine- tenths of all interior Alaska that is not mountain is lake and stream and niggerhead swamp, thickly interspersed with dense scrub forest and "jungle," as Yanert calls it. Travel across it in the summer is impossible, save along ridges of high ground. Even in the mountains the whole earth reeks with moisture; almost every level spot is a bog or a lake, and the valleys are always nigger- head swamps. But in the winter, when the cold solid- ifies the wetness and the snow smooths out the inequali- ties, one may go where one pleases in the open, and lakes and swamps are an aid instead of a hindrance to travel. The permanently frozen soil which the water can- not penetrate is doubtless the reason for this saturation of surface. The snow which melts in the spring, the rain which falls in the summer, soak into the spongy moss until it has all it can hold, and then form pools in all the little hollows between the clumps of moss— and there is a swamp. One need go no farther to understand the terrible plague of mosquitoes which afflicts the coun- try. Given this universal wetness of surface and a sun THE MOSQUITO PLAGUE 125 that is in the sky nearly all the time, and conditions are ideal for their multitudinous breeding. It is odd that so many people should still discover surprise at the presence of mosquitoes in the arctic re- gions. Wherever there is land that retains moisture and receives warmth, mosquitoes, may be found. They have no altitude limit as such. I have myself been troubled with them in the Colorado Rockies at thirteen thousand feet, and Doctor Workman found them at fifteen thou- sand feet in the Himalayas. They have no latitude limit; Greely, for instance, found them at Fort Conger, in Grinnell Land, well above the 80th parallel. Wherever flowers and grass will grow, mosqiutoes will breed, and flowers and grass grow wherever there is land near the sea-level not under permanent glacial ice, up to the ex- treme limit of the northern hemisphere. Ten miles or so before leaving the t.ats a native settlement is passed on the right bank, but off the steam- boat channel. Unless the boat have freight for the place it does not usually put in, and the mail for the two white traders who divide its petty commerce, and for the mis- sionary teacher, the only white woman for nearly a hundred miles in every direction, is delivered into the skiff or launch that puts out when the boat is sighted or the whistle heard. The p' appears on most recent maps as "Steven's Village," . since it is the village of the Indian patriarch Stephen, the corrupted name can only be attributed to that perverse desire to make one letter grow where two grew before which afflicts modern philologists and map- ! ? fl Ul .; (1 '!l t' m.' ■' i' 126 POST-OFFICE ILLITERACY makers, and seems to have taken the place in their minds of the famous horticultural ideal presen.ed for the con- sideration of Captain Lemuel Gulliver by the King of Brobdingnag. It is usually the Post-Office Department, oddly enough the most illiterate department of our government, which is responsible for these corrupt cur- tailments, but since there is no post-office at Stephen's Village, the blame lies elsewhere this time. It is my observation that spelling reformers are the most prolix and verbose of writers; economists of letters, they arc the prodigals of words; a saving at the spigbt and wast- ing at the bung-hole characteristic of the passion for contraction and elision. So these map-makers who save a letter here and a prefix there, who lop off all posses- sive forms and write "Cook Inlet" for "Cook's Inlet," will cover the Koyukuk River with places such as Berg- man and Arctic City and Peavey and Jinitov n and Union City and Seaforth which have no existence. The last settlement of natives was at Fort Yukon: the intervening stretch of one hundred and seventy- five miles or so separates one language from another. Here at Stephen's Village the natives speak the language of Tanana and the Middle River; the tongue of Fort Yukon is the tongue of the Upper River. While of the same root, the two tongues differ perhaps as widely as Spanish and Portuguese, and this difference seems to speak of a long period without intercourse, in which the d- ergence arose. Beyond the certainty that the natives of the interior of ALiska are all of one common stock, there is little that is known, or ever can be known, DALL RIVER ,^7 of their history prior to the coming of the white man. Their language was not written until the early mis- sionaries extracted its grammar and reduced it to writing and there are no traditions worthy the name historical amongst them. On the very edge of the Flats the Yukon receives the Dall River on its right bank, and Stephen's Village used to be situated just at the mouth of the Dall, on the slough into which it discharges, but an inundation some ten years ago destroyed the village and induced the In- dians to change its site. This river is named for Mr. William Healy Dall, the distinguished naturalist of the National Museum' at Washmgton, who was one of the earliest explorers of the interior of Alaska, and whose book "Alaska and Its Resources," published in 1870, and long since out of pnnt, IS the most valuable book ever written about the country. When Dall records and discusses his own ob- servations he is a safe guide; when he falls into error >t will be found that he is recording what has been told him by others. Dall's book left Alaska known to the extent that his eye had seen it; even his speculations on what he had himself seen are almost always judicious and frequently illuminating. He belongs in the first rank of explorers, and his work will be frequently re- ferred to henceforth. Most people are quite unaware that shortly after the Civil War the Western Union Telegraph Company entertained the ambitious project of connecting Eu- rope and America by telegraph, via Alaska, Bering Sea, Ml ,28 THE WESTERN UNION SURVEY and Siberia, and sent out well-equipped survey-parties into the field on both the Asiatic and Amencan sides, and maintained them for several years, spendmg upwards of three million dollars in such preparatory work. The cheme was dropped when the Atlantic cable provd successful, and all that was gained was what Dall and hlcomplnions brought back from Alaska and Kennan from Siberia in the way of increased knowledge of the regions they had traversed. Both these septuagenarians are still in harness, full of honours and fame. I I i^ ,1' d CHAPTER IV THE LOWER RAMPARTS AND XANANA n.nJ"!/"'^"" ^■"'" '"^" '^' ^'^''' «^«" «ore ab- mptly than .t entered them. There is no gradual rising of the ground or preparatory reassembling of the waters To nght and to left the levels stretch away unchanged, but immediately in front is a mountain barrier with a narrow gap or notch in the midst of it. Straight for that gap the r.ver drives, gathering its various channels iTk V ''"T"^''"'^ beforehand, and at a plunge has eft behmd the great basin with its wide-spread channels, and flows ,n a narrow bed between the lofty barriers of the Lower Ramparts. One is impressed with the thought of the depth to wh.ch that narrow bed must descend in order to carry the great volume of water that has hitherto been spread out m mdes of width. Since entering the Flats one first- ckss tributary has been received and a number of lesser, though st,ll important ones. Not only the drainage of the Flats themselves, of about thirty thousand square miles, but the discharge from the much larger drainage- basm of these tributaries has been added to the wafer o the river, now all carried in a channel a few hundred yards wide Farther along it will contract still more ^o far as the writer knows, no serious attempt has ever been made to determine the depth of the Yukon within the Ramparts, but it must certainly be very great. "9 'I iTf I'l fi' • 1 ,30 THE RAMPARTS SECTION The change of scenery i» as agreeable as it is abrupt. The eye has grown tired of the interminable expanse of water and low-lying land, of dense scrub spruce and willow, almost as thick and serried as the pile of a plush carpet, of desolate sand-bars and ragged, crumbling mud- banks, of piostrate trees in full foliage helplessly sway- ing in the turbid water. It is a pleasant relief to look upon bold high ground again, upon varicoloured rocks, upon a sky-line broken by aspiring curves, upon a prospect mysterioui'y bounded and an exit apparently denied every time a bend is turned, by distant, overlappmg mountains. Even the most accustomed traveller on the river anticipates the change with pleasure; to the new visitor it comes with delight. Immediately the Ramparts are entered, the deserted buildings of the old trading-post known as Fort Hamlin are seen on a bench of the left bank. The place served as a warehouse in the days of the great Klondike ac- tivities, and for a while there was some mining, or at least prospecting, on the Dall River, which drew sup- plies hence, but for ten years past it has been altogether abandoned and deserted. For the most part in one compact body— although here and there a small island may divide its stream-the river winds between steep and rugged mountain ridges that maintain a general level until the Ray River is received from the north. Here they open out and break into more rounded, detached masses, but again close m to a general ridge-like character after the confluence. As some of the sharp bends foreshorten the confining FOREST-FIRES ,3, wall, they take to themselves an almost canon-like ap- pearance and often seem to Slock all possible passa.; There is, however, no true , fion of the Yukon. The Ramparts cons.st of a series of rocky gorges, in places of a picturesque ruggedness and gloom, with the usual small spruce fmber clothing the slopes save where the no mfrequent forest-fires have denuded them. In such burned places a covering of fireweed springs up. and when .t .s , bloom, in July, patches of rich magenta brighten the somewhat scmbre colouring of the Ram- p3ris. Forest-fires have done vast destruction throughout e mtenor. Dall found large forest-fires burning i„ when the waste has not continued. S..„uld the season be a dry one the traveller is almost certain to encounter them somewhere along the course of the Yukon, and at t.mes the journey down the river is made an almost contmuous evidence of their activity, near or remote. Sometimes the whole river reeks with smoke from White- horse to Anvik. Immense areas have been burned over: once started, the fires sweep on until they burn them- selves out or some opportune rain-storm extinguishes them. There is no attentat at fighting them, nor in the present condition of the country would an atten^ot be possib e. Yet It grieves one to see such wastage of timber and of animal hfe. Birds, in particular, are none too numerous here, winter or summer, and the destruction LTr"'f K '" " '°"'^-'" '" ^''^ «»^'y ^"""H" » complete for the area involved. f) m< ,1 i i in l! ,j, ABANDONED COAL-MINE After the Ray River, named for Captain Ray, U. S A who was at Fort Yukon in 1897-8. the river turni on itself and flows east, then due «)Uth until the next important tributary. Mike He.. Creek, i. received, con- fluent on the left bank, named for an old prospector oJ these parts. The official curtailer of name, has again been at work, and recent map. call it "He.. Creek, striking out the picture.quenes. of the name and mak- ing it commonplace-but what i. that to a cartograph- ical economist who can save four letters thereby ? For- tunately, it is easier 10 change a name on the map than on the lips of the people. Vess might be anybody, but Mike Hess is one man. Nearly opposite the mouth of Mike Hess is an abandoned coal-mine, another ot the many along the Yukon. The coal was of poor quality and the vein "pinched out" as it was followed up. which is the story of them all. A little below the coal-mine the river takes another change of direction and for a few miles flows almost north, and then sweeps around in a great blunt curve, with ever-increasing heights on t. -ght bank and lowlands on the left, for Rampart City This blunt curve is known locally as "Point-no Point " for ever ahead is what looks like a promo; toiy; until 'when it is reached, it is indistinguishable from the general ^ eep of the bank, and another promontory looms ahead. From the coal-mine to Rampart is about twenty- five miles by the river; a cut-off across the lowlands of the left bank halves the distance on the wmter trail. A mile above Rampart is an abandoned Indian vdlage RAMPART CITY ,33 with a graveyard high up on the bluflF. Such of the native, as survive have moved to the w te town; the girls have married white men and the youthful part of the community is half-breed. Is this to be the fate in general of the Alaskan native? Perhaps in small com- munities like this, it is; certainly the half-breeds are much in evidence and seem to increase everywhere; but It nriust be remembered that only a part of the natives of the mterior live along the Yukon River, and it is along that stream that contact with the white man has been most intimate. There are as yet many Indian com- munities where there has been little or no admixture of blood. It is not safe to judge all terior Alaska by what is seen along the Yukon. Rampart City is pleasantly situated upon a bench of the left bank, with lofty mountains behind and ng ground leading up to still loftier mountains on the . po- site shore. Its long rows of empty cabins and aban- doned stores give a rather melancholy aspect to -he town; an aspect which departed prosperity usually takes. There may be twenty-five or thirty white residents, as against a thousand in the heyday of its mining boom. The visitor who walks up ana down its deserted streets now, while the steamboat discharges a little freight and the purser wends his way to the post-office with the mails, may conjure up the busy scene that was presented m the summer of 1898, when many a boat-load of eager seekers after gold thronged these narrow sidewalks, or started out through the mud and the mosquitoes with packs on their backs, for the creeks; when these silent 134 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION liquor-shops, with doors and windows boarded up, wait- ing for a resumption of business that will never come, were alive with men entering and leaving, and the stores were open day and night for the outfitting of prospectors. Rex Beach, whose cabin visitors always inquire after, has drawn a highly coloured picture of it in "The Bar- rier," the scene of which lies hereabout, so far as it lies anyvhere. Across the river is a totally different scene, with totally different assot-ations. Rampart looks backward to the spacious times of the Great Stampede, to the feverish prosperity of gold-dust and gambling-den, when hopes were high and everything was wide open, and cost was not considered, and money was spent lavishly. The Agricultural Experiment Station, its well-kept and diver- sified fields clothing the uplands with patches of colour unwonted in Alaska, looks forward. It looks forward to farms and ranches, to meadow and pasture, to waving fields and lowing herds. It looks forward and points the way. I could grow eloquent over the contrast did I share to the full the confident expectations of the agri- cultural experimenters. They have done very valuable work, beyond question; they have sought the world over for hardy and early varieties of grain that would yield in this adverse climate, and they have proved that in favourable spots and favourable seasons these hardy and early varieties will ripen here; they have cultivated with great success the garden vegetables, and have selected and distributed the seeds most suitable for the soil. They have demonstrated that where profit and loss need m * ' m j i 1 1 PROSPECTS OF AGRICULTURE I3S not be considered, agriculture is possible in the interior of Alaska. On the south bank of the river the shovel and th' gold-pan, the sluice-box and the wheelbarrow are still tl. implements of what industry there is; on the north b nk the plough and the harrow, the drill and the hoe reign. . u The juxtaposition is significant, I thmk, rather than the contrast. The future of agriculture in the interior of Alaska depends on the future of mining in the interior of Alaska. Take away the government subsidy from the farm, and the amount of crops of any kind raised would be the amount that the miners would purchase. In any farming for profit the market of the mines is essential. In the neighbourhood of mines, and nowhere else, may be found flourishing and profitable truck-farms to-day. , Isolated by geographical situation, and enormously remote from any centre of population, what can arctic and subarctic Alaska ever hope to raise for export from her stubborn frozen soil in competition with other lands ? But so long as she produces gold she can be made to pro- duce almost anything else in reason that the gold-miners desire. New-laid eggs and fresh milk and cream and butter they may have; the garden vegetables in profu- sion, even cucumbers and tomatoes raised under glass, if they will pay the price; and they will always pay it if they have it. Farming and gold-mining stand or fall together. . None the less, the country owes a debt of gratitude to the Federal Government for the setting up and mam- 136 YUKON RAPIDS If 't •I 4 I. taining of these experiment stations, at which the utmost capacity of its soil and climate is gradually bemg ascer- tained. . , Thirty miles or so beLw Rampart the gorges of the river grow towards their maximum of picturesqueness, and about ten miles farther reach an impressive climax of gloomy deptu and lofty height between their steep mountain-walls. Here are the rapids; the channel is constricted by rocks and presses against the south bank, and the great volume of water passing through a narrow compass with considerable grade gives a very swift, swirling current, though it presents no great difficulty to the river steamboats unless they have heavy tow of barges. This is the point which the Russian naval lieu- tenant Zagoskin* is generally credited with reaching on his voyage up the Yukon in 1842, reporting the river not navigable any farther. The traveller who, upon reach- ing the rapids, has already passed down more than a thousand mUes of the river in a comfortable steamboat, may smile at the Russian naval officer as a somewhat perfunctory explorer, and indeed it is certain that long before any steamboat plied these waters the Hudson Bay voyageurs from Fort Yukon came down through the rapids in large flat-bottomed boats loaded with trade goods, and returned with thq furs for which these were bartered. Old natives at Tanana still tell with admira- tion of the bateaux with six pairs of oars which brought . It should be noted that Dall credL« ^^^^^ff^liitl^'Z »s the Nowikaket, but it is hard to understand why he should declare tne rb«unn^abU above that point whence all is plam sa.hng to Tanana. ";l ! I' u> LONELY SIGNAL STATION 137 them guns and blankets and powder and shot and tea and tobacco, and gave them better terms than the Rus- sians from Nulato gave. But in all probability Zagoskin was the first white man to voyage thus far upon the Yukon River. Knowing nothing of the geography of the country beyond his own explorations, knowing noth- ing of the immense depth of the narrow channel he was pursuing, penetrating farther and farther into a maze of mountains which rose ever higher and higher, it was no wonder that when he came to the broken, rushing water of the rapids in the depth of the deepest gorge, with the difficult and dangerous tracking over the boulders of the shore necessary to pass through them, he assumed that he had reached the limit of navigability and turned back. On the right bank, nearly opposite the swiftest water, is an abandoned station of the military telegraph line, that used to follow the river from Tanana as far as Ram- part. Rampart now has its telegraphic connection by way of Hot Springs on the Tanana River, and this lonely station, lonely both in summer and winter, no longer condemns two men of the Signal Corps to exile from mankind. On the other hand, the abandonment of this lonely station makes the Yukon River more lonely— and this process goes steadily on. It is one less place of refuge from the storms that in the winter rage through the Ramparts; one less place where a man may find shelter and fire and food. Having had rest and refresh- ment there on several well-remembered occasions, en- couraged to press on against the snow-laden blast by ih 138 CHIEF TRIBUTARY OF YUKON the knowledge of its proximity and the anticipation of its hospitality, the writer cannot but regret its abandon- ment. So violent are the wind-storms that prevail within the Ramparts for the greater part of the winter that the ice is commonly swept entirely free of snow, and sometimes for twenty miles at a stretch its surface is burnished by the constant attrition into a beautiful appearance of translucent black crystal, its cracks visible down through all the six feet or more of its thickness. Between mountain barriers of the same general char- acter as heretofore, though gradually lessening in height, the Yukon now approaches its most important conflu- ence, the confluence with the Xanana, which enters from the south almost at a right angle; but the Yukon itself turns almost at a right angle to receive its tributary, so that at the point of junction the directions of the two streams coincide, and for three miles they flow side by side, with islands between them, the waters gradually commingling until the town of Tanana is passed. Just at this right-angle bend, where a lofty mountain- ous bluff rises from the north bank of the river and the channel flows around its base, the Ramparts end, and the prospect opens out to right and left into the vast valley of the lower Yukon. So soon as the corner is turned and the river is out of the Ramparts, the Protestant Epis- copal Mission of Our Saviour appears, picturesquely situated on steeply rising ground, with a large hospital (twin to that at Fort Yukon) on a bench of the hillside, and a capacious and handsome church, adjoining a graveyard with beautiful birch-trees, near the river; the i'Ji i, THE TOWN OF TANANA 139 native village straggling along the bank for two or three hundred yard*. In another couple of mile* the town of Tanana it reached and the boat ties up to the wharf of the most important place, in a general way, on the American Yukon. In '-oint of population Ruby exceeds it, but Ruby is the pou of a mining-camp merely; it sprang up in a night and will dwindle and die, as Ram- part has dwindled and died, when the placers in the hills behind it are exhausted. It is the peculiarity of Tanana that it is not directly dependent on mining. Its importance is due partly to the army post. Fort Gibbon, which adjoins it, and partly to its situation at the confluence of the Yukon with its chief and most populous tributary. It is a transfer point and a trading point; if the visitor go on down the river, he will probably have to change boats here, for the regular steamers from Dawson turn up the Tanana River to Fairbanks, and he may have to wait several days, or even a week, despite all assurances to the con- trary. The confluence of the Yukon and the Tanana has always been an important point and probably always will be Before the white man's time it was the great summer gathering-place, and Indians from far up the Tanana River, and even from the upper Kuskokwim, met here with those from the upper and the lower Yukon for barter of furs and commodities. Just as the mouth of the Kobuk River in Kouebue Sound has for ages been the summer meeting and trading place of the Eskimos from Point Barrow to Cape Prince II Hi\ I40 A TRADER'S EMPORIUM of Wale«, and itill gathen many hundred* every year, lo thi. place, Nu-cha-la-woy-ya* in the native tongue ("betMk-een the rivers"), wa» the great rendexvoui of the Indians of the interior. By trade with the coast Indians of Prince William's Sound and the Lynn Canal, with E nos from Bering Sea, who all came into not infre- quent contact with ships and sailors well before the close of the eighteenth century, and by trade with the tribes of the Mackenzie who dealt with the Hudson's Bay Com- pany's posts, passing from hand to hand, from tribe to tribe, the white man's axes and files and knives were brought here and distributed over the interior. Very old men living to^lay cannot remember when steel and iron tools were not in use, though they remem- ber them as scarce and precious. Some of them state that theif fathers remembered the use of stone axes, but the oldest living natives cannot remember ever seeing a stone axe. As early as 1778, when Cook visited the natives of Prince William's Sound, he found iron arrow-heads and knives amongst them, and on seeking to discover whence they had them, they pointed to the east, and he rightly conjectured that they had come all across the continent from the factories on Hudson's Bay. Even before that, • I muit »k th. read« to bear with thii npte-or ikip it-« it « wnt«n more foTmv own latirfaction than hii. Th.te i> a .ingular unamimty arnongit Jinlrlv wrU«" "rem Dall to Schwatka. in mUcalling tl... place Nudacay- t'endTan after Indian, however, ha. auured me that th.« w« n^ !ueh name and I conclude that theK writen did not receive the name from ntn iTp.' S:f from white men. who handed out to •-«"'«™'"3*« corrupted fo.m. But I can End no trace whatever on the nver K«lay of the corrupted form. INDIAN CIVILISATION 141 in 1741. when Bering landed on Shumagin Island and buried a sailor (for w horn he named the island), he it .aid to have found native* wearing iron knives at their gir- dies. So when Clive ransacked the treasury at Moor- shedabad after the battle of Plassey, he found Venetian florins and Byzantine sequins which had been received hundreds of years before in payment for goods that had paued through an immense number of hands in barter ere they reached the consumers in Europe. The won- derful ramifications of indirect trade and its irresistible power of penetrating all barriers would be a fascinating subject for a theme, for wliich history would furnish many picturesque illustrations. In the classification of the archseologist the natives of the mtenor were in that period of development known as the stone age-though it might puzzle Henry Fairfield Osborn himself to say in what precise division there >(_ when they began to come in contact with the products of the white man's civilisation, nearly a century before they came into contact with the white man himself They had domesticated the dog; they used flint-headed arrows and spears; they wove nets and baskets from the fibre of the spruce root; shaped admirable canoes from the bark of the birch, and toboggans and snowshoes from Its wood. They clothed themselves with the furs and housed themselves under the hides of animals killed in the cha e. and had a rude unglazed potterv. They seem to have made already all that was to be made of their meagre resources and their harsh environment- it is difficult to see how they could have advanced any further i • M -l ! I ■ 1 ;♦, j 142 ETHNOLOGICAL AFFINITIES without impulse from another race, and quite impossible even to conjecture how long they had lingered at this stage. In sinking a well at the Allakaket, on the Koyu- kuk River just at the arctic circle, fragments of pottery and of wooden implements were brought up from twenty- five feet below the surface. Some resemblance in feature and expression which certain individuals amongst them display to the Japa- nese often prompts inquiries amongst visitors whether the race be of Mongolian origin. The only answer that can be given is that there is no ground for such belief— or, for that matter, for any other belief as to their origin. Where nothing is known, one man's guess is as good as another's. They are classed by ethnologists with the Athabas- can race, the general race that so many tribes of North America belong to, and the problem of their origin, therefore, merges in the larger problem, which in all probability is quite insoluble. What little evidence there is seems to indicate that they came into Alaska from the East rather than from the West; from the Mackenzie River country rather than from Asia, but the only positive opinion to which I am willing to commit myself, after some examination of the subject, is that they are not descended from the "Lost Ten Tribes of Israel." There is probably little additional ethnological or archaeological data of value concerning these people recoverable. A sufficient examination of their language and legends, their manners and customs, has already been STONE AXES 143 made by competent hands, Father Jette, S.J., nf Ta- nana, who has spent many years of precise and patient study of them, being the recognised authority upon them in scientific circles. Their traditions and folk-lore al- ready show traces of the unconscious influence of the white man's teaching, and much that they begin to grow ashamed or contemptuous of is suppressed when they can be persuaded to a narration. The relics of indigenous culture have disappeared; on several occa- sions I have met learned representatives of museums searching the country for specimens of primitive handi- craft and finding none, and in twelve years I have been able to procure one stone axe and have seen two others. One of these two others had the special interest that it was found near the mouth of Beaver Creek on the Yukon, beside some ancient tree stumps that bore every ap- pearance of having been cut with it, and I was sorry that I was unable to visit the place and verify the cir- cumstance for myself. The finder said that at first sight he thought the trees had been gnawed by beavers. As one looks back one grows to a great respect for these people, maintaining a brave and successful contest against the utmost inclemency of nature with such crude weapons and tools. Their descendants at Tanana are decadent; every year the deaths exceed the births and the village dwindK s as the graveyard grows. When the somewhat limited resources of Tanana are exhausted many visitors walk out the two and a half miles from the town to the Mission to relieve the tedium of waiting day after day for a steamboat, and often I I 1 ; i m >44 INDIAN MORTALITY grow enthusiastic over the picturesque graveyard full of brightly painted graves nestling amongst beautiful birch- trees. But the writer being deeply concerned in the preservation of Alaska's native population can take little interest in a picturesque graveyard that is gradu- ally swallowing up that population with no progeny left behind to continue the race. The reader may recall the tabk of births and deaths at Fort Yukon over a period of five years, and the in- crease of population which it represents. For the same quinquennium there is a steady decrease at Tanana; indeed, there has not been a year for ten years past when the births have exceeded the deaths— until 1916, when the births have a slight preponderance. Why is it that at Fort Yukon the Indians are stead- ily increasing and at Tanana are steadily decreasing ? They are offshoots of the same stock, of the same gen- eral habits and character and mode of life, have been for years under the same religious influence. So far as location is concerned the Tanana Indians have rather the better of it; the salmon are fatter and more plentiful here than they are three hundred and fifty miles farther up the river, the climate is slightly less severe, there is a little more sun in the winter, access to the haunts of the big game is somewhat easier; berries of all kinds are abundant, while in the neighbourhood of Fort Yukon they are not found at all; and who would not rather live amongst these pleasant hills than in the gloomy wilder- ness of the Yukon Flats ? All things considered, I am of opinion that the natives of this mid-section of the :i h Tim: , ii, k( ii (xj, nK.ivivvK,, v, tjik x ,th k miwi,.x a, Tvnam. M Till CRAVEYAHl) AT THE MlbSlKX OF TaxaW i'i I ':k i n s! I THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 145 river are more favourably situated for the needs of Indian livelihood than those much above them or much below. The inquirer who will look around him at Tanana may find the answer without much difficulty. There is the army post with Its soldiers; there is the town with its saloons. A special agent of the Department of Jus- tice reported a few years ago that no less than forty white men, in and around Tanana, made their living or a part of their living, peddling liquor to the Indians. Liquor and lewdness — and where do not the two go hand in hand ? — are destroying these people. The children are born diseased, of drunken and diseased parents, and find an early resting-place in that picturesque graveyard. The chief of the tribe died lately of an alcoholic debauch, and one of the gayest of those graves is his. One takes encouragement from the recent decisive vote of 'he people of Alaska in favour of the prohibition of alcoholic liquors and the "bone-dry" law which Con- gress thereupon enacted, but one's encouragement would be more buoyant were there grounds of past experience for an expectation that the law will be thoroughly en- forced. There must be a change in the system of magis- tracy and a change ir the system of police before this will be possible, and there seems little likelihood that the United States Congress, the only authority adequate to that change, can be moved to make it. Territories have always been justiced by commissioners living upon fees, have always been policed by United States marshals and their deputies; and there is no more conservative i t % 146 MT. DENALI Bf i rJi body on earth than our Congress when it is not under the influence of panic. ^ ,. , n, ,„ The visitor who has leisure to take the httle walk to the Mission should look out. if it be a clear day, from the vantage-ground of the hospital for the fine v.ew that it affords of Alaska's great mountain. Denali, or Mt. McKinley. looming like a white cloud on the southern horizon-one hundred and fifty miles away. Rising wel above twenty thousand feet, it is not only the loftiest mountain of the North American continent, but .t is the most northerly mountain of the first class ■"■ the world. If he be intending the journey to Fairbanks he wdl have other and somewhat nearer views of it, but if h.s course lie down the Yukon this will be the only opportunity for seeing it at all; and since weather clear enough to dis- close the mountain is rare in the summer-time, he will do well to avaU himself of this chance in either case, for it is perhaps the finest sight interior Alaska has to dis- ^'^The geographical position which made Tanana an important native place has made it an i«PO";.'"J'''"; place. It determined the location of Fort Gibbon m 1900, and had already brought storekeepers and traders. BuTit was the discovery of gold three hundred miles up the Tanana River, and the building of Fairbanks in ,903, and the great development and growth of the next year, that really established the place. It « the "lost central spot of the interior, and in the day when Alaska is divided into manageable portions, should be the capi- tal of the Yukon. In the winter the trunk trails to ARMY-POST LIFE 147 Fairbanks and the souther. coas,t, to the Koyukuk and the northern mines, to all the lower river points and Nome, meet here; in the summer all steamboats up and down the Yukon and up and down the Tanana meet here and transfer passengers and freight. The army post will not detain visitors long; there is no stateliness of building or careful laying out of ground; climatic conditions are, of course, averse; the two years' sojourn of officers and men is not long enough to arouse the desire of making the place attractive; it is too often thought of by both as an exile to be borne as best it may and to be terminated with joy; by both,— and especially by their wives. There is no military pomp or parade whatever; I have been there on the Fourth of July, when not the slightest notice was taken of the day; I have been there when the governor of Alaska made' a visit, and not the slightest notice was taken of the gov- ernor of Alaska, although by the regulations of the army itself he is entitled to his salute of guns at any post within his Territory. A flag is raised and lowered and a gun is fired every day; the rest is fatigue duty with a moving-picture show twice a week. TTie army post is important to Tanana from a com- mercial point of view, and it is important, also, from a social point of view. However poor their taste as archi- tects, however little effort be made to represent the majesty of the United States, there is always a certain dignity and urbanity about the officers of the army themselves, and it is no small thing to domicile a dozen men of culture and intelligence with their wives and ,48 ARMY SURGEON'S SERVICE families in the midst of interior Alaska. They usually mix freely with the substantial families of the town, and give a tone to Tanana society that no other place m the interior can boast. This tone at Tanana, and the maintenance of the telegraph lines by the Signal Corps, represent the ac- complishment of a military garrison which, ^y I am informed on good authority, costs the United States at least j$3 50,000 a year to maintain. One other matter connected with the army post should be mentioned, the kind willingness of the post surgeons to give of their time and trouble in attendmg to the ills of the natives of the village. There is no medical man at the native hospital at this wn ..g- though one is under appointment-nor has been for some years, and it is always an exceedingly difficult thing to procure suitable men willing to undertake this work. There is no greater need for the world's primitive people to-day than a large increase in the number of men trained in medicine who are willing to devote themselves, with- out much hope of reward or renown, to medical mission- ary work. So it has been of immense assistance to those labouring at this Mission that the army surgeons at Fort Gibbon have always been willing to lend their cheerful and capable services. CHAPTER V XANANA TO NULATO We are now more than half-way down the navigable Yukon, and have left narrow confines and rocky gorges behind us for good. The great valley we have entered is sharply bounded for hundreds of miles more on the north by rnountains for the most part contiguous and never far distant, but it stretches out to the south in vast forested areas. The Yukon grows markedly broader and more affluent after receiving the Tanana. Much water will, of course, yet discharge into it along the eight or nine hundred miles it must traverse to its mouth but It has now received the greater part of its flood, and has a strength and copiousness that begin to make mani- fest Its rank amongst the world's great rivers. It may not be out of place here to refer to an inter- esting phenomenon touching this river's flow. It is well known that the great rivers of Siberii. the Obi, the Yenesei, and the Lena, which have in the main a due northerly course to the Arctic Ocean, exhibit over that whole course high eastern or right-hand banks and low ^ft-hand banks. Nordenskiold, in the "Voyage of the Vega"-a most comprehensive gathering of information touching the high latitudes of Asia, as well as a narrative of the making of the northeast passagf^draws attention to this circumstance; and Nansen, in the very able ac- ISO CURRENT DEVIATION PHENOMENA count of hi. recent Siberian journey on behalf of the Russian Government, refers to it and discusses it at some length. The explanation is obvious; the rotation of the earth on its axis from west to east throws the mobile water against the eastern bank, and in the course of ages the rivers have eaten away their eastern banks and moved over slowly but bodily to the east, until they have encountered some rocky barrier that checks fur- ther advance, leaving low, alluvial land behind them to the west; and are still so cutting and moving. Now the Yukon River, so soon as it emerges from the rocky con- fines of the Ramparts, down virtually to the beginning of the delta at its mouth, displays the same phenome- non- it presses continuously upon its right bank. But the curious and interesting thing about it is that its course is not to the north at all; it has a general south- westerly direction, and for the two hundred odd miles that lie immediately before us, from Tanana to Nulato, its course is almost due west. Occasionally in the neigh- bourhood of a tributary coming in on the right which deposits a bar, or of some other obstruction, or on the rare occurrence of rocky bluffs on the left limit, as in the region of Melozikaket, the channel swings to the left bank, bu over by far the greater part of the dis- tance the channel hugs the mountains of the right bank and leaves the low alluvial ground on its left, just as the Siberian rivers do. What effect can the earths rotation have upon a river flowing mainly east or west . Only it would seem, that of hastening or checking its stream. The rule deduced by Nordenskiold is that MEANING OF "KAKET" iji rivers that deviate much from the parallels of latitude will display the effect of the earth's rotation that he de- scribes, but here is a river which, in this long stretch, deviates little from the parallels and yet displays it in a marked degree. Again, from the Koyukuk mouth to Ikogmutc (Rus- Stan Mission), a distance of upwards of three hundred miles, the river leaves its westerly and drops into a nearly due southerly course, deviating more widely from the parallels of latitude than it does in any other equal stretch of its own length. But this deviation being southerly should, by the Nordenskiold rule, throw the waters against the left bank of the river instead of the right; yet here, also, the channel almost continually presses against the right bank. It would be interesting to see this matter fully discussed and the circumstances explained, for it can hardly be mere chance that over many hundreds of miles the Yukon hugs so closely its right or northern limit. Nine or ten miles below Tanana Tozikaket is passed, where the Yukon receives its tributary, the Tozitna Since a number of "kakets" or "chakets" will be passed, the reader may be informed that this suffix in the Indian tongue of these parts means "mouth," and is aaded to the name of the river to signify the mouth of the river in this way: the termination "na," which signifies "nver^' or "water," is struck off, together with the preceding consonant, if there be one, and "kaket" is suffixed to th' root that remains. Thus the mauth of the Tozitna is Tozikaket; the mouth of the Nowitna is ' ' >rj I* fill! 'I !' I SI LINGUISTIC VARIATIONS Nowikiket; the mouth of the Meiorltna is Mcl6zikiket — and there are scores of others along not only the Yukon but the Xanana and the Koyukuk; throughout, Jndeed, the whole range of this language. The knowl- edge that the syllables "kaket" mean mouth, without the knowledge of the simple rule of inflection just given, led the map-makers, some years ago, to write the names of the rivers mentioned above, "Tozi," "Nowi," "Me- lozi," which are not Indian forms at all; but the proper forms have of late been restored. The struggles of the early explorers with these names and the extraordinary results they print are sometimes amusing, and illustrate the famous Captain Cook's ob- servation made while he was cruising on the Alasknn coast that he had frequently found "that the same words, written down by two or more persons from the mouth of the same native, differed not a little." Whymper writes Tozikaket "Towshecargot," and with Schwatka Nowika- ket becomes "Newicargut." Dall, however, whose ears as well as eyes were by far the best ot any of the early Yukon travellers, writes the names almost exactly as they are written now. Dall's " Alaska and Its Resources " was published in 1870; if Schwatka, whose journey was thir- teen years later, had taken the trouble to read it, he would have been spared a great many blunders. I have spoken of Ball's book before; let me say here that I never turn to it without being struck afresh with the wealth of accurate observation and judicious reflection it contains. About sixteen miles below Xanana, on the right bank. i'*; r I OLD TRADING-POST 153 was an old native village and trading-pcxt (to which the corrupted name Nuclacayette was transferred), dating back to the early trading days before the gold stampedes of the closing years of the nineteenth century— now long since abandoned for the town of Tanana. When Lieu- tenant Schwatka made his raft journey down the Yukon in 1883 this was the most important trading-post on the river. McQuestion, Harper, and Mayo, the first white men other than the Russians and the "Hudson's Bay Company's servants" who came to live on the Yukon, had their headquarters here, managing, at that time, the Alaska Commercial Company's business, a San Francisco corporation which entered upon the Alaskan trade soon after the Purchase, and until two or three years ago still held the valuable sealing monopoly of the Pribilof Islands. Of the three men mentionea Alfred Mayo still survives at Rampart, beyond any question the oldest living Alaskan pioneer. This place, which figures more largely than any other in the early narratives of the river, and thus deserves mention here, has long since quite disappeared. A few cabins about the mouth of Grant Creek, on which creek was a factitious mining excitement some years ago which involved (and overwhelmed) a command- ing officer at Fort Gibbon, are presently passed, and the main stream of the river swings over to some remarkable cliffs of frozen mud on the left bank, known as "the bone- yard." As the sun thaws these bluffs all the summer through, and the face sloughs off into sticky, evil-smell- ing muck, quantities of bones of great extinct mammals ' ' 1 1 54 MAMMOTH REMAINS it <-fl are uncovered. The occurrence of these remains of the mammoth and mastodon throughout the northern parts of America and Asia and Europe, is well known and has often been described and discussed. Indeed, it is said that no other extinct animals have left such abundant traces behind them. Kotzebue first drew attention to these remains in Alaska when he found skulls and bones in the great ice cliffs of Escholtz Bay of his Sound in 1815. They are plentifully distributed thioughout the whole interior of Alaska. Almost any sand-bar will yield a tooth. I know an empty cabin on Crooked Creek in the Chandalar-Koyukuk country, where an enormous mammoth tusk reposes, brought up from a shaft— as I was informed— at a depth of nearly two hundred feet, the sole product of an expected gold-mine. I think anybody might take it who would be at the labour of removing it. One's surprise and speculation are, however, aroused at such great accumulations of bones as these mud cliffs contain; what killed the beasts and then gathered their carcasses together, how came they embedded in the muck and then frozen into a solid layer two or three hundred feet thick ?— these are ques- tions that one naturally asks, but must be content to leave unanswered. It is well known that in ti.e tundra of Siberia whole carcasses have been found embedded in ice, the flesh so perfectly kept from decay in this cold storage that it was fed to the dogs, and even some of it eaten by men. No such discovery has, I think, ever been made in Alaska, but it is quite likely that the tundra of the arctic slope may hide similar complete remains. w AN UfTRACED CRIME 155 A few miles l.^low the b(- .eyard we come to the Nowikaket on the '-vh bniik, tl e river discharging into a bay or harbour. The attiuencs of the left bank in this region are not important, or navigable for many miles: they rise in the mountains which form the watershed between the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, which river, the second largest in Alaska, now begins to flow in a course generally parallel with the Yukon, into Bering Sea. On the opposite shore, a little below, is Mouse Point, and I well remember a story told me by the trader at Mouse Point, a man above the ordinary intelligence, on my first visit to the place— a story whicd illustrates the utter neglect of Alaska by the government of the United States until a few years ago. This trader had come across the river to the Nov/i- kaket in the spring of 1902 on some occasion of business, and had noticed the remains of an old camp destroyed by fire. Rummaging among the debris, he uncovered the charred body of a man, the skull cleft as by the blow of an axe. With some companions he returned a little later to make a thorough search, and their investi- gations left little doubt that robbery and murder had been done here the previous summer. Two large gold- pokes of moosehide were found, empty, but with enough dust still clinging to the sides of the sacks to satisfy the experienced prospectors that it was Klondike gold. An old battered clock, as I recollect, also bearing the name of a Dawson dealer, was found, and some other personal relics. A careful statement of what had been discovered. y| ■J] 1.1 :i Jl I ! P> ,56 A RUSSIAN PIONEER substantiated by the signatures of the discoverers, was sent to the nearest United States court— then at Eagle —and to the Department of Justice at Washington, and repeated attempts to secure some judicial investigation were made. But not the slightest notice was taken, and no effort was ever made to identify the victim or dis- cover and secure the criminal. Finally a hole was dug and the body interred— and there it lies yet, unidenti- fied, unavenged. There is little doubt that other such crimes were committed with like impunity. A few miles below Mouse Point, on the same side of the river, we reach Kokerines, a native village under Roman Catholic charge, with a trading-post, a church, a government school, and a telegraph station. This is the beginning of Roman Catholic native work on the Yukon; from this point they divide the river with the Greek Church, save that at Anvik the Episcopal Church has an old-established and important Mission. "Kokerines" is named for an old Russian settler who had a numerous half-breed progeny by a succession of native wives. I can find no reference to him in Dall or Whymper or Schwatka, though Lieutenant Allen in 1885 mentions him as agent for the Alaska Commercial Com- pany, and spells his name Cochrein, which, for aught I know, may have been the right way to spell it. Yet he came during the Russian occupation, and when he died, not many years ago, must have been the oldest white settler on the Yukon. Several of his daughters are married to substantial white men. The "Kokerine Mountains," on the right bank, pUe 1^! n I \ 1'- ill M- t i ' 1 k II MOUNTAIN SCENERY 157 up into a bold range, ridge above ridge, f- above the timber-line. Where the mountams -"f j^"- j'^'^^™ ber as they do here, their moss-covered or rocky sum S;s ive pleasing variety to the ^^^.^^^H^ ^%'^^: ,,e region one of ^r^^;^^^^^^! The snov/ 1 neers on them till laic in ju> , Lain elly in September, ..th an added d^-^y and b 1 iance of contrast. All the way to the Melo^.kaket th mountains beyond the right bank are massive and mpoTg with great rounded shoulders deeply sculptured Ty'g mes and glens. Their highest domes, rismg^rom three to four thousand feet above the nver for much the Lost part virgin to the foot of man. give the traveller itoZer climbing a desire to reach them ad . sDlendid wide view which they would afford On the other side of them the Melo.itna is hastemng to its °;„ction with the Yukon, twenty or thirty miles *"' U was in this fine region that the writer witnessed the Irlndest and most memorable thunder-storm o h.s Z^. we were iourneying ^J^^ s;ar::;r:f';ii/-nsesuit.hea. i^?^iiX^"SL^---H now b one blinding flash .fter another, now tremulously ! J ,58 THUNDER-STORM DESCRIBED constant for several seconds at a time, iWu™"-^^8 '^ dark, cavernous recesses and revealmg the whole wde river landscape, and shining so bnghtly through the lindows of our ^ngine-room that the pohshea parts of the motor gleamed in its light. . T*'-*>-^" ^f/^ and pealed, nnd the reverberatmg boom from every shoulder and buttress had not begun to grow famt ere another crash and peal split the air. Now the clouds Lemed to have advantage and descended to envelop and grapple with the peaks, as though to spUt and rend them with thunderbolts at close quarters; now the stains seemed to prevail and the clouds w.thd^w awhile to reinforce themselves for another attack_ And Z strange thing about it was that the atmosphere of the river was wholly undisturbed by the t.tan.c conflict the storm was confined to the «'°"""'" J°Pf .^^It egion of the air they penetrated. All the br.ef n.gh through, the majestic spectacle was mamtained, as hour after Lr we pushed on from Melozikaket to Kokerxnes, aSall night long, now at the wheel, and now leanmg out of a cabin window, I watched .t. entranced. As we passed Kokerines and the dawn appeared the conflict abated, but it was not until the thunder-storm on the n^ountains was over and the day was come that we ran into violent wind and rain that for a wh. e tossed the launch about like a cockle-shell. The sultry heat was eone for the summer. Thunder-storms are not very common on the Yukon though when they occur they are likely to be v.olent and notable, but there is no country 1 have hved m that WONDERFUL RAINBOW »S9 stretches such vivid rainbows across its sicies as does the Yukon country, and I can say with Wordsworth: "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky." It was in this same region that I saw the grandest rainbow I have ever seen. All day the entire heavens had been overcast, with intermittent drizzling rain, and at eventide the heavy pall was suddenly lifted at the northwestern horizon just enough to let the level rays of the sun stream through. Instantly there sprang out against the dense, dripping clouds the most superb and startling display of colour my eyes have ever witnessed. There were two complete, concentric bows, with a defi- nite outline of a third, spanning the river. The inner of the two was brighter, I think, than any rainbow I ever saw out of Alaska, but the outer one was so daz- zlingly brilliant that we who saw it were dumb with amazement and awe. Never before had I seen the pris- matic colours so distinct from each other, so sharply divided into separate bands; never before such rich and lustrous effulgence. It was as though some new celestial sign had been given the world; and my thoughts reverted to the rainbow of the apocalypse, encircling the Great White Throne, and for the first time in my life it seemed an appropriate and ever adequate figure. Then in an instant it was gone, and the sun had set, and the leaden skies took a deeper sombreness from the recollection of the pomp and splendour they had so recently displayed. I will not say that Claude or Turner could not have I !l i6o A SUMMER AURORA rr ' ! painted this scene, though the palettes of Titian and Paul Veronese were more familiar with the pure, rich tints that would have been required; but I am sure that whoever had painted it would have been called extrava- gant and sensational by any one strange to our skies. Yet another delightful recollection clings in my mind about the Melozikaket region, for it was here late one August that I saw the most delicately charming aurora of my experience. Many people entertain the notion that the northern lights occur only in winter; but they are to be seen in Alaska as long as there is any darkness in the spring, and again as soon as darkness begins to come in the later summer. The visitor who lingers into August or even late July is unfortunate if he see no display. We were coming up the river again in the launch one perfectly still night. A crescent moon sailed amidst a cluster of stars in a serene sky. And in and out, back and forth, to and fro, twined and twisted around moon and stars with bewildering swiftness and complexity, greenish filaments of auroral light, as though a multitude of luminous serpents were attracted to the moon as moths are attracted to a candle. And moon and stars and writhing filaments of light were perfectly reflected in the swift yet placid water of the river, so that whether one looked above or below one saw them equally well. I have described in another volume some of the vast and splendid displays of the northern lights I have seen in the winter; this summer aurora lingers in my mind with a feeling of its singular loveliness, and as one sometimes ALASKAN JOURNALISM i6i gets more pleasure from a delicate water-colour sketch than from a huge and imposing oil-painting, so do I recall this pretty little summer aurora that sportively enmeshed the si ver n^oon and the diamond stars in a living network of opalescence against the purple velvet of the summer night, with more joy than many a more majestic one. Whistler could have hinted its exquisite beauty m a "nocturne "-but if he had, Ruskin would certainly have called him a coxcomb again. Although I have not had occasion to become as inti- mate with this part of the river as with some others, yet I think the region between Nowikaket and Melozikaket IS the most attractive to me of its whole course. The clear brownish water of the Melozitna, issuing from a break in the mountain range and discharging in a little delta, runs distinct amidst the Yukon's turbid flood for some distance after the Melozikaket is passed, and just below, on the opposite bank, finely situated on rismg ground where the mountains make a cirque, with a bold bluff at each extremity, lies Ruby, the most populous place on the Alaskan Yukon at the present time, and the only settlement of any kind, white or native, from Xanana to the mouth, on the left bank of the river. There used to be a newspaper at Circle, and one at Eagle; within my own time there were newspapers at Rampart and Tanana; but they are long since dead, and to-day Ruby is the only place on the whole Ameri- can River where a newspaper is published-which is a pretty sure gauge of populousness. Ruby sprang up in the early summer of 191 1, as a 1.1 I63 MUSHROOM GROWTH mushroom springs up in a night. I passed by on the winter trail in March of that year, and camped on the bank almost opposite the place, and the hillside was void of any evidence of human existence. In the follow- ing July I passed down the river in the Pelican, and the river-front was :warming with men, the beach was lined with boats of every description, the hillside was white with tents. News had gone abroad of a rich "strike" on a creek thirty miles behind this spot, and, so soon as navigation opened, a stampede from every mining-camp in Alaska had taken place. Before the close of navigatioi. that year all the canvas places of business and most of me canvas residences were replaced by wooden structures and the town had assumed almost its present form. The "strike" on Long Creek did not turn out to be so very rich, except in spots, but a number of smaller strikes were made in the vicinity, and the camp has been a fair producer for the past five or six years. How long it will last no one can say, but by and by the placers will be gradually exhausted, and since Ruby has no other reason for existence save as a poit and mart for the placer-mines, it will dwindle with them. It is unfortunate that there was no law regulating the building of towns along the river when Ruby was laid out. As it was planned, the main street faced the river, with only one side to the street, and the business houses fronted without obstruction upon the beach. But the cupidity of late comers, with no law to check them, led to the building of another side to the street. l! lill !•: ,1 1 !. k THE RUBY DISTRICT ,63 and the back, of ,he,e later erection, with their out- houses and domestic offices now line the wate'fZ and B.ve a ,<,.. .lid aspect to the town from the rim .'°:„? :"' °^ "'f'-t '<- site, in Alaska spoiled It u unfortunate, also, from the point of fire protection Ruby has not yet suffered from any serious fie. but the hud I. , ,.,,i„^, ^„ ^,„^^,^ ^^^^^^^ ^ . bu he Rubv h ' "^r'' ""' '''' ' ^"'-» "-• From Ruby, by way of Ophir and Tacotna, runs the winte^ nd mak ' Iditarod. passing through 'the Innoko^Ip^ and makmg connection with the overland trail to An- chorage and Seward on the coast. Ruby has a resident comm.ss.oner and deputy marshal, and it is on Tf hre Places m the mterior where a session of the district court bdow Ruby keeping almost in one straight line against the mountamous bluffs of the right bank, with low wc^ed country on the other shore all the way ' r.th K 7 ^°""^"' '°"''' " ^*'^"8'; ^he river turns mher sharply to north of the general westerly direcZ or tlnr"/""T^' """^ '""'"S ■"""""•"^ behind it for twenty-five miles, enters a flat country which is in fact, the mouth of the great valley of the Lyu7uk-t; y t V ! : ,64 A MEMORIAL CROSS Koyukuk Flats. And as the Nowikaket-Melozikaket stretch has been described as one of the most picturesque on the whole river, so this stretch through the Koyukuk Flats is one of the least attractive. It has all the monot- ony of the Great Flats above, without the appeal of their spaciousness, without the interest (to most visitors) o their penetration beyond the limits of the geographical frigid zone. Ten or twelve miles above the Koyukuk mouth, on the right bank, stands a bold, solitary mountainous bluff, against the base of which the current runs very heavily, and near the summit of which an iron cross has been erected In this neighbourhood occurred the murder of the Roman Catholic Archbishop Seagher of Oregon, in 1885 by a half-breed attendant, when engaged upon a missionary prospecting journey in the winter. The crim- inal was tried and convicted at Sitka, but there seems to have been absence of adequate motive and doubt about his sanity; he was imprisoned for life, but, I am told, subsequently released. The memorial cross was erected by the Jesuit Fathers of Nulato, and the bluff, known as the Bishop Mountain, is the most promment landmark hereabout. , , „ , We now approach the confluence of the Yukon on its right bank with one of the most important of all its tributaries, the Koyukuk, the last great affluent which it receives. By a number of sloughs and intricate chan- nels the waters of the Koyukuk find their way into the Yukon, but the main stream of the Yukon keeps to the opposite shore, and to reach the settlement at the well- A MIGHTY TRIBUTARY ,65 defined principal mouth of the Koyulculc it is necessary to go down below it, cross the river, and turn up around a sand-bar, except at high stages of water. Two lofty niountain bluffs of peculiar shape on the north side of the Yukon and the west side of the Koyukuk are land- marks of the confluence. This great river, navigable for light-draught steam- boats between five and six hundred miles,* with an im- portant gold-mining camp seventy miles above the head of Its steamboat navigation, deserves and will receive a chapter to itself, but the magnitude of its drainage basin may be judged from the fact that its headwater tribu- tanes mterlock on the east with the tributaries of the Chandalar, which enters the Yukon about thirty miles below Fort Yukon; on the west with those of the Kobuk and the Noatak, which empty into Kotzebue Sound, and on the north with those of the Colville, which empties mto the northern ocean. Besides the native village, the settlement at the mouth contams a trading-post and a telegraph-station, but the place IS of slight importance, since the port of the Koyu- kuk IS Nulato, twenty miles below. The twenty miles- journey IS all along the right bank, which during the salmon run is usually lined with fish-wheels at short in- tervals. I once counted fifty wheels within this distance Historically considered, Nulato is the most important point on the Yukon River. It is the site of the first set- .1 J°"° °if °"'.''^f««8i<>"s blunders is to put the length of this river "in i i66 THE NULATO MASSACRE tlement made on the river by white men, for in 1838 the half-breed Malakoff, in the employ of the Russian Fur Company, ascended hither from St. Michael and built a fort and a trading-post. This, however, was destroyed by the Indians, was again built and destroyed, and it was not until 1841 that Derabin, another agent of the Russian Fur Company, established the place perma- nently and remained in command until he was killed in the notorious Nulato massacre of 185 1. Dall, who win- tered there sixteen years later, gives a very circumstan- tial account of the affair, which received prominence, not only on account of the number of lives sacrificed, but on account of the inclusion among the victims of Lieutenant J. J. Barnard, of the British ship Enterprise, engaged in the search for Sir John Franklin. He had been detached by Collinson at St. Michael to proceed to the Koyukuk River and inquire amongst the Indians whether anything had been heard of shipwrecked white men making their way overland from the arctic coast, and although a message sent by him to the chief of the Koyukuk Indians that gave umbrage to that important personage is commonly considered as the cause of the massacre, yet in all probability Barnard and his message had nothing to do with it, and he met his fate merely be- cause he was accidentally present at the time. The unfor- tunate Russian who brought the message from Nulato was murdered, killed, and eaten (so the story runs); the only case of deliberate cannibalism as against the canni- balism of starvation I have ever heard charged against the natives of the interior. A band of Koyukuk Indians At tiei siti: ,,| TMI \||,,t,i Miksvik,,; ,,f ,S;,. If CAUSE OF THE UPRISING 167 came down in the night to Nulato and a clean sweep was made of the Nulato Indians; three large houses, contain- ing a hundred sleeping men, women, and children were burned down, and those who sought to escape were shot with arrows as they emerged from the flames. Then the fort was attacked and the factor, Derabin, Barnard — who was his guest — the interpreter, three children, and their mother were all slaughtered. How much of this savage butchery was due to the oppression of th^ Russians and their brutal treatment of the Indians,— of which Dall was witness when he win- tered there; — how much of it to the rival pretensions of Koyui(uk and Nulato shamans, or medicine-men, which the Jesuit fathers, who knew some of the participants, in their old age and piety, — incline to regard as the chief cause;— or if Barnard's message were aught else than a spark that fired long-accumulated combustibles, will never be definitely known. Barnard's grave is still kept neatly by the Jesuits, and a long Latin inscription has replaced the brief Eng- lish one written by the ship's doctor who had accom- panied him, but was fortunately absent that fatal night. One would think, however, that the British admiralty would mark the spot with a permanent stone and an iron fence, for Barnard died in the execution of his duty. Cf late the river-bank of the scene of the massacre, which is about a mile below the site of the present town, has been cut by erosion of the current, and many skulls and bones and copper household utensils and beads and i68 BAD INDIANS ii ' buttons have been uncovered from amongst rotting, charred timbers, and carried oflf by "souvenir" hunters. I, myself, though not of that great company, dug out of the banic with a stick a brass button bearing the imperial Russian double eagle — evidently from a uniform coat — and was interested to see, with a magnifying glass, on the back of it the word "Birmingham," and I won- dered if official brass buttons are still imported into Russia. The natives of the lower Koyukuk have always borne a bad reputation, in marked contrast to the good char- acter of Alaskan Indians in general, and the recent (1915) trial of one of them on the charge of murdering a white man a number of years ago for the sake of his outfit of grub, while it failed for lack of legal evidence, left an impression upon many who were present that the crime had been committed. Dall says that for years before his time the Koyukuk Indians had obtain'ed intoxicating liquor from traders who visited Kotzebue Sound (eight hundred miles away by rivers and portage) and thinks that "this circumstance had done much to render the tribe, naturally cruel and turbulent, one of the worst in the territory"; but this explanation (like the liquor) is far-fetched, though, of course, Dall did not know how far-fetched, for he thought the Koyukuk but an hundred miles long. Whatever the cause, the Indians of the lower Koyu- kuk have always borne a bad name. The tribe has dwindled to a handful at the Koyukuk mouth, and they bear a bad name to-day. Little has been done for them; NULATO STATISTICS 169 even the government school, maintained for a few years, has been abandoned since the accidental burning of the schoolhouse. They are attached nominally to the Ro- man Catholic mission at Nulato and are visited occasion- ally by a priest. Nulato itself boasts a couple of stores, a resident com- missioner and deputy marshal, an elaborate radio-tele- graph station, a considerable mission establishment, and a. very picturesque burial-place, perched on the peak of a rocky bluff, bright with gaily painted graves and flut- tering pennons. There is also a resident physician in the employ of the Bureau of Education, who has con- verted a building intended for a school into a little native hospital of half a dozen beds, and this physician and his hospital, and a like establishment at Mountain Village near the mouth, represent all that the United States Government is doing to-day for the health of the natives of the whole Yukon River, save that a few drugs are intrusted to the custody of the teachers at govern- ment schools. It is not the fault of the Bureau of Edu- cation that this is the case. Year by year for many years past the Bureau has asked Congress for additional appropriations that would permit some general efforts for the prevention and cure of disease, and, year by year, these additional appropriations are denied. Travellers on their way to the Koyukuk diggings are transferred here to light-draught steamboats that make the trip to Battles three or four times during the sum- mer, and since there is no regular schedule of sailings they often have ample time to acquaint themselves with m imt I !* 170 SLOW TRAVELLING whatever of interest Nulato affords, to investigate its industries and reflect upon its history. Like Tanana, Nulato has no tributary gold-mining; its commercial importance that is not dependent upon native trade is due to its position as port for the Koyukuk. CHAPTER VI KALTAG, ANVIK, HOLY CROSS, THE PIMUTE PORTAGE MARSHALL The next stage of the river journey is the forty miles from Nulato to Kaltag, again almost wholly along the right bank with continuous mountain bluffs all the way, and low, densely forested land to the left, and little to demand description or comment. About midway is an old coal-mine, from the de^-rted shafts of which the steamboats sometimes procure ice in the height of sum- mer if their supply falls short. Almost anywhere below Tanana the traveller voyag- ing down-stream may pass a steamboat with a tow of two or three barges, slowly forging against the current, pushing fifteen hundred tons of food and machinery and general merchandise ahead of it; for so the interior of Alaska is supplied. One of the barges will perhaps be left at Ntilato, and a lighter-draught boat will pick it up by and by and push it ahead to Settles at the head of Koyukuk navigation. Another will be dropped at Ta- nana for the light-draught Tanana steamboats to take in tow, and another for the boats that ply the upper river, or it may be that one will be left at Ruby to un- load at leisure while the steamboat proceeds to Tanana and picks up the empty barge on its return. The fine "packets" and the powerful freight-boats rarely go ; ill * rr I ' ti<:! 1^1 172 THE KALTAG PORTAGE above Tanana nowadays, though when they were put on the river their run was the full sixteen hundred miles to Dawson. Year by year for ten years past the river tonnage has steadily declined, until the season of 1916, when material and supplies for the construction of the government railroad from the Nenana base gave a fillip to freights. Kaltag is chiefly notable for the easy passage to salt water which it affords, for the Yukon here approaches Norton Sound so closely that in ninety miles' walking one may reach UnalakUk. Unalaklik is about sixty miles from St. Michael, so that within one hundred and fifty miles one may reach St. Michael from Kaltag, in- stead of the five hundred and fifty or more which is required by the river journey. But the portage is, of course, only available with any facility in the winter, and it is this route which the mails for St. Michael and Nome take at that season. The military telegraph-line which used to come all the way down the river from Tanana, cross the portage, and follow the coast to St. Michael, now ends at Nulato, and the radio stations at that place, at Kaltag, and at St. Michael, flash their messages through the air without the aid of wires. he operator's cabin at Old Woman Mountain was the half-way stopping-place on the jour- ney to Unalaklik, and here again, while the signal-corps men are relieved of a very lonely exile, the portage trail must be left still lonelier for the withdrawal. Gradually the radio stations are superseding the land wires throughout the interior of Alaska. The land wires ADVANTAGE OF WIRELESS ,73 were expensive and laborious to maintain. Passing, as they did in the main, through densely forested country every high wind and storm endangered them; in the winter, especially, the tasic of repairing the lines and keeping them continually open was sometimes one of great severity, and the infantrymen, attached to each station for this purpose, often suffered from exposure to the extreme cold. Moreover, despite their utmost ef- forts, communications were frequently interrupted The "wireless" has, of course, troubles of its own I he despatch of messages is much slower than with the land Imes, and the receipt of them is sometimes greatly hindered, or even for a while entirely prevented, by cer- tain atmospheric, or perhaps it were more proper to say ethereal, conditions, that are very obscure. But in a country like the interior of Alaska, where the total num- ber of messages sent is comparatively small, the 'an- tages of the wireless stations are so great that it c n be only a question of time when the land wires wUI be abandoned altogether. There now lies before us the longest stretch of the whole Yukon on which there is no sort of settlement important enough to find place upon a map-the hun- dred and suty miles or so between Kaltag and .invik By far the greater part of the steamboat course lies close agamst the right b: nk, with mountains coming to the water's edge or never far from it, all the way. To the left IS low-timbered country with a distant range-the Kaiyuh Mountains-visible beyond, and behind that range the Innoko River is flowing to its junction with '11 >)', I 174 CLIMATIC DEIAILS the Yukon in the Chageluk Slough; beyond that again, a wide, mountainous region intervening, the Kutkokwim has united its forks and will soon begin to approach the Yukon. Through the tow-timbered land on the left bank one of the curious detached channels of the Yukon flows, called the Kaiyuh Slough, leaving the river about ten miles above Kaltag and returning to it about ten miles below, and receiving a small tributary named the Khotol. From the mouth of the Koyukuk all down this stretch of the river, and still farther, to the Russian Mission, the traveller is going steadily to the south. The influence of the lowered latitude, while it is not apparent at a glance, is none the less felt. I have found ferns amidst the rocky gullies of this shore, and in the depths of the woods a little way from the shore, that I have never seen higher up the river. The extreme cold of Fort Yukon and Tanana is much rarer here; the mean temperatures are higher; the climate has grown slightly and insensibly milder, and I am sure it has grown more humid. The general character of the vegetation is the same; spruce of two varieties, cottonwood, birch, and willow, are still almost the only trees. Here and there a native fish camp, here and there a white man's fish camp, dot the shore at wide intervals; here and there a pile of cord-wood awaits a steamboat. The fish-wheels creak and groan as they revolve in the current, and if a "run" be on, the traveller may see silver salmon or dog salmon floundering and flapping in the "buckets" or sliding down the chutes into the box I'i • ; i 1 I 'M 'p^' PICTURESQUE ANVIK ,75 travellers mmd. It .s eighty years since white men began to „se this river; it is fifty years since it came Zl the possess.on of the United States; yet here, in the ne.ghbourhood of the earliest settlement, is naught bu he unpeopled wilderness. The natives of these pan have unquesfonably greatly diminished; a mere handful of whue men have come in their place. I doubt if there be a dozen m th.s one hundred and sixty miles; I can count no more than half that number Forty miles above Anvik, with the channel on one of ZZ" "'"r." '" '•'^ '''' ''^"''' »•>« -'"askable de- eaves th? ""^ '^""^ '' '""^ ^•'^S^'"'' Slough kaves the mam stream to meander one hundred and sTvSi" T ir' "^"" '" '"^ ^"''°" - Koseref- S^k"^ " ""i'"^ '^"""'' '■•=^"^'"8 *he considerable Innoko R.ver m .ts course; a duplication on a much arger scale of the Kaiyuh Slough near Kaltag. But the Innoko and .ts tributary, the Iditarod, will feceive spe^ c^I attention elsewhere, in which place it will be more Anvik is perhaps more picturesquely situated than Tstrl" IT""'"' °" ''' ^"''°"- ^^« ^-'^ ^". a stream of dear water, comes in on the right bank, and about a quarter of a mile above the confluence, on the nght bank of the Anvik, the mission building Z h Episcopal Church nestle against a steep, wooded ridge and look out across the narrow strip of lowland covered k 176 WORK OF A MISSIONARY «l I 3~ , I ' with fishing camps that makes the other bank of the Anvik River, to a wide and beautiful up-stream prospect of the Yukon and its distant, diminishing bluffs. Thirty-one years ago a mission work was undertaken at this place. Thirty years ago the Reverend Doctor John W. Chapman arrived to conduct it, and it has been in his charge ever since. The early accounts of the place agree in speaking of its inhabitants as amongst the most degraded on the Yukon River. We are fortunate m having an indifferent account contemporary with the beginning of Doctor Chapman's work, by the first mem- ber of the United States Geological Survey who came down the Yukon. He describes the Anvik natives in 1887 as living in underground huts, the place reeking with filth and intolerable stench, the greater part of the people seemingly diseased, and presenting on the whole the most miserable and wretched appearance of any human beings he had ever seen. He goes on to say somewhat petulantly that if the young clergyman he saw there would take off his coat and start cleaning up, it would be better than walking the beach in his clerical clothes. I cannot put my hand on the report to give the name and the exact words of the writer, but this is the substance of it as I well remem- ber. Doctor Chapman had just then arrived, though the geologist did not know that; if he had returned to Anvik any time these twenty years past he would have been compelled to admit that Doctor Chapman had taken off his coat to some purpose. For there has been marked improvement. The ;>>• « >^':'.)f^ ■1 \: I I 1 ?■ .1 h M 11 ESKIMO SUPERIORITY 177 underground houses are long since gone; the people are well sheltered in cabins with little garden-plots around them, and are comparatively healthy; a school has been maintained from the first and there are some twenty boarding pupils from the Chageluk Slough and from up the river. Like the long, scarcely inhabited stretch from Fort Yukon to Stephen's Village, the long stretch of the river just passed over brings change in the native people and the native language. The Anvik River has its lower course parallel with the Yukon; but it heads in the mountains near the shore of Norton Sound and its trib- utaries interlock with the tributaries of the Unalaklik River. It has thus always afforded easy communication with the Eskimos, and in Dall's day, and one_ knows not how much earlier, the hardier and more virile and better-armed Eskimos dominated these particular river people. Moreover, the Eskimos of the wide delta country at the mouth of the river have extended their influence and their blood thus far up. Though in the main Indian, the Anvik people are a mixed people, and, certainly at first sight, give one the impression that they have inherited a double portion of the phlegm of both races. The visitor is likely to find them taciturn and unresponsive, not to say morose, beyond the inhabitants of the upper reaches of the river. The mixture of blood and the modification of lan- guage and custom are not the only matters that differ- entiate these people from those who inhabit the upper regions of the river We are out of the common range I ; I- Wi Ni !h 178 EFFECT OF FISH DIET of the big game here; moose and caribou are rare, and the mountain-sheep is unknown. We are come to the ichthyophagi, whose steady diet of fish is varied by little else than the spring and autumn water-fowl. Rabbits and squirrels and some small deer, and berries, and the produce of their little garden-plots enter into their diet to some extent, but in the main they are fish-eaters; and such are all the remaining natives of the Yukon down to the sea. Now, it has been observed by travellers for centuries and in many parts of the world that an exclusive or largely preponderating diet of fish does not tend to the upbuilding of stamina, and there seems ample ground to believe that a more vigorous constitution, a more san- guine temper, and a more vivacious and enterprising disposition may be looked for amongst those whose diet includes flesh to a considerable extent. How much of this difference is due to purely dietetic considerations and how much to the habits of activity, agility, and vigi- lance fostered by the chase, as against the sedentary life of the fisherman, I am not prepared to say, but I never pass down from the Indians of the upper and middle river to those of the lower river without feeling sure that I can observe this marked division between the fish- eaters and the flesh-eaters. These considerations render the Indian or mixed In- dian and Eskimo of the lower Yukon much more diffi- cult subjects than their kin of other parts for missionary work, using that term in the way I always use it, as in- cluding all practicable improvement in habits and char- THE FISH HARVEST ,79 acter and mode of life. They are exceedingly tena- But if A IT, 'J'"^ ^"" °^ ^°"^'""°- 'aching. ful h, ''''' '"^ ^'""^ "'^ '^"''> -•>« - wondef. ful harvest u secures from the water ! I have seen "the oa""tt":he M^r"" '" "^"^ P'^"^' ^'^ '"« Alaskan coast to the Mediterranean, but I had to go to Anvil; to understand the abundance of the river. Fish-wheel are no. much m use in these parts, because they at n; needed. Durmg a run of salmon the nets and traps are no s^ner set out than they are full and running over and often have to be taken up altogether until the cut- sTnnlv T ,""' "" "'''' "P ""'' '•'' overwhelming mouth of the r,ver, when they reach the place the fish are not exhausted and gaunt by long, fastfng trav 1 s they are at Fort Yukon and even begin to be at Tala in^r^r '-'' ''- —^-a-Ha.r years. so^Tn' tragic than this migration of the salmon ? After thirtv known of them, back to the very spot where they were llZ'^ri ' '"^''"'°"' '"'''"" '^"^" 'hese fish; and to reach that spot may involve a journey of fifteen hundred mdes up the muddy Yukon, and its tributary, and S tributary's tributary, until at last the clear streT; or lake .s reached where they were born; and during the wh e o that journey nothing is eaten. I have asked many fisher- Ml 'I i8o FISH MIGRATION I men, white and native, in many diflferent parts of the Yu- kon, whether they ever found anything in the stomach of a salmon, and the answer was always in the negative, and that is the universal testimony on the other rivers used by this fish. Of the comparative few that reach their destination and perform the act of reproduction which is the object of the journey, the great majority die very shortly thereafter. The circle of their lives is complete when they have reached the waters which gave them life and have transmitted that life to others. Consider, from the point of view of a mechanical problem, the prodigious exertion of power involved in the journey of fifteen hundred miles— and this is cer- tainly not the extreme distance travelled— through icy water, against a swift current, without any reinforcement of strength from food. What dynamic reservoirs the bodies of these fish must be, and what an economical expenditure thereof the fish's characteristic mode of pro- pulsion must be, as compared, let us say, with a screw- propeller. As man has learned of the birds in his cleav- ing of the air, may there not yet be something to learn from the fish in the matter of progress through the water ? Consider, again, the astonishing faculty that enables this fish to return lo its individual spawning-ground. The Yukon is so muddy and clouded that the fish can- not see, and therefore cannot avoid, the sweeping arm of the fish-wheel that scoops them up if they come within its range— for fish-wheels are useless in clear water— and yet they can determine precisely the spot at which to ' 1 I il, I' I THE MYSTERY OF INSTINCT i8i leave the broad river, to the right hand or to the left, can tell what tributary to ascend and just where its conflu- ence is. Only once before has the fish been in this river, and that was when, a fingerling of two or three inches in length, it made its rapid journey down to the sea. It seems idle to talii of memory. What man, issuing out of a lake that feeds a brook that falls into a creek that discharges into a tributary ol a tributary of the Yukon, and, passing once many hundreds of miles down these waterways to the sea, in daylight, with all sorts of land- marks to aid him, could undertake to return to the spot whence he came two years and a half later ? But after the salmon enters the Yukon from salt water it can see nothing; then what wonderful power of water-analysis must this creature have to determine the peculiar char- acteristic of each stream he passes by until the one is encountered that carries his native water! What infi- nitely delicate faculty of taste or feeling ! Indeed, the more we try to reduce the thing to intelligible terms the more incomprehensible it becomes. We cannot explain it; the childish explanation of the medicine-man is as valid as any attempted explanation of science; to talk about "irresistible instinct" and "imperious demands of nature for the propagation of the species in a favourable environment" does not explain it at all; it is like explain- ing the mystery of the firefly by stating that it has " a photogenic apparatus in its abdomen" — of course it has —the Cuban girl who pins it in her hair knows that. It is time that intelligent people emancipated themselves from the superstition that to speak about things in long I82 VARIETIES OF SALMON words it to explain them. We cannot explain the won ders of the spawning migration of the salmon; we only know from accumulated evidence that they are bo. In other streams of the Pacific coast, frequented by the same species, careful and long-continued observations have established the facts with certainty. Although not so completely dependent upon the salmon as the natives of the lower river, the upper-river people also would be at sore loss without it. The chase is more or less precarious everywhere; the harvest of the water is sure. Dried and smoked, the fish are stored up for the winter, and furnish a large part of the subsistence of man and dog. In some seasons the catch is plentiful and in others it is scant, but it never fails altogether. Here at Anvik, however, it is always plentiful. The flat camping-ground of the peninsula at the mouth of the Anvik River begins to bloom with great racks of red fish early in the season, and before long, acres and acres are covered with them. What tens of thousands of fish may be caught the summer through I know not, but the num- ber is immense. The very profusion of the fish induces carelessness in the curing, and Anvik fish has a name for being insufficiently cleaned and smoked. First comes the king-salmon, and the capture of the first fish of this largest and finest species is a notable occurrence anywhere on the river, and marks the open- ing of the season. Who does not relish the first steak from a fine king-salmon? Two lean months have passed, with no mitigation of canned and dried food, save an occasional duck or goose. But very soon one THE FISHING SEASON 183 grow, satiated; the king-ialmon is too fat. too rich, too highly flavoured for a steady diet, and unless there be naught else one turns from it. Presently the silver salmon comes, more delicate and less oily; then comes the great run of dog-salmon, and lastly, late in the season, a run of "chinook" saln.(.n, l.v .nun> preferred m flavour to all the other kind- The fish camp at Anvik, Airh ;r, n,a„y f^n, j,j smouldering fires and its sw .rmu.;. p; ti\ ■.■ j.o.pk and dogs, is a picturesque sight, but Ilk,; m ,nv another pic- turesque sight it is more agreeabl. whe,. vicved from a distance than when inspected at clos • i:ii,.iter,s. it reeks of fish and smoke, and the clear water of the little river, almost stagnant at the point of confluence, is fetid with offal. Moreover, the flies and mosquitoes are intoler- ably numerous the summer thtojirnder ■ ; 1 .'I m w FATAL DEPOPULATION 189 staffs and stinted resources of other missions cannot at- tempt. Without in the least desiring to be critical, one may perhaps be permitted to express surprise that so large a staff has never included a qualified physician; that amongst the numerous buildings there is not a modern hospital. For if the bodies as well as the souls of these native people deserve attention, and efforts to ameliorate the conditions of their physical existence be justly within the scope of missionary service, then the efforts of a skilled physician are of an importance which, if it be not equal to the purely spiritual work of the mission, is certainly equal to its educational and industrial work. The native population of these parts — and this in- cludes Anvik — is certainly greatly reduced. Even in Dall's day there were evidences of a much larger popu- lation in times not remote, and since that day destruc- tive epidemics of disease have scourged the whole region of the lower river. In 1900 (the year of the great stam- pede to Nome) a disease resembling measles made its way up the river from St. Michael, slaying a large pro- portion of the inhabitants of every village in its course. I was told by the superior of the mission at Holy Cross that half the native people of the place died in that visitation. One is sore to think of the lives that might have been spared, the depopulation that might have been checked, had there been adequate medical service at hand, for a priest with a smattering of medicine and a sister with a few drugs and bandages are a poor resource against *J IM « 1* ( !-i 'I 190 PLEAS FOR MEDICAL AID epidemic sickness. I would not even hint blame on others without taking full share for the communion I represent. In all these thirty years we have had for only two or three years— and that long ago— a resident physician at Anvik; and it is only recently that we have provided medical f.irilities at Fort Yukon and Tanana. But Anvik is a sm ! place compared with Holy Cross, and has never hat' i.iore than one man and two women at work— until a year ago, when, owing to his length of service and advancing years, Doctor Chapman was pro- vided with a lay assistant. Having the survival of the native people more at heart than anything else, if I had the money I would provide an adequate modern hospital for Holy Cross and the stipend of a qualified physician; and if this should meet the eye of a generous member of the Roman Catholic Church, of means equal to the task, I would plead that in no other way could greater g»»d be done to the people of the lower river. If it be possible to lay up treasure in heaven by helping the distressed or the unfortunate (and I am of that opinion) I can think of no way in which a balance may be more surely transferred to the celestial account than by providing the zealous men and women of Holy Cross with the means of caring for the sick of their region of the Yukon. It is easy to say it is the business of the government; we contented ourselves with saying that for many years; now we do not talk any more about the government in connection with the native people of Alaska; the gov- ernment is blind to everything save mining-camps and town sites, deaf to everything save the screech of its new THE FUTURE OF THE YUKON 191 locomotives. It is the business of the church; to save the people alive in the land we must make it the business of the church. Sometimes while standing for hours at the wheel of the launch Pelican, slowly grinding up-stream, or slipping swiftly down with the current, or while trudging on snowshoes ahead of the dogs in the winter, beating out a trail for them through the snow, I dream and speculate about the fui 'C of this vast, lonely Yukon country, and I can bring myself to no forecast in which the native people do not constitute the bulk of the permanent set- tled population of by far the greater part of it. It is a good and sufficient Indian country; it would support twice or thrice its present Indian inhabitants, as there is evidence it has done in the past; but it is not a good white man's country by any standard that countries have been judged by hitherto. White men of the trad- ing class, of a certain shiftless, casual class, there will, I suppose, always be, and their blood will mix with the blood of the native, as it is mixing to-day, and will modify it to an increasing extent. Regions where valu- able ninerals are found will have a preponderating or even exclusive white population, so long as the yidd persists. But the visions that gladden the eye and fire the imagination of many, visions of great tracts under the plough and still greater tracts under fence for pasture, visions of ranches and farms and contented homes all over the Yukon wilderness, will not take form before my eyes. I^i t ( u I i. If ' III! I i 192 PROSPECTS FOR THE WHITE MAN Much comparison of a rather superficial kind is made with Norway by those who are possessed of this vision, on the assumption that climatic and agricultural condi- tions are similar. Let the assumption stand, and the fact remains that no more than eight or nine per cent of that country is under cultivation to-day after all the ages of its occupation, and that three-fourths of its population inhabit the regions immediately adjacent to the coast. That a similar development is possible for Alaska I am quite ready to believe, but consider the enormous area that remains; consider the half-million of square miles and more that would correspond to Norway's waste hundred thousand. It is this vast inland region which, to my mind, will either be a wilderness inhabited by Indians or a wilderness not inhabited at all. Which is preferable ? Shall the white man dispossess without any probability of himself entering upon possession ? Shall he destroy with no likelihood of restoration ? To wipe out a simple primitive people by liquor and disease is just as flagitious as to exterminate them with fire and sword, and the depopulated wastes of interior ALska, if depopulated they be, will cry out on our boasted civili- sation as loudly as the depopulated wastes of Asia cry out to this day on the merciless barbarism of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. I do not wish to claim for the work in which we are engaged and the similar work in which others are en- gaged any more than its due; I do not wish to claim any- thing at all for it save in so far as by presenting such claim that work itself may be aided to greater efficiency. MISSIONS PROTECT THE NATIVES 193 but I believe it is just to say that if the Alaskan Indian be preserved in the land it will be due more to the efforts of Christian missions than to all other influences put together. It is the missionaries who have fought the distribution of liquor, who have fought the flagrant, brutal immorality of low-down whites, who have spurred the laggard law to such eflForts at enforcement as have been made, who have cheerfully incurred all sorts of personal odium in the struggle to protect the natives from those who for lust or gain would debauch and destroy them. The visitor is very likely to hear the echo of such odium, and should remember that the measure of the unpopularity of a missionary to the In- dians amongst a certain class on the steamboats and in the drinking-shops and on the water-fronts of towns, may very possibly be the measure of his usefulness. From Koserefsky to Ikogmute, that is to say from Holy Cross to the Russian Mission, is about another forty miles, in which the river maintains a course due south. The Kuskokwim, meanwhile, has been approach- ing the Yukon so rapidly that at a point on the left bank called Pimute they are separated by no more than thirty miles, as the crow flies. Low-lying lands, with lakes and streams nearly all the way, afford an easy passage from the one great river to the other in about double the distance just mentioned. This is the Pimute Por- tage, which has been in common use since the Russian days, when it served to connect the trading-ports from St. Michael to Nulato, with Redoubt Kolmakofsky on the Kuskokwim. II i m u 4 MOOCOrV IISOIUTION IKT CHMT (ANSI aiid ISO lEST CMA«I No, 2) ^l^i^ J APPLIED IM/1GE In. 194 RUSSIAN CHURCH IN ALASKA L . i The Russian Mission is the sole surviving agency and evidence on the Yukon of the rule of the Czar in these parts. Its picturesque Byzantine architecture has the interest and attractiveness of a civilisation and a Chris- tian culture strange to western eyes. One speculates as to what would have happened had the Purchase never taken place; would similar bulbous domes rise over Xa- nana.' — would Fairbanks present the characteristic ap- pearance of a Siberian town ? — or would towns at Xanana and Fairbanks have ever existed ? Xhe missionary work of the Greek; Church is mori- bund in Alaska to-day — certainly in the interior and, one suspects, on the coast as well. For a number of years past it has been without any episcopal supervision, and has slackened and degenerated in consequence. Xhose who remember Bishop Innocenti and his prog- resses down the lower Yukon to St. Michael, will regret, at any rate, the loss of a picturesque and benevolent character, a not unworthy successor, one thinks, of the saintly VeniaminofF, whose praise is in all the books on Alaska, and the brightening of dull lives by impressive and gorgeous ceremonies. Here and there along the river, from Nulato down, may be seen graves surmounted by the same triple cross that rises above the church at Ikogmute, and since the form of that cross has become the mark of identification of the Greek Church and often excites curiosity and inquiry, it may not be out of place to explain that the uppermost crosspiece represents the superscription that Pilate wrote, and the lowermost crosspiece the support that received the feet of the -I, %% ''i THE ESKIMO ZONE I9S Crucified One. The angle at which this last is always inclined is purely conventional, as, of course, is the whole symbol. But whereas the plain or Latin cross has become the general symbol of Christianity, this peculiar form of it is, nowadays, the specific indication of the Greek or Russian Church, which, all told, must number amongst its members close to one hundred and fifty millions of mankind. It is hard to find detailed and definite information about the planting of the Russian missions in Alaska, but this post dates back long before the Purchase. It was an old-established mission when the early explorers, to whom such frequent reference has been made, passed down the river. Much of the early history of Alaska still lies locked up in the little-known language of Russia.* We are now amongst the Eskimos . . have left the Indian people and the Indian language behind us. The skin boat, covered all over save where the boatman sits in a well in the centre, supersedes the birchbark canoe, the double paddle the single one, the much more devel- oped Innuit culture the simpler and cruder Ingalik. But while these people ?re of the same stock and the * It is interesting that just when Miss Agnes Laut (" Lords of the North," "Pathfinders of the West," "Conquest of the Great Northwest," etc.) has been delving into the archives of the Hudson's Bay House in London, for the original story of the penetration of the continent from the east, Mr. F. A. G ' ("Russian Expansion on the Pacific") has been delving into the arch ." the Russian Fur Company at St. Petersburg for the original story of V penetration of the continent from the west. So far Mr. Golder's work is in the main Asiatic and preliminary, but he promises a conti.ua- tion which those concerned with the early history of Alaska will eagerly expect. Their work will meet, one hopes, on the Yukon. One wishes, how- ever, that Miss Laut could borrow something of Mr. Golder's historical Kdateness, and, in her turn, lend him a little of her superfluous vivacity. 111 I! M .*l ' I* ill 196 BROAD REACHES IN RIVER same root language as the Eskimos of the coast, they are much modified by their river life. The EsiN.imos are the finest native people of which I have any knowledge, but I would not adduce these riparian folk in support of that statement; I would present the marine Eskimos with whom we shall come into contact by and by. For the same contrast exists between these divisions of the race as between the Indians of the upper and the lower river. The flesh of the seal, the walrus, and the whale takes the strength-giving place of moose and caribou and moun- tain-sheep meat, and the chase of these pelagic mammals in the stormy and foggy waters and amidst the ice of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean demands, and there- fore in large measure produces, a vigour and a courage even superior to that required in the ch:se of the land- animals. But I must withhold my hand from the coast- wise Eskimos until we reach their habitat. After leaving the Russian Mission the Yukon desists from its southerly course, having reached its lowest lati- tude in about 61° 44', which is nearly the latitude of Lake Lebarge; it now takes a decided bend to the west and then to the north of west until Andreafsky is reached, after which its course is due north to its mouth. In these reaches the river becomes very wide; indeed, at times one bank is scarce visible from the other, and in rough weather navigation may become so difficult that steamboats will tie up for the wind and waves to abate. About "ifty miles below the Russian Mission we reach, on the right bank, sitting at the foot of a high hill known from a prospector's name as the Pilcher Moun- I' I NEW GOLD FINDS '97 tain, the new mining-town of Marshall, gold having been found on Wilson Creek in its vicinity in the summer of 1913. The creek was named for the President of the United States, and the town for the Vice-President. The camp was a small one and not very favourably regarded until the summer of 1916, when another creek (Willow) was found to contain much coarse gold amidst glacial boulders, and it is said that the output of that season reached the half-million mark. In the town (which is very small, for the diggings are close at hand) and the creeks, there were some two hundred and fifty whites in the summer just mentioned. The population of these camps varies so greatly from time to time that one does not care to set down a figure without appending a date. The occurrence of gold so far down the Yukon was a great surprise to most Alaskan miners, and shows again how wide-spread is the distribution of placers throughout the whole territory. From the Chisana camp in the extreme east to Nome in the extreme west, from the Sushitna in the south to the Koyukuk in the north (with a strong probability of its discovery in the arctic slope beyond that), there is no region in which profitable fluvial d''posits of gold have not been found. But it takes, and will always take, rich placers to pay for the extrac- tion of the metal in continental Alaska. They are soon worked out and the country thereupon reverts to the wilderness. The very name "camp," by which diggings are always described, indicates that there is no "abiding city" in these settlements. ih ■ >'' i- lir CHAPTER VII THE DELTA COUNTRY. BERING SEA, AND ST. MICHAEL Dropping down an ever-widening river, the traveller who has observed nothing else must observe the great change that is gradually coming over the landscape. The spruce-trees are thinning out. Here at Pilot Sta- tion, a native village about twenty miles from Marshall, with a govern nent school, a Roman Catholic church and two small trading-posts, is still timber, but in another twenty miles we pass the last spruce-tiee. The familiar coniferous forest that has lined the banks ever since the voyage was launched at Whitehorse, and has given char- acter to the river, is gone. Clumps of cottonwood will be seen here and there for a while yet, but the willow is now the chief growth. We approach the tundra country of the delta, covered with dense moss, from which springs scrubby willow brush; we approach the sea. About a mile up the Andreafsky River, which comes in on the right bank about fifty miles below Marshall, is the abandoned post of Andreafsky, and at Andreafsky the tide is felt, though it is still one hundred and twenty miles to the mouth of the river. Almost the last hills lie about Andreafsky. On the left bank no elevation has been visible for many miles, save the dome of the soli- tary "Kusilvak" Mountain, twenty-five hundred feet high, which rises from the midst of the delta country far to the west. Already the largest mouth of the Yukon, .98 AN EARI,^■ RUSSIAN SEITLEMENT i<« the Kwishluak, has led off its water from the main stream, that bifurcation takinj place a few miles above. But this south mouth is not avigated in general; the steamboat exit is by the nortn or Aphoon mouth, which leads to St. Michael. If the steamboat be an oil-burner she may put in to Andreafsky to pump oil from a bar„'e, or she may put in to drop a barge or to pick one up, and. if so, the visitor will have opportunity to inspect a place that is not without interest. The place dates back to a Rnssiin settlement in 1853, and in 1855 it was the scene of a surprise and murder by natives sinilar to that at Nulato, though on a much smaller scale. As the two Russians who were in the fort came naked out of their sweat-bath the. • ere set upon and killed with clubs and knives. Unlike the Nulato massacre, this outrage was amply avenged. A party from St. Michael crossed over the hills and exterminated the inhabitants of the village where the assassins lived. Says Dall eleven years later: "From that day to this not a native on the lower Yukon has lifted his hand against the whites." It is said that round the necks of the Indian assassins were found crosses, indicating that they had been baptised at the Russian Mission; but the Rus- sian Mission is not the oi..y mission which has had cause to repent the too early and too easy baptism of cv^echu- mens, in Alaska and elsewhere. With the great development of steamboat traffic fol- lowing the Klondike discoveries, Andreafsky became a place of much importance. It is the first convenient 1 ! N ' ■'I 4 200 DISUSED STEAMBOATS harbour from the mouth of the river up, and since there is no port at the mouth of the Yukon, this place took something of that nature. Here were the warehouses, stores, and dwellings of the Northern Comii.-rcial Com- pany. A mile above were the extensive winter quarters of the company, including machine-shops, a large hotel, a marine railway for hauling out steamboats, and an electric plant to light the buildings. Here the crews of many steamboats wintered that they might be on hand for the navigation of the river before it is possible to reach St. Michael by sea. Most of these plants still stand,* but the whole place is deserted and abandoned. The most interesting feature of the place is the "bone- yard," as it is called, where a number of disused steam- boats are hauled out to rot and decay It was in the early summer when last I put in to Andreafsky, and, though it was near midnight, with the aid of field-glasses I was able to read some of the names of these derelicts, and I find "Tacoma," "Alice," "Victoria," "Gustin," wr; -n down in my diary as those I could make out, thougli there were a number of others. After the North- ern Commercial Company absorbed the Alaska Commer- cial Company, it was the custom to maintain the virtual monopoly of fhe river by buying up any independent boats that were put upon it. It was cheaper, I suppose, to buy them up and haul them out than to let them reduce freight rates by competition. • I have learned since writing the above that a violent storm in the winter 1915-16 levelled a number of these buildings with the ground, and that others were torn down and the lumber used in buildings at Marshall. .11 't li L' J mi ii ., I' 1: ' ' ■'I 'ill Ij iil I PAST AND PRESENT ON THE YUKON 201 There is an irresistible melancholy about such a place as this. Its extensive and substantial buildings uselessly burden the barren hillside, the stir of commerce is stilled, the warehouses empty, the fires under the steamboat boilers are long since drawn, never again to be lighted; the whistles will never again shrill the air and draw whites and natives alike hurrying to the bank. Here comes, perhaps, an old Eskimo in his skin canoe, with a salmon or a bucket of blueberries to sell, according to the season— and that represents the trade of a place that was once the most important commercial point below Dawson. The times of the Klondike stampede were spacious times for the Yukon. Anything that could stem its current was valuable out of all proportion to the craft on any other river in the world. I wish I had the list that I suppose some one at St. Michael must have kept of every steamboat that went up the river. I wish I had myself kept record of the wrecked boats I have seen, or seen fragments of, or heard the story of, along the Yukon and the Koyukuk. I wish I had a complete list of the contents of the boneyards at Andreafsky and St. Michael. Doubtless the chief blow to the prosperity of the lower-river route and to the huge establishments ^t Andreafsky and St. Michael was the opening of the White Pass Railway and the steamboat line that con- nected with it in 1900, and the deflection of the traffic that followed. But in that year the Klondike had al- ready reached its maximum output of ^22,000,000, and the decline was so rapid that by 1906 it had been reduced r 1} mr^ 202 UNCHARTED REGION almost to one-fourth of that amount, with a tonnage of freight in proportion. So here these stranded steamboats lie; and as we think of a ship in the water as something personal and sentient, so these ships seem to me dead and buried; buried in the primitive native way of these parts, above ground, lifted up on piles, as the Eskimo graves were lifted up on poles, to desiccate and decay in the air; and I suppose that if they stay there long enough there will come men poking and prying into their bowels, carrying off pieces of rusty, archaic machinery for exhibition in museums, just as Eskimo graves are rifled to-day and the poor skulls and bones carried triumphantly off in the sacred name of science.* Leaving the Andreafsky River and dropping down the Yukon again, we are hard upon the delta country, a wide waste that has never been surveyed or mapped save in the roughest way. Indeed, this observation applies to much of the whole course of the river. There are no sailing marks, no indications of the points at which to make difficult crossings, no aids whatever to navigation along the whole extent of this great rivei save the few that individual steamboat captains have from time to time set up. Since there is only one generally used mouth of the Yukon, only one that leads the way to St. • Dall himself was not above skull-snatching, and the only ignominious inadent in his narrative of two years' intercourse with the natives is that in which he describes himself as waiting for a snow-storm that would cover his tracks and conceal his movements, and then sneaking off at night to a graveyard, making a wide detour and coming back another way, to be- head a defenceless corpse and carry off the grisly prize. THE DELTA COUNTRY 203 Michael, and this one is entered twenty-five or thirty miles up-stream amongst a maze of sloughs and false channels, u might be thought that its occurrence would e announced by some prominent sign upon its bank ut there is nothing; and I suppose many a small craft has blundered into the wrong channel, as the Pelican did m the summer of 1913 with the bishop aboard, and found Itself out m the shallow mud-flats of Bering Sea before it realised that it had gone astray. It was proposed on that occasion that we coast around to St. Michael, but we had no compass and no chart and would have had to go far out of sight of the low-lying land to find water enough to navigate. So we turned back and lost the best part of a day. But how desolate this delta country is, and how poor and mean the whole coast-line of it, I never realised until that occasion. There is a desolation that has dignity the shores of the Gulf of Mexico are desolate enough with sometimes no sign of human life for scores of miles' but there IS the great expanse of golden sand rising into tufted hillocks, there are the flashing surges, there are the water-fowl. Here on the shores of Bering Sea one sees nothing but flat mud-banks rising a few inches above the tide, strewed here and there with sticks of bleaching driftwood which here and there, it may be, some Eskimo has piled upright that it be not so easily carried off by high water. Not a tree, not a bush breaks the monot- ony, not the slightest deviation from the perfect level of the moss-covered earth that does no more than emerge from the water. It is said by navigators that for more 204 SCENE OF DESOLATION |i< ,ii than one hundred miles of this coast there is positively no landmark of any kind. And if it be a gloomy, still day, as it was on the occasion referred to, with mist in the air premonitory of rain, I have seen no region of the earth so squalidly forlorn. There is no "glad, indom- itable sea" here. Dull and stagnant lie the brackish waters, not two feet deep for miles and miles beyond the shore; the mud rises and more densely clouds them when the boat touches bottom; the birds do not fre- quent them, even the fish avoid them, and the moment one steps ashore the seeming solid ground is found to be naught but morass. There is not even "a magic in the distance, where the sea-line meets the sky" that accompanies the most commonplace coast, for sea and sky merge in a lifeless, indistinguishable blur. I think if the Czar had ever seen the delta coast he would have kept it for the exile of those political offenders he hated most. It is here that the Yukon is depositing the burden it has so long carried in solution; it is here that it is con- tinually extending seaward the great expanse of land (one wishes one could say dry land) it has already made, gradually building it out into Bering Sea, gradually filling up Bering Sea. Granite and shale from the tops of the highest mountains, ground up in the mighty mills of the glaciers to the smoothest paste, and earned off in swirling black floods from underneath the wasting ice- foot all the summer long, porphyries and quartzites from the foothills and pene-plains, sand that it has scooped from the frozen banks of the Flats, where it undercut i 1 1 "FLUMEN EDAX RERUM" 205 them until they fell into its flood, mud from the shores of every one of its thousand tributaries and tributaries- tributaries, are all ultimately brought here. Here we might find the water-front of Fort Yukon that was eaten away so ravenously in the summer of 1916, and many an island that has disappeared altogether; and here, too, comes ultimately the wash of the sluice-boxes, carrying the fine flour gold that the most painstaking care of the mmer cannot save, with vegetable mould and dead moss and the fine powder of rotten wood. It is all dissolved and swallowed up and transported hither, and here dis- gorged and thrown down. For a couple of hundred miles to the south, without counting indentations, the same thing is going on, for when there is an end of the Yukon's mouths the great Kuskokwim River takes up the work. Almost the whole eastern shore of Bering Sea IS of this character. We recognise one of the great ceaseless processes of nature: "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low." But the process is not beautiful on the shores of Bering Sea. There are five main mouths of the Yukon,— the Aphoon, down which our steamboat will carry us pres- ently, the Ok-we'-ga, the Kwik'-pak, the Kwish'-lu-ak (known by white men as the Kus'-sel-vick), and the Kwem'-e-luk. In spring and in any flood-time there are many more, of which the Kash'-u-rauk opens into Hazen Bay, and is then navigable for all river-craft, though in summer it can be used only by canoes. Between this mouth and the last-mentioned of the five main mouths. I 1; ■ 1:1 ' m Jl! 306 THE LOST RIVER REACHES r I; ! I i, the Kwishluak, are a dozen smalt ones. These partic- ulars of the delta, with the phonetic orthography of the native names, I owe to Mr. Frank Wasky, of Marshall, Alaska's first delegate to Congress, a careful and intelli- gent observer, familiar with the region. Through this wide delta country, intersected every- where with watercourses, and not traversable in sum- mer save by these watercourses, are scattered several thousands of river Eskimos. Missionary work is done amongst them by the Roman Catholic Church, which has a considerable establishment on the Nunavarrock Slough, between two of the mouths, and there are several government schools in the delta. I should say, however, that, on the whole, this delta country is one of the least-known parts of Alaska, and its natives least influenced in any way by contact with the whites. I jumped from Andreafski to the mouth too soon, being led away by my indignation at the absence of all sailing directions on the river to tell of the Pelican blun- dering out to sea at the wrong place. Twenty miles below Andreafski, where positively the last height of land is passed, lies Mountain Village, with a government school, a government physician, two traders, and a dozen cabins. The steamboat turns at last into the northernmost or Aphoon mouth of the river, which presently takes a narrow and well-defined form, and passes Old Hamilton, where are a rather pretentious store for such a small place, and a little Roman Catholic chapel; and in a short NORTON SOUND ,07 time more the wireless standard of Kotlik appears on the horuon. where is a Signal Corps station from which the passage of boats into Bering Sea is reported to St Michael. There is a bar at the mouth on which a dredge has been working for a number of years, sucking out the sand and mud at one end and casting it forth again at the other, and thus gradually deepening a channel. Ihere is said to be not less than three feet of water now at low tide. The tide is small throughout Bering Sea, and IS much influenced by the wind; ,t averages about three feet. Once over the bar. the vessel is out in Bering Sea. in that large arm of it known as Norton Sound, with a voyage thereon of sixty-eight miles to the port of St Michael before it. This coast is not as doleful as the delta coast below. The bold headland of Point Roma- noff looms up some twenty-five miles distant, and the water is a little deeper; still it is. on the whole, a flat and unmteresting shore that we keep in sight. Point Romanoff, say the cartographers, is the "Point Shallow Water" of Captain Cook, upon which the family name of the imperial house was superimposed in Russian days; and the steamboats give it a wide berth because three miles out no more than four feet of water is found For we are now come again to the track of the great navigators of the eighteenth century, and Captain Cook IS sponsor for the more important of the names we shall yet encounter, as George Vancouver was for the names along the Inside Passage. Hi i :i I 208 VITUS BERING \i\ The sea itself on which we are sailing is rightly named after Vitus Bering, the Danish sailor in Russian employ who spent the greater part of his life endeavouring amidst the utmost difficulties to carry out Peter the Great's instructions and determine the eastern bsunds of the Asiatic continent. Bering passed through the straits that bea- his name in 1728, in heavy wea'her, but did not know that they were straits, and never saw the American continent until his third voyage in 1741, when he saw the coast in the neighbourhood of Mt. St. Elias. The delimitation of Bering's Straits and the deter- mination of the closest approximation of the two con- tinents was made by Captain Cook in 1778, who vindi- cated the accuracy of Bering's observations, and with characteristic greatness set Bering's name on the narrow passage between the continents which he had unwittingly passed through fifty years before. Norton Sound was named by Cook for Sir Fletcher Norton, speaker of the English House of Commons, afterwards Lord Grantley, a lawyer-politician of the factious times of George III, who was known amongst his opponents as Sir Bull-Face Doublefee, of whom Horace Walpole says that he "rose from obscure infamy to infamous fame"; but Horace Walpole was something of a politician himself and could be very spiteful. Cook gave the name because his officer who made the detailed examination of the sound was a near relative of Nor- ton's. One could wish that Cook had honoured the lieutenant himself as Vancouver honoured Puget, instead of his distinguished kinsman, in which case this would have been King's Sound. A TEMPESTUOUS S'^A 209 ^^ Twenty miles or m. beyond Point Romanoff we leach 'the canal," the mouth of which is mariced by a beacon, leading by a winding course unto St. Michael's Bay! This natural watercourse, on the Improvement of which the government .nrnt a good deal of money, affords a safe and easy passage for small craft, and avoids the worst part of the sea passage to St. Michael, but it is not used by steamboats because of its narrowness. "We don't need it when it's smooth and we can't use it when It's rough," a captain replied to my inquiry. It is this canal that makes the island of St. Michael. The flat-bottomed river-boats are sometimes very roughly handled on Bering Sea. They will not issue out of the mouth of the river if there be much wind at the time, but storms spring up suddenly in these parts, and the river boats are light and frail and top-heavy, and get severe pounding occasionally. There is a powerful tugboat, however, kept always in readiness to go to the assistance of a steamboat. Either inside or outside of Stuart Island (another of Cook's names) we pass to St Michael's Island, a barren, treeless, volcanic land cov- ered with tundra, and partly around the island to its port. Ocean-going vessels cannot put into the port of St. Michael, but must anchor a mile or so off shore. Barges are then towed out to them and the cargo discharged, and the barges are towed back to be picked up and pushed ahead by the river-steamboats; all of which can only be done in calm weather. The place is evidently, therefore, not a convenient port, but it is the best there is in all these parts, and it serves. I il 'i:l1 ill 2IO ST. MICHAEL >,! m When the White Pau and Yukon Company bought out the Northern Navigation Company (which wai the navigating end of the Northern Commercial Company) in 1914, and thus secured the monopoly of the whole river from its head to its mouth, its policy was to send all possible traffic by the upper route; and some of its hi officials announced that they would "wipe St. Michael off the map." But they found that the rail- road could not compete against their own water-borne tonnage, and that St. Michael was indispensable to any economical handling of the Alaskan freight problem. It is still on the map at the old place, with all its old draw- backs. A government railway operated without regard to profit and loss might, it is true, lay down at some point of the interior, on navigable water, all freights required, at a rate water-borne traffic could not meet. There would still remain the need of distribution, for which the river traffic of a fleet of steamboats would be necessary, but St. Michael would be of very little importance for a while. Sooner or later, however, the maintenance of such a railway at the public cost would become too irk- some a burden, and the road would be leased or put upon a commercial basis. The moment that was done the river fleet would go to the sea instead of to the rail- road for its cargoes, and St. Michael woulu be "on the map" again. When the Russian American Company was under the able and high-minded administration of Baron von Wrangell, Michael Tebenkoff was sent to establish a RUSSIAN COLONIAL LIFE j,, pott on Norton Sound, and in 1833 he built Redoubt St. Michael, putting it under the protection, one tur- mi«e», of his patron archangel. St. Michael wa. thus the second Russian post on Bering Sea. for Nushagak. in Bristol Bay, had been established in 1818 and has a history of upward of eighty years. Some of the old Russian log buildings still stand; a little octagonal blockhouse, or bastion, on a point of rock with diminutive, rusty cannon, arousing the interest of all visitors. There were occasions, so the tradition runs, when the fort was needed and the "six-pounders" were effective. Life at the place wa. slow and lazy, one judges, from the references of those who touched there the factors or agents despotic and often brutal, and the Russian workmen, convicts shipped hither instead of to Siberia, were of a class who could be controlled in no other way. Master and men alike were grossly addit -cd to drunkenness whenever the necessary liquor was ob- tainable. It is rather amusing to read the mutual accu- sations of the Russian American Company against the Hudson s Bay Company, and the Hudson's Bay Com- pany agamst the Russian American Company of selling liquor to natives, when neither seems to have had any scruples on that head whatever. And when Dall was finally leaving St. Michael, when the sway of both com- panies was terminated and the territory of Alaska had been transferred to the government of the United States he saw a small schooner lying in the bay, and writes as follows: "To the eastward a bidarra was puUing for the ! < * 212 ST. MICHAEL'S LATER DAYS canal, and rather seemed to avoid u, T,t.- St.... official. „ sS, " "" "»'"" °f "" ™'«'l The post at St MfrhS ">y«enously eluded. P =.1 at St. Michael was maintained by the Ab,l.,n "■""■""«' •!« company ,„ „„|, " »~"l "■ ■ky b„„gh, abou, a corresponding and „.„ g„„„ 'I I" I' * ti ^'1 im ^^! A WONDERFUL REVIVAL 213 development here— the Klondike stampede. At a stroke the desolate coast of Bering Sea became a highway of the nations. The available shipping of the Pacific coast was soon exhausted and ships from the Atlantic were sent round the Horn. The quays of every port on the Pacific coast were ahum with Alaskan business. Once started for the north, the tide of traffic divided into two streams, and one took the "inside passage" for Skagway, and the other too^ the "outside passage" for St. Michael. All the heavy merchandise, all the stocks of goods for trad- ing, as well as many of the individual venturers went by way of St. Michael. The shipyards of the Pacific coast were crowded with orders; the Morans at Seattle started building a fleet of river-boats, some of which went up under their own power, and others were tugged up to the port of the Yukon. At St. Michael itself the Alaska Commercial Com- pany was not slow to realise the good fortune whicl had thrown all this business into its lap. Shipyards were laid out, machine-shops were installed, and rapid build- ing of river-craft was begun; stores and warehouses and dwellings and a hotel were built. Other companies were organised — the Alaska Ex- ploration Company, the Alaska Development Company, the Seattle-Yukon Transportation Company, and I know not how many more; but the only one that sur- vived and for years maintained a rivalry with the origi- nal Alaska Company in river-steamboats and in trading- posts was a Chicago concern, the North American Trad- ing and Transportation Company. There, across the i i\ 1 f If m 1 'ii I " ';'. I 214 D'^CLINE AND FALL bay of St. Michael, was its establishment— a town by it- self, with hotel and machine-shops and stores and ware- houses and all the usual accessories. To-day that great plant across the bay is completely shut up and deserted, and much of the plant on this side is disused. And here and over there alike lie the abandoned steamboats of the respective "boneyards." There is the Isom, the largest and finest boat that ever floated on the Yukon River— far too large and expensive she proved —and a number of other vessels; and here is ti'.e Han- nah, one of three sister packets that plied to Dawson and back so long as it was profitable to do so, and sev- eral more. I have not counted them lately, but there were eight or nine a few years ago. It does not follow that a boat on the beach is a boat that is abandoned, of course; all the boats are pulled out every winter, but year by year less are launched in the summer, and every year that a boat lies on the shore makes it less likely it will ever displace water again. The army post at St. Michael— Fort Liscum— adds to the business and the attractiveness of the port, but it is perhaps the least desirable place of residence of all the Alaskan posts. A wet summer, with mosquitoes that breed in the soaking tundra by millions, and a stormy winter, with prevailing high winds in place of the "strong cold" of the interior, and no trees to break their force, such are the usual seasons on this barren coast. Plank sidewalks line the streets, extend across the tundra to the army post, and stretch up and down and to and fro about the compound, but where the plank ESKIMO TYPES 2,5 sidewalks end, the summer walking ends in general To step off them is to step ankle-deep in the wet moss. I spoke of the coastwise Eskimos in high terms, and we are now in their territory. The visitor will see them on the streets, or leaning on the counters of the stores, or beaching or launching their boats on the water-front, clad in dirty drill parkies, or in fur parkies from which most of the hair is rubbed off, and shod in mukluks; and their handiwork in the shape of carved walrus ivories and baskets and fur boots he will see exposed for sale in every place where anything at all is sold. Should he possess the wild desire to purchase ivory cribbage-boards which most visitors display, there is probably no other place on earth-unless it be Nome across the Sound- where there is such a variety to choose from. I do not know that I would take the Eskimos who frequent St. Michael and Nome, some of whom have been mfected with the white man's vices, as representa- tives of their race. Natives of any kind who hang around a white man's town are not usually the best specimens of the stamina and virtue of primitive men. I would go to Unalaklik, sixty miles or so along the shore of Norton Sound, the salt-water end of the Kaltag portage, and there I think any one who has carefully observed the Indians and Eskimos all down the Yukon would find a people superior in many ways to any he has met. Even in the .ummer camps around St. Michael and Nome the visitor is struck with the industry which these people display. Every inmate of a tent will be at work, the father carving a piece of ivory or wood, the i'l 2l6 ESKIMO INDUSTRY .■* mother making mukluks, or fur boots, a large girl beat- ing out and twisting caribou sinew into the incomparable strong thread with which the furs and the boots are sewn, and that I wish every tailor in the United States were compelled to use for sewing buttons on with; even the children will be whittling bows and arrows, the whole family occupied in some productive way. I have been struck by this admirable trait wherever I have seen these people. And there is always a smile for the visi- tor; they are a light-hearted, good-humoured people, easily amused and thoroughly enjoying a very simple jest; far from being "the shuddering tenants of the frigid zone" that Goldsmith imagined them — winter or summer. The average Eskimo is undersized compared with the average white man, but they are by no means the squat, diminutive folk they are commonly supposed, and individuals of full stature are not rare amongst them. They are well-made and often graceful in physique, with small hands and feet. The nose is generally rather flat, but in some is well bridged and shapely, and the mouth, while commonly large, is in youth so well filled wi'.h white, gleaming teeth, so easily revealed in an attractive smile, that its size is not conspicuous. I have seen in- dividuals that I think would be called handsome by any standard. These Eskimos are essentially navigators; they are as aquatic as ducks; the centaur was not a more intimate union between a man and a horse than the Eskimo is between a man and a boat; not many of them, I think. 4' I ii 1 1 '!» U u NATURAL NAVIGATORS ai7 can s\yim, yet they are true amphibia, as much at home on water as on land. With nothing but a thin integu- ment between them and death from drowning, they ven- ture far out from land and pursue and icill the seal and even the whale on the ice-encumbered waters. It is admirable to see men mastering such a savage environ- ment, wringing a subsistence from such an inhospitable land, such treacherous and perilous seas; with nothing save what their hands have made from the meagre ma- terial those hands could find around them, asserting and maintaining the supremacy of man. It has always seemed to me that human nature takes a new dignity from the life of the Eskimos. Naked in the arctic re- gions, man still rises superior to his environment, still adapts himself to it or constrains it to his needs. Nor is the kyak, or even the oomiak the extent of Eskimo boat-building to-day. At Unalaklik they con- struct excellent schooners and prove themselves first- class shipwrights. Greatly reduced in numbers as they have been by the causes that are almost invariably set in motion when the white man makes acquaintance with a primitive people (a paraphrase which my readers will have no trouble in reducing to if lowest terms), there is rea-on to take hope that the diminution is checked in general and that in places the balance is turning the other way. I have allowed myself perfect frankness in speaking of the government's neglect of the Yukon Indians; let me be equally frank to say that the introduction of reindeer amongst the Eskimos of the coast has been a great relief I I i : I ■ I'! n m m 2l8 THE REINDEER SCHEME !l i «iii Fti. and assistance to these people; yet I will add that I doubt if Congress would ever have appropriated the initial sum requisite for the purchase and importation of the rein- deer had it been intended, in the first instance, for the benefit of the Eskimos. It was the plight of the white men in Dawson in the winter of 1898 that set on foot the impracticable and foolish plan of sending in relief by reindeer, and the abandonment of the plan left the gov- ernment with the reindeer on its hands, as the man in song was left with the elephant on his hands; then Doctor Sheldon Jackson saw his chance and stepped in, and the reindeer were secured for the Eskimos. They are a people that any nation may be glad to have fringing the inhospitable waste places of its arctic coast, living, as I hold it true in the main of the Yukon Indians al;o, where no one else will live; a picturesque and interesting and harmless people with a place of their own amongst the races of mankind, and a right they have bravely won to exist on the face of the earth. PART II ;,' ii ; ii 111 VI 'H I 'It ^1! I' 4 i CHAPTER VIII THE PORCUPINE AND THE CHANDALAR The Porcupine River The Porcupine is the largest tributary which the Yukon receives within the region of the Flats, and one of its most considerable in general. By its affluent the Old Crow it brings down the most northerly water which the Yukon receives, and is thus earlier in closing and later in opening than the great river itself. Its running ice terminates the navigation of the Yukon in the au- tumn and delays it in the early summer, so that "Is the Porcupine throwing ice i"' is an important aueetion late and soon in the season. The Porcupine River was known to white men before the middle and upper Yukon, and, as has been mentioned before, was the highway by which the middle river was reached. John Bell, chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, descended a river tributary to the Porcupine that now bears his name in 1842, and in 1844 descended the Porcupine to its mouth. He was beyond doubt the first white man to see the Porcupine River, and the first white man to see the Yukon above Nulato, though I cannot find that he did more than catch sight of the latter river at the confluence. I can summon readily before my eyes the large map 1 1 m:\ ! , '1 322 WASTE PLACES ;. .1 it I . ' I I M m of North America which was in the atlas at my school. On it the Porcupine River was laid down to its junction with the Yukon (from Bell's or Murray's reports as I now judge), but the latter river was drawn thereafter flowing far to the northwest to a mouth in the Arctic Ocean east of Point Barrow, marked "Colville or You- con," and I have before me at this moment, in one of the "Franklin search" books of the sixties, a map in which that mouth is so designated. What made the chief impression upon my young mind in that map of the school atlas was the great blank space containing three names only: "La Pierre's House," "Rampart House," and "Fort Youcon" (three posts of the Hudson's Bay Company), and what strikes me as most interesting to-day is that the same space holds only those three names. La Pierre's House is quite abandoned this long while, and the company is gone from all of them, but those three names still stand alone aero s ten degrees of longitude as they stood fifty years ago. The visitor is come to the waste places of the earth so far as the works of man are concerned. It was in the early summer of 1910 that the Pelican made her first voyage up the Porcupine. She was brave in the new paint, without and within, of her spring over- hauling, her white sides gleaming in the perpetual sun- shine as she ploughed the sparkling water; and her en- gines running with that purring, sewing-mach'ne sound that betokens recent tuning-up of sparking levers and exhaust-valves. Her tanks full of gasolene, her lockers full of grub, her cushions recovered, her curtains washed. MOTOR-BOAT FITTINGS 223 her mosquito-bars carefully repaired, some new books on her little library shelf, and some new aluminum utensils m her galley, whcr, ..he took the bishop aboard and ran his purple i ,;,mant up ihe flagstaff that sur- mounts her cabin, she eit iierself n-.t unfit episcopal equi- page for Arctic waters, ohc uh^rishes a little store of napery, china, and plate, with which her bare board is covered and her graniteware and tin are replaced when she carries distinguished passengers. A craft, in which one takes personal pride, is, I sup- pose, always a source of personal expense. There is this httle device and that little convenience attractively set forth in the pages of motor-boat periodicals, or the catalogue of dealers' "accessories" (a word that covers a multitude of sins); there is continually swelling and soaring an ambition for more efl^cient and less trouble- some performance, that grows by what it feeds upon and takes new Hight with every new installation; and when the limits of an appropriation that covers little more than the gasolene supply are long overpassed, the master of such a craft finds himself still spending. The reproach of the Pelican is that with eight feet of beam she is only thirty-two feet long instead of forty; and that is not the fault of the builders, who indeed pleaded for the greater length, but of the White Pass Railway Company whose flat cars are only thirty-two feet long and who would not guarantee her safe delivery over their tortuous mountain road if she exceeded that length— of that company, and of those who deemed it necessary to send her in by Skagway and the upper river I' '♦4 224 SPRING REVERIES instead of by St. Michael and the lower. She would be a faster and a handier as well as a much more convenient boat did her length bear juster proportion to her beam. But such as she is she has been of long and useful and comfortable service. With caches of gasolene and lubri- cating oil at half a dozen places along the river, and a tank capacity for a week's cruising, she gives a range oi travel quite out of the reach of scheduled steamboats, and one sometimes exults at the unconstrained mobility she permits. The Tanana is my wash-pot, over the Koyukuk will I cast out my shoe, upon the Iditarod will I triumph ! I am sometimes tempted to vaunt, in vain- glorious moments at the opening of the season, when the fever of the Arctic spring stirs the blood and the sweet sound of lapping water once more delights the ear and the great fleecy clouds of summer begin again to float in the blue sky. Where else do waterways open such vast country to travel ? where else could one be so foot- loose and free ? Such moments have their charm — and their peril. They are almost invariably followed by mishap. Should I be steering when I take such flights, at just about that time the fly-wheel right behind me will very likely begin deluging the engine-room with water from the bilge, and the shower must be endured until a landing can be made. I know nothing better suited to dampen the ardour of self-satisfaction than a protracted shower-bath of bilge- water. Or, lost in distant prospects of waterways I would traverse, I find myself taking the boat where she has no present water to float in, and the labouring of the BLACK RIVER 22J engine arouses me from my reverie perhaps just in time, perhaps too late, o avoid grounding. I have spoken of her spicii-and-span condition at the opening of the summer. Alas! for her paint and her finery when she has cruised a few weeks in these dirty waters, tying up to mud-banks in wet weather and sub- miti:ing to hooted feet that bring the sand and the muck with them; when she has been aground a time or two and has been sparred and pried off with scant regard for her gleaming white sides ! — she soon looks as rusty and as soiled as though she had not been repainted since she was built. But just now she is in good fettle, fresh from the ways, with a clean river to navigate; and we hope to bring her back from the Rampart House for her down- Yukon voyage, looking little worse than she does now. We drop down a mile or so from Fort Yukon to the entrance of a little crooked slough that does no more than afford passage, and so slip into the Porcupine River and turn our bows up that stream. Clustered around tie mouth.- of the Porcupine are encampments of the Fort Yukon folk on all sides, ready for the run of salmon that any day may bring now, and here and there fish-wheels are already revolving and creaking. Within twenty-five miles we pass the mouth of the Big Black River coming in on our right, which has al- ready united with the Little Black a few miles away, and so soon as we have passed it are conscious of a diminution in the water we are navigating. The Black River is an important stream, navigable for more than '\ .1 It, ^ !< fl f iiQ \t I'i u 'i ;li Z26 FLY PLAGUE l'> I'!! two hundred miles, and it lias two Indian villages situ- ated upon it, at one of which (one hundred miles up) a white trader maintains a store. The season has been dry, as the early summer often is in this region, and the river is low, and the heat of these first days of July is great. With the failure of a little breeze and the over- casting of th^ sky, the weather grows oppressively sultry and a swarm of horse-flies, or moose-flies as they are called in these parts, makes appearance — large venomous insects that bite a piece out of one's flesh when they alight. It is a curious coincidence that we have a popular magazine aboard with one of those scolding, oracular articles which such magazines affect, by some eminent or nearly-eminent scientist (much heralded and belauded in a prefatory italicised note) on the subject of Flies. Flies are the chief contaminators of food and drink, the chief disseminators of infectious disease, in short, the chief enemies of the human race. He does not say thai their god Beelzebub is the devil himself instead of some lesser fiend, because he has of course gone far beyond devils, but he is most severe and resolute in his denun- ciation of flies, and almost as severe and resolute against those whose indifference tolerates them. So long as he confines himself to generalities he is well enough of his kind and succeeds in lashing himself into a fine scientific fury. Displaying no indifferent toleration ourselves, but "swatting" right and left until the floor of the cabin is gradually covered with dead, we are disposed if not to agree with him at least not to make issue with him. RIVER SCENERY 227 But presently descending just as dogmatically to details, and roaring against the negligence of grooms and hostlers, he declares roundly that horse-flies can breed in nothing but horse manure. And here are we annoyed by them almost beyond endurance— and not an horse within an hundred miles ! A little while since we saw a bear prowl- ing the bank and the bishop suggests that perhaps they breed in bear manure also. Fifty or fifty-five miles above Fort Yukon the Sheen- jik or Big Salmon is received on the right bank, coming down from the north, where it interlocks with tributaries of the east fork of the Chandalar. The Sheenjik is one of the Porcupine's most important tributaries, and a good deal of fur comes every year out of the country it drains. The Flats are monotonous whether on the great river or on its branches; we wind around the mud-banks thickly set with spruce and willow, eagerly looking for the first glimpse of the mountains, but all day passes and our horizon of tree tops is still unbroken. Here and there is a native camp, the white of the tent showing pleasantly amidst the sylvan sameness; soon the dull red of the split salmon will add the characteristic touch of summer colour. The caving banks throw their trees into the stream, now on this side, now on that, sweepers and snags call for watchful steering, the crossings are numerous and ill- defined and one must read water with some readiness and certainty if one is to be sure of always finding water. For fifteen hours we run without a stop, save touching ::ii' llli: 228 FALSE ECONOMIES ['H i* U' the bank once or twice to speak to some Indians, and then tie up for sleep. This is our regular schedule and it allows of continuous journeys without undue fatigue. An hour or so after tying up is spent in attention to the engine and preparation for repose. Immediately upon stopping, while the cylinders are yet hot, a liberal dose of coal-oil is introduced into each of them through the pet-cocks, and the fly-wheel thrown over once or twice. When the boat had completed six seasons' work the engine was overhauled and the pistons were withdrawn from the cylinders for the first time. The complete absence of carbon deposit upon the pistons, which was then disclosed, was due, I think, to this habitual dosing with coal-oil. Two pneumatic cushions in the cabin afl^ord com- fortable beds for half the boat's company; two others, carried deflated, must be blown up each night to accom- modate the remainder, and that takes some time and lung power. I have bought pumps — hand-pumps and foot-pumps; they last a few days or a week or two, and then they get out of order or the connecting tube breaks, and they are cast aside in favour of the lungs and the lips. Why is it that devices such as this — and a thou- sand others of common domestic utility — are so cheaply and poorly made.' Take a can-opener as a more com- mon instance, or a "Dover" egg-beater — why is it that they must be so flimsily constructed that they can be sold at retail for ten cents .? A can-opener is a tool quite as important nowadays as a chisel; a Dover egg- beater is quite as important as a brace for a wood-drill COOKING STANDARDS jjg and mechanically much more intricate; why should they not be as carefully and solidly constructed ? Surely there are enough people who would prefer to pay fifty cents or a dollar once, rather than ten cents a dozen t.mes over to justify making and selling some of them of tof,l quahty and price, instead of "notion" quality and pnce. Indeed, is not one of the more important domest.c reforms of the day the construction of domestic implements with as much care as the implements of other handicrafts? Would it not be tim. and money saved and efficiency gained to sweep away the whole five-and-ten-cent" junk that multiplies in kitchens, and replace it with real tools ? When a man finds that he has to cook, not only for himself but for others, as most men find sooner or later who hve and travel in the mterior of Alaska, he is quite l.kely to decide that he will cook as well as possible in- stead of being a mere "grub-spoiler." If the Due de Richelieu invented mayonnaise, it cannot be beneath any one's dignity to make it who can procure a reason- ably fresh egg; and. in the main, the difference between good cookery and poor cookery is a little time and pains But whenever a man finds himself under the necessity of cooking he becomes impatient with the unsubstantiality ot the available implements. The cooking on the Pelican is done in a little galley furnished with two "Primus" stoves-and it is surpris- ing how much can be accomplished v.ith a Primus stove. This admirable Swedish stove, used by Nansen twenty-five years ago and long employed in the north »l|' 1 I i 230 A NAVIGATOR'S LIFE h' f\:W. seems only recently to have been discovered in the United States. I saw shop-windows full of them, as in the introduction of some new device, with "demon- strators" making public exposition of their use, in New York and other cities when last I crossed the continent. The cooking is done and the meals are eaten while the boat runs, so that when she ties up there is naught but the attention to the engine and the preparation for the night to occupy our time. The beds are blown up, the blankets extracted from the lockers, the mosquito- curtains set up, our prayers are said, and we turn in for eight hours' sleep; three persons in the cabin and one in the engine-room. The windows of the boat are provided with blinds, but it is hard to darken the cabin in the middle of summer and at the same time provide sufficient air for ventilation. When the alarm-clock announces the expiration of the eight hours, the boy in the engine-room gets up, piles his bedding and his deflated pneumatic mattress into the cabin, starts his engine and casts loose; and the journey is resumed within ten or fifteen minutes at most. The man sleeping on the floor in the cabin next arises, deflates his mattress, gathers up both beds, and, before doing anything else, starts the Primus stove for a cup of coffee all round. Then, one by one the others arise, toilets are made at the little lavatory, the bedding is stowed in the lockers, and breakfast is taken in hand. If the weather be fine the after-deck affords a pleasant fresh place in the early morning, and when the first meal of the day is ready there is usually appetite for it. TROUBLES OF NAVIGATION 231 Breakfast eaten, one of us goes forward and relieves the man at the wheel that he may make his toilet and eat, and that is the regular routine on a long cruise. If the weather be bright and cleai we shall come to our first glimpse of th : ilisi mt mountains within seven- teen or eighteen hours of our start, and one's heart is always cheered, winter or summer, at the prospect they afford of emerging from the Flats. In two or three hours more we pass the "Schuman house," one of the very few inhabited cabins we have seen, and here is likely to be an encampment of Indians; and between five and six hours' more travel brings us to John Her- bert's house at the entrance to the first ramparts of the Porcupine. Here it was, or hereabouts, on the first voyage of the Pelican that we met with misadventure. The water was low and it was often difficult to judge where lay the channel. Coming to an island that seemed to divide the waters almost equally we went up on the right hand only to find that there was not depth enough to pass. So we dropped down that we might cross over and take the other side. But the boy at the wheel made the crossing too soon, for a bar from the island stretched far below it, and we found ourselves aground, the swift water swinging us broadside on before we could ex- tricate ourselves. It does not take long for gravel to accumulate against the keel of a boat lying in such position, and Arthur lost his head for a moment and en- deavoured to dig a way off the bar with the propeller, advancing and reversing in rapid succession, without I (I m J.' ■ m ■ m 232 AN INDIAN CHIEF i .1 \\ •\ much avail, and without considering what he was mean- while doing to the propeller itself. It was necessary to resort to other measures, to "peel off and get in," and two or three naked men overboard with stout poles managed gradually to pry her into water that would float her— a rather chilly job and rough on the bare feet. It would have been a trivial and, in those days, not at all unusual mishap but for the abuse of the propeller, which was so blunted and battered by the gravel that thereafter we could get no more than five hundred and twenty revolutions out of the engine instead of the six- hundred and twenty at which we had been running— and all the strong .v.-ter of the ramparts yet to pass through. Amundsen described John Herbert twelve years ago as "a very fine fellow, six feet high, with dark hair and u full moustache," when he met him on his overland trip from Herschel Island to Eagle to telegraph the news that he had made the northwest passage; and the descrip- tion fits him yet. He is one of the finest specimens of the race in physique and character and is now the chief of the Indians centring about Fort Yukon. His house on the Porcupine is finely situated with a noble outlook, but is little used nowadays save at times in winter as a trapping-cabin. Here the river emerges finally from the mountainous region through which it cuts its way for one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty-five miles to debouch upon the Flats, and as we enter the portals through which it is flowing the banks swell up in bold PICTURESQUE SCENERY 233 bluffs with great detached yellow rocks rising out of the water. The change is most welcome, and the scene most attractive, after the long, tedious grind through the Flats, and with hearts full of pleasant anticipation of the fine scenery of the ramparts, we enter upon the second half of the journey. Soon after entering the ramparts, however, the bluffs fall away and open country is resumed for a number of miles, though not the open country of the Flats. Through this open country, between the lower and upper ramparts, enters the Coleen River from the north; though why called Coleen, by whom or after whom, I have not been able to discover. It is also called "Sucker River," sometimes spelled "Succour"— a spelling for which I wish I had reason, for then would hang a story to it, whereas "sucker" is simply a fish. By this break in the continuity of the gorge-like formation we are the better prepared for the upper ramparts when they come, as they do presently, and for about fifty miles to the New Rampart House and ten miles or so beyond, pre- sent some of the most picturesque river scenery of the north. It takes limestone and sandstone to make picturesque scenery; to weather away into spires and turrets and fantastic craggy shapes shooting up naked and ragged; to bring the charm of colour with which the upper ram- parts abound, yellow ochres and red-browns, stains of copper and uon ore, deep velvety blacks of shale and pure white of lime. I have seen the canon of the Yellow- stone and the Grand Canon of the Colorado, and I am %] *u THE RAMPART DISTRICT not going to compare the ramparts <>( the Porcupine with them for a moment, so much smaller is the scale. But I do not think that the rocks of the one or the other carry any more vivid colouring. The upper ramparts of the Porcupine begin at the Howling Dog Rock, where the river is confined by pre- cipitous bluffs that drop sheer into the water. At this rock thr tracking of boats up the river must be inter- mitted and the oars resorted to; the dogs that have been pulling the line or running along the beach accompanying the trackers, must take to the water and swim around the rock, and they precede the plunge by prolonged protest. Just below the rock, on a fine elevated bench, is the attractive site to which the Hudson's Bay Com- pany removed when it was ejected from the newly ac- quired territory of the United States at Fort Yukon in 1869, thinking that it had passed into British territory; but it was soon found that the new post was also within the Alaskan purchase, and within a year another remove was made twelve miles farther up the river to the Old Rampart House. There is no sameness about the ramparts of the Por- cupine as there is about the ramparts, upper and lower, of the Yukon. Every bend brings some different scene, and while the canon-like character of the passage is maintained throughout, there is great diversity in shape and colour and arrangement of the masses of rock. Sometimes for a long stretch the wall is perfectly level and almost perpendicular, and the term "rampart" is exactly expressive of its appearance. At the turning of ROCKY SHORES 33S another bend and a change in the nature of the rock of the containing walls, the scene is altered completely, and every possible irregularity in contour is introduced Here a needle that would afford entertainment to the most daring rock-climber, rises straight from the water's edge; here a group of jagged white pinnacles issues out of and surmounts a dark-brown bluff; here a rounded verdure-clad shoulder juts out in striking contrast be- yond stark yellow rock. The next bend, it may be, is dommated by a mountain mass that towers to a peak still carrying snow, and from it the ridges fall away in successive buttresses and terraced escarpments. Now one bank and now the other claims chief distinction of fantastic masonry. "Quartzites and dolomites" intrud- mg themselves whimsically give splashes of rich and varied colours. The stream itself is as varied as its ramparts. Here are placid stretches with little current; here are rapids that It taxes the launch to stem; by and by we shall reach water that with her diminished power she can scarce pass through at all, and then the pike-poles are brought to her assistance and she is pushed through the worst of it. The loss of a hundred revolutions per mmute is a serious matter. Here are large rocks in midstream over which the water foams and roars There is a story that an old Indian long ago shattered his canoe on one of these half-submerged rocks in mid- stream, and, being unable to swim, stayed there and starved to death, his bones being found on it in the fall. Here are beautiful little sheltered bays with white y » 111 'A |i: 236 OLD RAMPART HOUSE l.t i V •.I ' 1 'I I I 1 I sand beaches right beside the rapids, a sharp line of eddy dividing the rushing water from the still. In one such we tie up for the night, a brawling stream coming out of a cleft in the mountains just opposite and singing us to sleep. Ninety'miles or so above our entrance of the ramparts we come to the site of the Old Rampart House, occupied by the Hudson's Bay Company in full confidence that they were by now in British territory, from 1869 to 1889. In this latter year comes John Henry Turner of the Coast and Geodetic Survey (the man for whom so many places are named in Alaska) and sets up his instruments and determines the longitude, by which determination the Old Rampart House is still some thirty-five miles, by the windings of the river, within the territory of the United States; and so the company moves its post once more and establishes the New Rampart House. Upon the site of the old post (of which no vestige re- mains but a graveyard) we find a summer encampment of natives, from the village of ten or twelve cabins on the opposite bank where a mountain torrent comes in through a gap in the bluffs, and landing a while we climb up to the knoll on which the graveyard is placed. The little plot is rudely but substantially fenced, for it is still the burial-place of this Indian community, and amidst unnamed Indian graves are here and there de- cayed headboards upon which may be traced the names of "Hudson's Bay Company's servants"; and one, which we are seeking, bears the half-obliterated name of the Reverend Vincent Sim, who died here in 1885. This is I '* t,. J^tl ;! ' II MISSIONARY HEROISM 237 the man of whose work at Xanana Lieutenant Allen speaks so warmly. Leaving Xanana in 1884, he returned hither nervous and ill, partly the result, it is said, of the persecution of a Xanana medicine-man who kept a drum incessantly beating in the neighbourhood of Sim's tent whenever he kn.w tixat Sim was trying to sleep, so that labouring all day in his teaching, he was tormented all night for weeks on end. Hearing of his condition the missionary from Fort McPherson came hither to nurse him, and as he grew worse and fell into a general de- cline, promised to take him outside by way of the Yukon (because the Riel rebellion was disturbing travel in the northwest provinces) as soon as water ran again. But on the very day that the ice broke and the water ran on the Porcupine River (iMay 25) Sim died. Xhere is something very noble to my eyes in the life and death of a man such as this. Allen found a child to whom he had taught the alphabet at the headwaters of the Xanana River, heard praise of his self-denying labour at the mouth thereof; here at the Rampart House the story goes that he was teaching even when he was dying. Xhirty-odd years ago a white man in these parts had to live as the Indians live, travel as they travel, eat their food; and nothing, it seems to me, but the pure flame of disinterested and consecrated devotion could furnish the impulse and momentum for such a life. Who can tell how wide its influence has stretched?— what part in the melioration of savage ferocity such as Alexander Murray describes at Fort Yukon (not to go to any ecclesiastical source) should justly be attributed I I il, • f- 1 I'M !'«. h . ! ' I »38 A CONTRAST thereunto ?-so that if these people be called savages to^ay, they must be called gentle savages to whom deeds of violence are almost unknown. I think that mouldering grave at the Old Rampart House is more honourable and more enviable than nine-tenths of all the mortuary monuments upon which sculptors have lavished skill, more honourable and more enviable than nme- tenths that Westminster Abbey contains. Let it be re- membered to the honour of the Church of England that she had such sons and sent them into the wilderness long ago; upon whose labours we of the American church ha-e tardily entered, in these more comfortable times, to rer; in some measure, the fruit. Travelling the Porcu- pine in the Pflican is a very different matter from trav- elling it in a birch-bark canoe. The thirty or thirty-five miles between the Old Ram- part House and the New includes the best of the ram- part scenery and the swiftest of its water. The run takes us ten hours, which would be reduced probably by a couple of hours had we our full speed. The gorge ar- rows and deepens, and grows, I think, somewhat more sombre in colouring, but the crags and cliffs even more impressive in form, until immediately after passmg a curious bright-yellow-topped mountain on our right, we swing to our left, the ramparts widen out, and we are in sight of the New Rampart House. Here in a basin in the river-bed, surrounded on all sides by rugged hills or bluffs about five hundred feet high, the river swinging around both sides of the basin, with a wide dreary waste of sand-bar in the middle, is the end of our present jour- SETTLING THE BOUNDARY 239 ney. Much as a city street curves out into a circus with a grass-plot or a monument in the centre and then resumes its proper narrowness, does the Porcupine River open out into this basin and then contract to its gorae- lilce form again. Very picturesquely the new trading buildings of the Rampart House rise from their high steep bench A gully from the mountains cleaves this bench and on the other side thereof stand the unfinished church and the native cabins. And that red flag .^-Campbell's "meteor flag seems out here in the wilderness its happiest de- scription as it flaunts its rich deep colour amidst the greys and greens and browns-that unaccustomed flag flymg from two flagstaflFs ?~k is the flag of England, for we have at length reached indubitable British territory But by how much we have reached it is very interesting to notice. While the place is in full sight and we are speeding towards it we are yet in Alaska. You see that last cabin on the Ieft.?-ten feet therefrom stands the bronze monument, one side of which is inscribed "Can- ada" and the other "Alaska." John Henry Turner put the boundary-line a quarter of a mile or so to the west- ward, but this is the conclusive and ultimate delimita- tion, the careful work of an international scientific com- mission. The line of the 141st meridian is now run with mmute accuracy from the Gulf of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean, and is marked all the way at regular intervals with bronze monuments on concrete bases. This matter of the longitude of points in the Arctic wilderness was beset with great difliculty. The only % • .1 i i in m (:;■ I ''HI ft 'r 240 MANY REMOVALS data the Hudson's Bay people had were the determina- tions made by Sir John Franklin on the MacKenzie in 1826. In the absence of chronometers, or any tele- graphic means of obtaining time, in the absence of any scientific instruments, trying to carry a dead reckoning down rapid rivers, it is no wonder that they were uncer- tain of their situation. Nothing could be more careful than Murray's record of his courses all the way from La Pierre's House to Fort Yukon; they occupy page after page of his published "Journal." He mounted a compass in the boat, checked its variation repeatedly as best he could, and riveted his attention upon it during the whole journey; indeed, Murray well knew that he was far within Russian ter- ritory, but could only guess how far. Raymond's de- termination sent the company back, some other determi- nation or just their own misgivings sent them back again. Turner's determination sent them back once more— and the site of their last removal stands but a couple of hundred yards across the boundary to-day. One recalls the controversy about the longitude in the reign of Queen Anne and the outrageous lines of Dean Swift, perhaps the most scurrilous in English literature, beginning: "The longitude missed on By wicked Will Whitton And not better hit on By good Master Ditton." which lines are said to have caused the death of "good Master Ditton." There has certainly been improve- t ^ ■^ *V' H ii. I HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY'S RECORD 241 ment in taste these two centuries, if in nothing else, as the reader who shall turn up the reference in a com- plete edition of Swift will readily agree. The Hudson's Bay Company is gone; the attraction of the Indian to the Yukon by the great impetus which the mming developments on that river gave to trading coupled with the refusal of the United States Govern^ ment to permit the company to bring in its goods by way of St. Michael (the actual refusal was a refusal of permission to cut wood for its steamboats) caused the company to withdraw from Yukon waters altogether. I have always thought that it abandoned a good post m pique. After a few lean years the Indians returned and an independent trader has thrived there this long time. Men may say what they like about the Hudson's Bay Company. It paid low prices for furs and low wages to its servants, but it handled nothing but thoroughly good merchandise, maintaining generation after generation a standard quality; and it managed, despite the low wages, to secure capable and conscientious men and to keep tiiem. It secured the confidence of the natives; its promises were never broken, its rules were rigidly maintained. To this day the natives at Fort Yukon can make no higher compliment to an article of mer- chandise than to say, "All-e-same Hudson's Bay." and seek to obtain by barter from their more fortunate Canadian kinsfolk (as they regard them in this par- ticular) the blankets and duffle, the scarves and braids which they can no longer purchase directly. 'i'i J' 1 i|,! .11' 341 REMOTE WHITE SETTLEMENT Between our sight of the New Rampart House and our arrival lies the swiftest water we have yet encountered, and the PtHcan is shorn of the honour of passing proudly through it by the wretched mishap that battered and buckled her propeller. In the midst of it she stands still, her best speed evenly matched by the speed of the water. Edging towards the shoaler part of the stream the pike-poles are resorted to and she is ignominiously poked and shoved through the rapid until slower current is reached and she can make her own way to the bank where the whole population awaits her-consp.cuous amongst them the red jacket and yellow-striped trousers of a sergeant of the Northwest Mounted Police. There is interest even to excitement in reaching this place It is the first white settlement we have seen m all our two hundred and fifty miles of travel; it is one of the most northerly settlements in all this interior coun- try if indeed it be not the most northerly. That trad winding up the westerly of the two hills rising behmd the place leads right across country, up-hill and down- dale to the shore of the Arctic Ocean, one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty miles away as the crow flies, and nigh two hundred, I suppose, as it must be travelled. Up it and along it went the pack-mules carrying the bagg e and supplies of the Boundary Com- mission. I climbed it just a week ago (for I am nwly returned to finish this chapter from a voyage on the Por- cupine and some of the details here incorporated refer to this latest journey), and pushed on for a mile or so through the thick scrub brush with which the plateau is CAN-ALASKA 43 covered the mule-trail well defined though boggy pushed on a.i though bound for rh> a„.' ""J«y. pushed wishing thaf I were botd?orfh;Arcr" "' '"""^ -y companions on the />' .r.ntas ""'' " °"' °^ The hills around are all worth climbing for the d!f ferent views they aflford Snm- c ■, °''" the Rampart HousTdeft "he b' " " '^ """' °' mountam top glowed deep crimson; a ver^Ttrr n^'and bcau..r„, 3ight that reminded me Jf a ml gh'i: once saw on the top of Vesuvius Anj 'Snt glow i f«»... ™„i„rwar^;./i^,,s^ tamly require "some can." would cer- womanTthf " "''"' i"""'^ °' ''''^ P'^« " °n« old woman of the greatest interest. She is I thint .u odest native of all these parts, and th ug ebt nl ecrep.t m body, of unusual sprightliness of m „d "he Remembers the coming of the first white mT to the Porcupme R.ver, and rh.t was John Bell in X84V o that, her memory running back seventy-five veart ,h^ must e well p.« eighty, as I judge, and that i a gr age for Indians to attain. Some one, hearing her speak of the first commg of the white man, said ''She Zt I ]'i i ^ t IP * I'f! ' l) 't; u I' 244 AN INDIAN HERMIT mean McDougal," who started the Porcupine po«t in 1869. "Oh, no!" ihe said, when told of it, "that was only a little while ago!" Moreover there is a romantic story attaching to her. It is said that when a young woman she was stolen away from her husband, or from her affianced husband, I could not be sure which, who thereupon renounced the society of his people and lived a hermit's life. He would bring the fruits of his trapping and deposit them on the beach near the store; the trader would take them and in return place such a general sup- ply as they were worth and as he judged the man would need; whereupon the misanthrope of the wilderness would come down in the night again and remove the "outfit" to his lair in the mountains; and that was all his intercourse with mankind for the many years he lived. It is hard to associate this withered and shriv- elled creature with the inspiring of such a passion, yet there is even now a gleam in her bleared eyes and a musical intonation in her voice, a readiness of wit and an air of independence and resolution that single her out from old Indian women. I suppose if I say that I count it a privilege to offer her a tribute of tobacco, I shall "provoke in the sinful a smile" as Truthful James used to put it, but indeed these ancients of the wilder- ness make great appeal to me. One by one they drop off; the contemporaries of the Hudson's Bay advent in these parts are now reckoned two or three only, and this venerable dame is the briskest as well as the oldest of them. I wish we had her at Fort Yukon; it would be interesting to take care of her, to dig into the nethermost W \l: 1 It -LI irii' i !i !l 1 t it 2^6 DANGEROUS NAVIGATION cupine. and not only children but Sro^\rtj^, friEhtened if told "the Nahonis are coming. A white man. building a cabin near Charley Creek this year (1917), was induced to build it on the opposite side of the Yukon because of his native wife's dread of the Nahonis. . , If the voyage up the Porcupine be one of the most interesting that the waterways of Alaska afford, the voyage down, particularly through the ramparts, is full of the keen excitement that a spice of danger and the constant vigilance necessary to evade it, induce. In places the current is so rapid, the channel so narrow, the shoals so near, the turns so sharp, that care and sbU are required and a very quick hand and eye to guu.e the boat safely through. There is no time to change ones mind or to correct a mistake. Sometimes one must steer straight for a rock, impact with which would stave in the boat, and, as it seems, upon the very instant before striking it, the wheel must be thrown hard over that the boat may make an almost quarter-circle turn and still keep in the deep water. Sometimes, as at Martin's Island between the upper and lower ramparts, the water sweeps very swiftly over wide gravel shallows with a narrow channel in the midst, hard to discern and taking short, sharp turns. The channel had httle more depth than enough to float us and our speed had there- fore to be cut down till it scarce sufficed for quick steer- ageway; and this, I think, at low water is one of the worst places in the whole river. It would, of course, be easy to exaggerate the diffi- CHANDALAR RIVER 247 culties and dangers of this navigation; to those properly equipped and accustomed to swift water it is not a bad river. There is a fascination about such travel, how- ever, that keeps one close by the wheel, though I know it is quite safe in Walter's hand, far safer than it would be in my own. We brought the boat down on this last trip, in one run from the New Rampart House to Fort Yukon, in about twenty hours, and I think he was at the wheel for fifteen or sixteen of them, leaving it to me only to eat or to attend to the engine, and I was al- ways glad when he returned. Both going and returning the heavy ice of the break-up lay piled upon the banks and sand-bars, gradually dis- solving in the sun, for the high water of the break-up of 1917 was checked by sharp unseasonable cold weather and fell coo rapidly to bear away its burden. From the latter half of the journey the pleasure was largely removed by an exceeding high up-river wind that gathered the sand from the bars and flung it all over us and through us, and sometimes carried such clouds of dust as to obscure the steering view. The Porcupine IS not wide enough to get up much of a sea; in the lower Yukon we should have had to seek shelter from such a wind; but even the Porcupine grows very choppy when wind is beating against current. The Chandalar River The Chandalar River takes its name from the term used by the Hudson's Bay Company's servants at Fort Yukon to describe one of the numerous tribes of Indians \.1 m '4 i!t! I; m < 1 i'^i :l ' Ml i III ■) II! M I i 248 ORIGIN OF NAME who visited the post. Because these Indians resembled the children of Jonadab the son of Rechab, more closely than the generality of Indians, in having no permanent villages but living in tents and wandering widely, they were known as "Gens de large," and the river which they chiefly frequented and down which they came on their journeys to Fort Yukon was called "Gens de Large" River. It is so pronounced to-day by the older Indians of the place when they use its white man's name. It became corrupted into Chandalar, and even found its way into the Geographic Dictionary of Alaska as "Chandler," with the purely fictitious statement that it was "said to be so named from John Chandler, a factor of the Hudson's Bay Company"— fictitious, that is, on the part of whoever said it— one of the few blunders which that very valuable book contains. The Indian name for the river, or for that part of it below the moun- tains is Tatreenjik. The Chandalar shares with the Koyukuk the dramage of the southern slopes of the Endicott range, the one flowing southeast to a confluence with the Yukon about twenty-five miles below Fort Yukon, the other flowing southwest with much longer course to a confluence five hundred miles farther down-stream, a little above Nulato. The many streams that flow into the Yukon between these rivers do none of them reach back to the mountains of the Arctic divide, but take their rise in the uplands, of the intervening country. The Chandalar, therefore, in two hundred miles of its course, has almost as much fall as the Koyukuk in six hundred, and is for CHRISTIAN RIVER 249 the most part a swift, unnavigable river. It has been navigated with great difficulty by steamboats for about one hundred miles, but this traffic has ceased for the last eight years and it is now ascended by poling-boats only. A few miles before its discharge into the Yukon the Chandalar receives on its left bank the Christian River, so called from the chief of the Chandalar Indians. Chris- tian is an Indian held in great respect alike by whites and natives of these parts, who exercises much more authority than most Alaskan chiefs do nowadays. This stream of considerable length drains the swampy lake country between the East Fork of the Chandalar and western tributaries of the Porcupine. Some sixty miles above the mouth of the Chandalar is a native village of about forty-five souls known as the Chandalar Village, and it is at this point that the winter trail from Fort Yukon strikes the river. For another thirty or forty miles the river is still passing through the Yukon Flats though with the hills appearing on either hand and promising speedy escape. Like all the tributaries of the north bank of the Yukon in the Flats, the Chandalar enters that dreary plain through a "gap" in the mountains, and the transition is abrupt and striking. There is, indeed, a gradual and not inconsiderable slope from the mountain rim to the centre of the plain; indeed the level appearance of the Flats is everywhere deceptive, their sides being tilted to their centre and the central line itself (the bed of the Yukon) having slope enough to give rapid flow to its waters, but any point of emergence from this region into ^-1: I 1 , i ?; if Pf V IV 111'' .[ I 2S0 UNCHARTED REGION the encircling hills is abrupt, and the traveller in the winter is unaware of the grade he has been ascending. Just above the rugged rocks and high bluffs that make the Chandalar Gap, the East Fork is received, and by the common consent of the natives and of such white men as have traversed and prospected the country the East Fork of the Chandalar is really the main branch of the river. But the East Fork of the Chandalar is quite unknown to explorers and map-makers. It has never been visited by any members of the Geological Survey, and the stream on all maps is put in by those vague dotted lines which mean "conjectural course." What is called the "mam Chandalar" has been surveyed and mapped, but this large arm which I am confident will prove the longest arm, awaits further appropriations or leisure from more pressing tasks; a condition which all the region from the Chandalar to the boundary-line, the 141st meridian, shares Between the East Fork of the Chandalar and the tributaries of the Sheenjik or Big Salmon, which is an affluent of the Porcupine, and just above the headwaters of the Christian River, lies a great lake, the largest I am confident within the whole basin of the Yukon; yet it finds no place upon any map. I have never seen the lake, but it has been described to me, and sketch-maps have been drawn of it by both white men and Indians. Its longest dimension, roughly north and south, is twenty-five miles— a white man well known to me having stated that with excellent snow surface in the spring it CHRISTIAN LAKE 351 took him considerably over half a day to traverse it with a dog-sled, and its width varies from two to five miles. It is bounded on the west by very high and rugged mountains, by lesser ones on the east, and by swampy flats through which its discharge meanders, on perhaps both north and south, and it is said to be of great depth. I judge its northern shore to lie just south of the 68th parallel, between the 144th and i4sth meridian, and It is said by many to drain into both the East Fork of the Chandalar and the Sheenjik, though by others to discharge into the latter only. This lake is known by the Indians as Vun-gi-i-te, or nearly Vungitty, by which name I think it should appear on the maps when maps are made of this region. The few white men who know it usually speak of it as "Christian's Lake" because it is a resort of the chief of that name and his people. While preferring the native name I should not greatly resent the perpetuation of the white man's name, since in this case it would honour a native chief who has been a father to his scattered people. Hither come the Eskimos from the Arctic coast on their winter hunts; and to them repair Christian and his tribe of "Gens-de- Large" for the bartering of the furs of their respective countries; the white fox and the polar bear for the wolf and the wolverene chiefly; with some traffic in ammuni- tion and tools; and the native clergyman at Fort Yukon has more than once taken advantage of this gathering for the evangelisation and instruction through inter- preters of a tribe of coast-dwellers, some of whom had once or twice visited the mission at Herschel Island, but r i HI »•; I '• if- i » > 'If:' 1 'klt'J u A WILDERNESS TRAGEDY others of whom had never been to that or any other s ation. I have long intended, and did once plan, a v.s.t to this interesting rendezvous, but the date of .ts occur rence is uncertain and its season one that usually finds me far afield on my winter journeys The lake, like others in Alaska and elsewhere, has by Indian legend a monstrous fish which inhabits .ts waters and produces storms by the thrashmg of . s tail a fancy which the sudden squalls of mountam lakes give asy and natural rise to. But the lake is reported actu- ally to hide within its depths trout of a very unusual '"'The East Fork of the Chandalar has one of those wilderness tragedies associated with it ^at - n°J "- common in Alaska, though this one .s marked by certam features that give it special interest. Two men who had been mmmg m the region, an old-timer, Geraghty, and a newcomer, Clarke set out in the early winter of .908 on a P^^^P^^/J^^P^^"^^ creek away up near the headwaters of the stream. G agh" had been there before and had found pros- pects that attracted him, but he was noted among,st J s Uuaintance for the lack of that sense of locahty which is so valuable a quality in his occupation The men had a dog-team and a considerable supply of staple "^m'en a year passed without word of them no special concern was felt by their acquaintance because it was thought they might have passed over the mountains and d^n the Arctic slope and replenished their suppliesat VOLUNTEER SEARCH WORK 253 Flaxman Island, where the trader-explorer LeflBngwell had a post for a few years, though this was not within their expressed purpose; but when another winter passed with no word or sign, fears for their fate were aroused. It has been noticed elsewhere that there is no public authority in Alaska charged with the search for missing men, nor any funds out of which the expenses of such search may be defrayed. In default thereof, a volunteer of the Chandalar miners set out in the spring of 1910 to follow the course the two prospectors had intended, and to discover if possible what had happened to them. The narrative of this man. Jack Cornell, which I took down upon his re- turn from a five months' search, gave a vivid picture of the difficulties of travel in the northern wilderness in the summer-time, as well as aflFording one more illustration of its dangers in the winter. Incidentally it is a fine il- lustration of the spirit of the best of our Alaskan pros- pectors. From the sth of April to the 8th of Septem- ber he saw no living soul and subsisted entirely upon game. Having knowledge of the country, he made his way towards a pass in the mountains two hundred and fifty miles above the mouth of the East Fork, through which he was confident these men must have gone had they visited the Arctic coast, and there he found evidence of their passage both going and coming, and judged there- from that they had visited the coast and returned to the East Fork country. Old camp sites left signs to his ex- perienced eye that white men and not Indians had lodged, and there had been no other white men in that :s U. I ' 1 1 1 ,54 HISTOLOGY OK THE TRAIL country for y«.; a ''J';/^ -Vrys^owf:; Tc Jnute etail/of the tra.king of their -"mmg journey That followed, for only by minute details could it be tra ed t all after the snow upon which it took place had J and fresh snow had come and gone agam. Thos The live long in the wilderness have the. powe« of observation sharpened to a degree httle short of mar- velt though for myself I think I had as soon seek m Ihe water of the Yukon for trace of the passage of the tatronast summer as seek in the wilderness or tra« of the passage of a sled two wmters ago. Yet there are uch traces, and with long experience there comes th observant an ability to detect them wh.ch belongs to what may be called the histology of the tra.l; the br ak Tng down'of brush, the use of the axe, never very bg intermitted, the charred -^ers of old.xtmgu.shed fi^^^^^ in wind-swept rocky places the charactenst.c mark left on stone by iron runners, the excrement of the dogs, 'X^t'Z.s Cornell followed the return jourrjey until he came upon the body of one of the men. It lay beside a broken sled and some tattered remnants of tent L n advanced stage of decay, and in the clothes was a ittle mildewed calendar book such as P-sp-tor -- „>only carry, striking out each day - '^^ P-"; ^^J name in which identified the corpse as that of Clarke and Icessation of the marks in which gave presumptive evidence of the date of death. FRUITLESS INVESTIGATION 255 Now this is all that was ever really known of the fate of these two men; yet notice what follows. Cornell had already spent six months at his own ex- pense in the search, and no government agency could be set in motion for further investigation or even for the decent interment of the remains (which Cornell had scrupulously left as he found them) unless some charge of crime in connection with the death could be made against some one. I dr not say that there were not those in the Chandalar who really suspected foul play, but I am quite certain that the Chandalar Indian who was charged with the murder before the commissioner of the precinct would never have been arrested had not the issuing of a warrant for some one's arrest been the neces- sary preliminary to further inquiry. Murder in the air, and an accused person bound over to the grand jury at Fairbanks, the marshal's office was unlocked, no ex- pense was spared and two special deputies were soon afield. They passed to the Arctic coast and found, as Cornell had deduced, that the lost men had in fact visited the trading-post maintained for a few years at Flaxman Island and had returned— and that was literally all they found. The remains of Clarke were boxed and transported to Fairbanks, where they were carefully examined by a surgeon for any sign of bullet-wound, the flesh being all removed from the bones, without result; and the Chandalar Indian, against whom there was no particle of evidence, was released after six months' con- finement in the Fairbanks gaol, when the grand jury Ignored the bill against him. What angered me most, \M J56 LEGAL CHICANERY as similar instances have angered me before and since wa, that this Indian who was """"^ ,K "r^ f Fairbanks in the summer, was discharged m the dead . winter, with no provision of clothes or money, to find h.s way back to his home as best he might, three hundred miles over the trail. There is no law that returns a falsely accused man to his domicile. If he be found guilty and serve a sentence, though it be but a week, he I returned whence he came at the government expense, but if he be innocent he pays this penalty for mnocence. Now, this is a plain statement of a case, all the per- sons of which were well known to me, in wh.ch I was „,yself a witness before the grand jury as to the where- abouts of the accused at the supposed time of Clarke s death, which illustrates the stupidity and mjust.ce of the legal procedure under which Alaska st.U languishes. There is, I think, little doubt that the men fell out and separated, and each starved or froze to death in a very severe winter. No trace of Geraghty has ever been found; there were rumours of an unknown white man taking passage on a whaler at Herschel Island, but they were unconfirmed, and the case passes into the limbo of unsolved disappearances to which Alaska has contributed so many. , , r •»» But I referred to the matter not only because of its association with the unknown country of the East Fork of the Chandalar, but, as I said, because Cornells journey illustrated the difficulties of summer travel in the Arctic wilderness. Writing, I am conscious, in the main for those who do not know the country at all, oi '1 A CORNELLS NARRATIVE 257 who do but float down its rivers in comfortable (team, boats, I am glad to give a glimpse occasionally which shall enabli them to form some notion of what is in- volved when a man leaves the river-bank and strikes across country. Here is one incident towards the close of Cornell's journey which I transcribe literally from my diary: It w« the rainieit iummer tver I ,c,-„ ,„„| »hc moo, .roes w« a terror. I had » veil and I honr.cy odi.v. „«,„ .^..l. ", «t It up. for It went to piece, all at om I .„.n. «!, 1. :., !• ihev eat It up they was that thick and that v™oi.,nu. V\ ,„,i, dunce to sleep was to travel so long and .„ Inrd ,h ,r ' r 11 as.cep a, «o„ as I stopped. And there Td lay and h.c ,..,,„« .nnl f ,« chdkd through and woke up. and off I'd start agai... Sc. .ti,,,. Vi build a fire and sometimes it was so wet and I was .„ , „! | uidn't build no fire. One night I had a scare I hain't got ever y.t. There', no one can say I ain't careful with fire-arms and I never had no such thing happen in my life before, and I've handled fire-arms smce I was a lid. But I was so plumb tired and wet and done up It went off and shot a hole clean through m, hat. Of course I muster forgot to draw the charge and the gun fell back against the tree and struck the hammer. I'm considerable of a nervous tempera- ure myself, but at first I didn't seem to take no particular node!, the thing sorter dazed me and I didn't think nothing of it; I muste^ been plumb wore out. But when I lay down to sleep it kinder came over me that I'd had a mighty close call, and that it was just a shave there wasn t another body lying out in these here hills I retty soon I got to trembling so I couldn't lay still and then I just plumb broke down and I couldn't sleep at all. When I got up in the morning and kindled a fire to roast two rabbit legs for breakfast I've all alone in the hills this-a way; first thing you know you'll go bug-house. And I made up my mind it'd be the last trip I'd take by myself. It ain't right. But I hain't figured out yet how I come V h 'i°j /' ' "' ''f" ' ""y ""'"' "'^" *«'' «'«">" »nd 1 ve handled em all my hfe. I muster been plumb wore out t ii! I ,11 lU '? II ^ * 258 THE CHANDALAR STAMPEDE Above the gap the main Chandalar enters the foot- hill country and it is bluffed on both sides henceforth with high mountains. Eight or ten miles above the gap is the abandoned post of the Northern Commercial Com- pany known as Chandalar Station, with numerous empty cabins clustering around its store-buildings and ware- houses, and another eighteen miles or so above .s the abandoned or nearly abandoned town o Caro, popularly but erroneously supposed to be named after a cer am brand of cane s. -up much in use for hot cakes at break- fast; it was named for a lady of Fairbanks. The Chandalar stampede, which Was responsible for the building of the trading-post and the town, took place in the winter of 1906-7 and the oUow.ng sum- Lr. Prospectors from the Koyukuk found gold on tribu- taries of the Middle Fork, and ther xvas a rush, first from the Koyukuk diggings and then from the Yukon, and the Commercial Company felt justified m the con- siderable expense of its establishment here, and in the greater expense proportionately of sending "^ steamboats to the difficult and precarious supply thereof. But the placers proved disappointing, and extensive further prospecting revealed little ground that was produc- tive The post was short-lived, the town not much longer; in 1909 the former was abandoned, and the latter was decayed almost to nothing in 1910. Then came a fillip of renewed activity from the discovery of quartz-ledges, and a speculative prospector succeeded in inducing certain people "outside" to provide money for the working thereof. Caro revived, and its talk QUARTZ-MINING ^sg changed from "mica-schist contacts" to "intrusive dikes With much reference to "preglacial conditions." 1 have formed an opinion that a little geological knowl- edge .s a dangerous thing for a miner. By the influence of the outsde" people referred to, the Alaskan Road Commission was induced to construct eighty miles of wa^n-road over comparatively easy country from the Yukon River to Caro. and "Beaver City" sprang up at its Yukon terminus. The road was entirely justified, I think, and is regarded as a pretty good piece of work- It opens a wide country to easy access winter and summer- but ending at Caro is nowadays ending nowhere. It shouH be extended to the Koyukuk River, but I suppose the bridging of the main streams involves an expense that the commission shrinks from with its present re- sources. By the common judgment of the Chandalar men the money that should have been spent in tunnelling and uncovering the ledges in order that the real extent and value of the quartz might be known was wasted in the costly transportation of stamp-mills while as yet there wa.. nothing to stamp. The old story was re- peated; for a while further subsidies were procured with increasing difficulty, but at length the supply failed and the operations ceased. The well-known politician who was ousted from the governoiship of New York ^tate by impeachment, ostensibly for what he had done but really, as it was generally believed, for what he had refused to do, is said to have borne the burden of the chief expenditures on Chandalar Quartz. Pieces of heavy :1: 4' I ill I J }\ I 260 zw STORY OF A COLLAPSE Ichincry that I suppose he has more tj^l^ -^J^ ^^ one else lie scattered along that government tra.l all ^^^Xr:rSLalar Quartz left the rr^^ Jh ;he Jdition of activity in which -x.sts tojda^ There are a few men working claims at the head ot B.g Seek and on the creeks that issue from the same moun- ^rs'and'flll into the Middle Fork; ^^^J^^^ n Trail Creek which is tributary to the West Fork, but Tdll tht there are twenty-five white men on the whnle river and that will include a few trappers, "'th re may yet be gold discoveries of moment mth.s HUt ict which is a difficult and expensive one to pros- p:: The a^^^^ is very short high up in the bare moun- ts where the few remunerative diggmgs - -tuated and witer is often very scarce, while the -t ° wo^ J- fuel is enormous, so that the ground must be r ch to u n„ return I have known seventy-five dollars a ' H o^d f^r wL at the head of Big Creek. Indeed the cord paid for wood hindrances to cost of transportation is one ot tne grcii. ^working S minerals here, as in so many other pa 'ci Arska, and to the prospecting for ^he- J^e J-" J •« unHer wiser operations may yet be prohtaDie, rrrt"yn^ne really knows much more n:':L:traCr^rMiieForkisre. ceivX^H runs roughly P-»e. ^h the mam St IS with high mountains between, through the midst stream, »itn nig unction with of which mountain, ^'g Cje dc Jow ^^ ^ the main river twenty miles above. CHANDALAR LAKE 261 above the mouth of the Middle Fork the West Fork comes in, a short tributary which heads against the South Fork of the Koyukuk. The main stream is hence- forth locally known as the North Fork and after twenty- five miles more of rapid course, in which it receives Big Creek as aforesaid, issues out of a narrow lake eight or nme miles long known as the Chandalar Lake, em- bosomed in rugged mountains. Indeed, the scenery of the upper Chandalar is in places very bold and pic- turesque, especially in the neighbourhood of the lake, though I can speak from personal knowledge only of its' wintry aspects. Above that lake is another region of extensive flats through which the river is said to wind for fully thirty miles, and beyond that it nears its bead- waters in the Endicott Mountains. n iJi tV f ' ' !)"' ! CHAPTER IX THE TANANA RIVER The Tanana River is by far the most important of the tributaries of the Yukon. There may be rr^alor li h another tributary from a g-^^P^""' P.";""^ view but from a co.nmercial point of v.ew .t .s rnore Imltant than the Yukon it.elf, as regards .ts output T'^d and the business which that '-put suppor - Probably twothirds of aU the wh.te ^^ov^^^^^Jl^ terior of Alaska live adjacent to .ts banks Statist csot our white population are Indeed skittish thmgs to handle Td g nerruratio^s based upon them are Uk^y - be^ only immediate accuracy; it is cnt^ely possib e tha Sween the writing and the reading of these words .ome ^Te:satio„al gold discovery may *ift the^entre o g«vity of the white population a thousand mdes a a !^ke as 'Z was shifted for a while by the Id.tarod t^o^de but such a contingency aside, tl. Tanana R^ wU P obably continue to be the most important Hve oT th interior. An element of stabdity lacking a„;:here else is undoubtedly introduced by the build- •nTof the government railway from the coast to its :Lr and unless that railway be extended to the Yuk"n the Tanana will probably become the main ar- ItZ the commerce of all interior Alaska--which, how- ever, is not saying a very great deal at present. 361 CURRENT PHENOMENA 263 The Tanana River differs from all other tributaries which the Yukon receives within the Territory of Alaska in that its drainage is largely the drainage of glaciers, and this circumstance has consequences which give the river certain marked characteristics. The turbidity of the stream, mentioned once before, is due to it; a tur- bidity so pronounced at certain seasons as to make the water in the highest degree unsightly and distasteful; the eccentricity of its rapid rise to flood after prolonged hot dry weather is due to it, and so is the relative short- ness of its navigable channel compared with the total length of its course. Nowhere, in that whole length, is it other than a swift stream. Most rivers slacken towards their mouths, but at certain stages when the Yukon is low and the Tanana is high it is swifter in its last ten or twelve miles than it is one hundred miles up, and I have never seen it really slack. The Pelican makes any ten miles of the Yukon within its territory faster than it makes the first ten miles of the Tanana. The entrance to the river presents great difficulties at low water. It has no one mouth nor does it dis- charge in a delta. For ten miles below what is counted its navigation mouth it flows roughly parallel with the Yukon, their channels being separated by islands, be- tween which their waters commingle. The river is entered round the lower point of the first of these is- lands, bur I suppose its real mouth is around the lower point of the last of them— a long island that stretches SIX or seven miles below the town of Tanana. The 1'. 1 1 1' II la * f'i ii REGION OF HIGH WINDS passage used by the steamboats has a very narrow crooked channel, frequently changmg, and .s much be- sf by sand-bars. At low water it is common to see boats trying unsuccessfully for hours to enter the nver 'rd they afe sometimes on the sand-bars for days at a ''^The region immediately around the confluence of these rivers is noted for violent winds. R.ver courses see" natural wind courses also, and here two of^he great air currents of the interior meet aud contend. The Lives lower down the Yukon call the -"ntam bluff near the confluence "the place where the wmd beast lives" He pays visits to other places but th.s they con ider his pennanent home. As we begm our voyage of the Tanan'a and turn the first bend or two we have vidence of the fierceness with -^ich ^^^^ -'i^'^,;", these parts. High sand-banks on the left hm.t of the rive" our right hand as we go up-stream have been cu and Ued and even bodily removed by .t; trees may be ,een buried in sand, the tops only emergent. It is in winter that these wind-storms are particularly fierce and persistent, and before the mad tra.l was cut t^ ough the woods on the right limit of the nver, wh n all tra'vel was on the ice, this was one of t"t^ ^ ; tressing and difficult sled routes m the country. There s "ne pcint of bank which it was sometimes almost im- posrible to pass in face of the wind; the glare .ce, swep polished, gave the dogs - ^^-""e- .f JnTss o man ha^ had to thrust his arm through the harness ot the leader and crawl on hands and knees, draggmg the u ENGINE TROUBLES 265 dogs with him, to get around it. In other places the ice over a large area is covered with sand blown from the banlts, malcing a surface over which an iron-shod sled may proceed only with the greatest labour. In the summer these winds are often so high that the steam- boats with their shallow purchase on the water and their extensive top-hamper, must tie up until they subside. Some fifteen miles above the mouth Fish Creek is passed, draining a large lake that lies in the lowlands to the left, and here the Pelican always stops to fill a keg with clean water. Tributary creeks are important to the Tanana voy- ager, since they provide the only usable water for drink- ing and cooking purposes. Coffee and tea made with Tanana water are undistinguishable, the mud flavour predominating over any other infusion. But the mud has more serious results. It was this condition of the water that brought the first voyage of the Pelican to an abrupt end. Built by a New York establishment chiefly engaged in marine con- struction and knowing nothing of any river but the Hudson (even, as I sometimes think, refusing to believe that there can be any river that is not a duplicate of the Hudson), she drew the water for cooling her engines di- rectly from under her bottom by a little gear-pump with lignum-viti gears— a most beautiful little pump. But the silt of the Tanana not only filled up the whole cir- culating system of the engine, choking the pipes and the water-jackets, so that constant cleaning thereof was necessary, but gradually cut those beautiful lignum- : if' 'Iff- , I ij,, ! n I ' Ml II', REMEDIES AGAINST SAND i''MI i66 ,11 ,„ nieces 80 that at last the pump would "Tlfrwat r tT B^re the engines were practi- :: 1 ' trtLuL use m such a stream it was necc^a^^ ''' rr; P ' ^t -To Jhc ne.. and then through rheCst wVeluc into another, detaining the mud at thrtottom of the compartments mstead o a bwng it to enter into the circulating system; and .t lowmg lu lignum-vitae gear-pump by was necessary to replace tne iignu 6 a common plunger-pump, not so ^'^^y ^^^V^lZ.f .ore readily repaired, and this was ^^^^^^ l^J^^ .placements and ^^^^Z:' t^Z^r^ all a Lis ; continen't to the same house agam for the across tne ^^^^^^ ^^^j stanch, Ifc, on *. Yuko. and !» ..to™.. *' '• •'«"»• J , K^ot ac! when she was launched. '•"For^ng ahead gainst the swift current with no more than fiv mUes an hour to her credit despite slc.rtmg of than nvc luu eiirker water and in- banks the PMcar:, towards the end of her hrst day 1 iill approach the Coschaket, a nat.ve v.Uage s.tu- COSCHAKET VILLAGE 267 ated, as its name implies, at the mouth of the Cosna. A white man's corruption of the name of the village into "Crossjaket" I mention only because I have more than once seen it in official documents. There has always been a settlement of natives at this place; it is much older than the village of Tanana. Lieutenant Allen, making the pioneer exploration of the Tanana Rivf- in 1885, met a considerable band of them, and prints a portrait of their chief, Ivan (who must ha\^ had that name from still earlier association with the Russians). Ivan is still the Coschaket chief, a man of much dignity and influence. Allen's description of these natives is interesting enough to quote, as giving a vivid impression of the Tanana Indians more than thirty years ago. "Their appearance in camp," he says, "at the very edge of the water, with thirty-five to forty birch canoes of aU sizes fastened to the shore, the abundance of rich- coloured king-salmon, split and hung up over the water, was picturesque in the extreme. They were indeed cleanly when compared to us; it lecined as though we had never seen bedding look so clean and comfortable, or the colours of calico so fresh." Allen's command was in great distress for food and secured a seasonable re- lief from these people. The Coschaket village dwindled in size when the mission at Tanana was started, but in the last three or four years has been considerably augmented again by migration from that place; some of those who came up being perhajis moved by the desire of getting away from J: I' .1' i, 1 4" . mi i III II ,68 INDIANS AND PROHIBITION the duwlute surrounding, there, and others, it is .aid. by th de.ire of escaping the surveillance and rernon- .trance of the mis.ion and even the .mall degree of re- "It exercised by the civil ^^^^^^ ^ easy but it is not always safe, to assign n*" '^"-'"J" white men or Indians, and I have J«a^^ J"*" ^J matter of liquor amongst the natives elsr^^here The Tlv houe for the survival of the Tanana River Indians Us'in c^orough execution of the prohjbition law lately enacted by Congress. The visitor will note that the cabL built recently at the Coschaket mark an ad- -"^rS::^ofrCosna interlock wi^tribu t3rir:ftheNorthForkoftheKuskokwm.a„d^^^^^^^^^ Coschaket starts a winter overland route to Lake Min ''w' after leaving the Cosc^a^^^^^! ^^f J.^ ridge is approached on the north bank of the river at the foot of which the channel runs all the way to the ZX:. Slough, and behind that ^^f^^^ inland, are the small mining-camps of American Creek ^"•SrS^isiough comes into ^eTanana about .eventy-five miles above the mouth of the river, a- conspicuous point where our course up the river leaves his bold ridge and turns sharply to the right around a Ir at stretch of flat land that has apparently built it- f ou 1 the bluffs. Ten -»« «ip the wmdings^o he slough (though it is but one mile by the road tha Z bee 'cut straight across this flat to the nearest point HOT SPRINGS 369 of the river) lie. the town of Hot Spring,, the centre of considerable business from the neighbouring miners. Hot springs are not uncommon in Alaska and do not strike one as so remarkable in the summer as they do in the winter, when, at this place, a considerable extent of ground IS free of the snow that covers the country and a body of water disdains the fetters of the frost and runs open and unconstrained even at the lowest temperature -enveloped in steam that is condensed on twigs and boughs in ever-gathering deposit until they break down beneath the weight thereof. The water, issuing forth at a temperature of no degrees F., and carrying, it is said, little or no mineral in solution, is employed to irrigate a tract of ground noted, as would be expected, for the earli- ness and excellence of its yield. One curious and sinister result, as I suppose, of the peculiar conditions for vegetation which these thermal springs produce, is the growth of poisonous plants that I do not think are found elsewhere in Alaska. The wife of the local physician, a few years ago, pulling a small wild tuber from the ground and nibbling it as she walked, was seized with violent cramps, and shortly thereafter died in great pain despite all her husband could do. The plant, it is said, was a wild parsnip. Ten years ago an attempt was made at the exploita- tion of this place as a "resort" for successful miners luxuriously inclined (to put no other face upon it). It was in the heyday of the Fairbanks camp and a stage route, passing the Hot Springs from Fairbanks to Ta- nana had lately been established. A spacious hotel of '}, 'ti 1 ''1 . 'if »• i !i: '!)'' 1 ihl Miciocorr resoiution tist chart (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2} I.I 'I- li^ ^ 1^ 1^ ■ 2.0 1.8 L25 i 1.4 1^ 1^ 11^ J APPLIED IIVMGE 1653 EosI Main Sire. 1 •609 US* (716) 268- 59B9 - Foi 270 MINERS' PARADISE LOST barns and p.gge continually supplied, unobtainable in Aiasica migm ^..-^pr of a and altogether, it is said that upwards of a quarter of a S on dollars was expended. But the speculation had r ucc ss. and when the hotel burned down three o Jour vears ago it had already long been disused The Chi f memorTal of it that remains is the denuded condition of Xe valley, from which the most extraordmary fine trees in the interior of Alaska were cut with a ruth- fesnesstiat rankles, in its degree, like the burning of Louva in A forest and a town, that are the slow beauti- ^ulTrlwth of centuries, make -t dissimil- app^a to men of feeling-and to the quick, irrevocable axe or S:h. as the c'ase may be. of an invading ar^^an Just above the "Hot Springs Landing, which s at the end of the straight road across the flat referred to, is a bad river crossing, with an ugly -"f " ,^f "'"^, "/ 'on which it is particularly easy to drift, and from which :• particularl/hard to get off on a ~i,,3 a„d children, float rejoicm, """^^"JJ,,^ gentlemen hunters from Down its stream come also tne g big-game New York and Boston bringing out their Dig g MUDDY WATERS ^7$ trophies "for the Smithsonian." The slaughter at- w" :,°:''! '*--''' °f 'hat institution mus' aLdy tam-sheep moose, and caribou. Up the stream go the supphes for the handful of miners who still make a ■vrng .„ the camp eked out with the plentiful game fo the trappers who glean the scanty harvest of foxes hei own s^chnine has not yet completely e«ern:;:teX searcl fo 'h'""'""" "'° ""■=" ''^"^ -"'- '"eir search for the precious metal among the foot-hill creeks The gasolene launch is gradually superseding the slow labonous pohng-boat, but many a man stiH puts hTs' wmter's grub, his tent and stove and bedding, E s do^ t hVnd 1; 7 °f ''"^ '°"«' '^P-"« "^^^ -d Propi his arms aI*" T""" ''^ '""^ ""^"'^^^ P*-" °f thedn u^ ""■"'''" °^"^" "''"^ '^'^^ - a beach th dogs may be used to help, but for the greater part the pole IS the sole dependence. The Kantishna is one of the affluents of the Tanana respo„s.b e for the muddy condition of its water, andTf t could be ascended to the head of the tributar es that 3d r f r'"' ""''"^*' ^■'^ — thereof would be well understood. Surprise is often expressed X^:::::\r:'' '''- ''-^ -^-intancr:: Jeers on the Alaskan tour (and their number grows very year) that water derived from the melting o/Tnow and particularly from the melting of the high snow of mountam tops should come down to the river so dirty -charged with sediment, as to foul those rivers ve'n' to the^r mouths. Could such an one stand by the side :i ;l It II! -i 276 ROCK IN SOLUTION of the McKinley Fork which issues out of and drams the Muidrow Glacier, his surprise would mcrease to see hat stream flowir,g over its wide boulder bed l.teral y as black as X a rushing, roaring torrent of as evil-lookmg water as one could discover elsewhere than in the discharge of a sewer main or some vile chemical works But if he could go upon the glac.er .tself even a high as twenty miles above its snout (at which pomt .t is most readily reached), in the early summer and see is surface all scattered over with black lumps that look ke coal, but are in reality a kind of shale wh.ch shatters iown frU the tops of lofty granite ridg" cur.ously crowned by this grimy, partially soluble rock; .f he could eo there and spend a little time in leisurely observa- L Lg a portion of the glacier, he -Id deduce or himself the prime fact of physical geography, that a g air is no'mere drain, but the greatest excavating 'agent in the world; is. in fact, nature's chief chisel He would learn that underneath, out of sight, it is continu- ally digging at its bed in the bowels of the mountam, wWle o^top it is continually receiving landslides of dis- Todged boulders and shattered rock which m the summer sun'sink deep into its melting mass, and that in its s^ow irresistible movement, inch by inch, it splits and sbrvers and crushes all that it digs up and all that is cas down upon it. grinding it as corn is ground in a mill grinding ad re rfnding until its attritus is so fin-"d ^o h and impalpably pulverised that the special term rock Sour' is used V describe it. Could he see this thing actually going on as evidently as he can see that a plant i^r GLACIER STUDY j^^ is growing; and realise, as I think only such personal «per.ence „,akes one fully realise, that the glacisar w::m be to ''' '"'''''-' "'''' -^^-^ °' ' ""« in tleir H T' '"'""'"^ '' '^' sediment carried Tras^nd •""''" J''" '' """'^ ''^ '° «"<» 'he dust of brass and .ron underneath a carborundum-wheel and he aTd bla": "• rl "'^ ^"^ ^^^'"'^^ ^-k - - thick and black w.th the resultant discharge during the heats worS'whil'"""" "^'"'■"^"°" °f - great glacier is well wo th while once m any man's life, even if it were at the cost of t.me and trouble which a journey to thrMuWrlw mg so fertile of new and more adequate conceptions of the pnme processes of nature as a thoughtful and cT cumspective visit to a glacier. Although I knew a little of what had been written water, as , boy and had even taken some interest in the famous controversy about glacial movement fan r:ed)t"' 'T' '■''"' ''''''' '° ^'^ -^-Vi thT ffect"^ "^ "':"" ^° ' «'^"^^ ''^'1 ^"-""hing of man s hi jmer had upon John Keats. It was a reveh anho'T "'?^' ™^''^'" '''^" 'he catastrophes " vlch .f ". 1"""°' """'y- ^'--^ -'ently, inch by mch through the long ages, grinding down mou;ta"ns and carvmg out valleys; reducing the adamaml I "n • it 278 VIEW OF DENALI primeval granite of thousand, of lofty peaks to soluble C and spreading it as soil over the low places of the earth Once more it was not the fire, nor the wh.rlwmd. no? the earthquake, that was pregnant of most power, but a still small voice. Yet if I could take the traveller from off the uncom- plaisant steamboat, running only its regular route, and carry him withersoever I wished-which .s the joy of the ?Zn-I would not turn from the upper Kant.hna Ct the Bearpaw that we might visit the MuWrow Glacier, for we shouH scarce come w.thm fifty m.les of S best. I would take him up the clear, br.ght arm of the river that draws the overflow of the great lake and I would blindfold him until we were far out upon the lake so that we had its blue waters as a foreground, and hen I would suddenly present to him the "oblcst vjew o^ mountains in all North America, and one ^-^^J'^^f^^ blest in the whole world. From that evel. less I thmk^ than a thousand feet above the sea. I would snow hm the sheerest, most precipitous face of Denah and Denah s W (Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker). compan.on peaks, rising by escarpment upon -arpment to ja^ed pyrar^ids that thrust themselves, one nearly fou m es S the other more than three miles, into the stam- ess eminence of air"; with their buttresses and r.dg their connecting arcades, their steep slopes, and awfu headlong pitches, all glittering in perpetual snow Th. sight, the finest that Alaska has to show is h d from he wise and prudent who travel in comfortable state and I shall not pretend to be sorry that not even the "GENS DE MONTAGNE" j^^ new government railway will conduct them to it The Zl T "° '""«" P~"'* " •■• h demons; the pro pector mterm.ts a while the propuL- n of his poling- from the Xanana to the Kuskokwim is grateful when the wmd disperses the clouds that so often envelop it. Though far away from the Tanana in this part of it, course, the great mountains of the Alaskan range have always been closely associated with this river The Hudson s Bay factors at Fort Yukon knew it as "the nver of the mountains." its natives were called "Gens de Montagne by the French-Canadian voyageurs of that employ, and vague lumours of its lofty snowy peaks are among the early reports which came out from' t' "! tenor of Alaska I rejoice that the region has now been made mto a National Park and that its game will be preserved, but I am glad that in all probability a certain amount of bodily exertion and bodily discomfort will always be required of those who would visit the finest scenery it contains. I have indulged myself, and I hope T have not wearied farther up the Tanana on the other bank another im- portant tributary comes in. the T lovana, and at its mouth IS a trading-post and a telegraph-station and a small village of Indians. The striking difference between the two tributaries 's m the water they bring; the one, as we saw at much length, turbid in the hot weather with the sewage of its ^i ih. jfeil ( ;i ill '(.' I'l 1 I 'I i l';i::nl j8o A NEW GOI.D-CAMP glacier.; the other clear and limpid, slish.ly tinged, it may be. with yellow from its mossy w.x,dh.nds. Th.« difference i, generally characteristic of the "'^""r.cs re- ceived on the left and on the right ba.,ks o the Tanan ^ All the larger streams confluent on the left bank are glacial and turbid; all those confluent on the r.ght bank are clear. It should be said, however, that, a 'hough the Kantishna has been taken to illustrate the glacaltr-bu- .aries it brings down so much water that does not come f I gl ciers'by other branches that its own stream .s not so dirty as some of the other glacial affluents, except in times of great heat. The Tolovana drains Lake Mmto, which .s rather a region of lakes than one body of w.cer. and .t receives the important affluent, the Chatanika into which many of the gold-bearing creeks of the Fairbanks camp fall. Bu the Tolovana River has now a gold-camp of its own -the latest, and it is thought the most promising camp of interior Alaska. On one at least of its creeks, L.ven- gLd. a rich pay streak has been found and the ou put ^he season of 1916 was upward of six hundred thou- sand dor -s. It is unfortunate for easy access and supply to the new camp that the navigation of the Tolovana River is interrupted about eighty miles above its mouth by an extensive and inextricable log-jam, the accumula- tion of untold vears, which the sluggish meandering stream constantl> adds to but is unable to --ove^ A tram-line has been constructed around .t and other craft are employed for sixty miles more, involving the expense of transshipment. KOX-FARMING jg, The chief town of the Tolovana camp rhus reached i. z: n ?:: "• '^rj^'- "'''' ^-'^^ •- ^caTof ; iiasKan lieolocical Survi-v— ■■ ,.„_ i- «,!,„■« .1. . -survey- a compliment to a m. i to owX'i:;"!"' '''^"°''-- °^ 'He interior of Ahs owe, far more than to any other man in its history It that L.vengood and the Hudson Brothers he.an the e7o7;2 " '"' ''«'°" -'"^'' -"'-'' ■•" 'hrdL.;.': wi ob'erv r ""'''^«" '"'«»" °^ '-ds wo.k1 wll observe the w.re enclosure, of a rather extensive fox-farm a l.ttle behind the trading-post and tl "o d house, and will thus come into contact perhap ,o7 or" the first t.me w.th an industry that has recently made extensive appearance in interior Alaska. Th s'^me of .914 saw the excited beginning of it. whenTa^cy pnces were paid for dark-skinned live fox « and a ol' hThe "ad""".'"":- ^-"'^ "--'f with more Iney ■n the followmg wmter sixty-three permits for fox-farms were .ssued. Whether this business is destined op Ty a .mportant part in the economy of interior Alaska it is ard to say; so far I think no one has made money b^ t. but there was much to learn that could only be learned pracnc. Experience teaches, but often' charge^a have already been abandoned has little bearing on the future. One thing is regarded as established-that ^he pnng of dark-coloured parents is likely to be dark- i :i '■?fe^=^ 11 ill 1 1 !l: f t.'i I ^ !l" 382 MT. DENALI though a pair of silver-greys or blacks are by no means sure to produce their own colour. The difficulty has been in rearing the pups, and that is probably a part of the prime difficulty of reproducing the natural conditions of fox life in its essential particulars. There is no question, however, that the high prices which black and silver-grey fox skins bring is due prin- cipally to their rarity, and should it prove practicable to breed animals of such pelage with anything like cer- tainty and regularity, the very success of the enterprise would mean its failure so far as high price for the fur is concerned. ,, Before leaving Tolovana the attention of the traveller may be drawn to the view of Denali, which in clear weather this spot affords-especially from the windows of the second story of the road-house. Glimpses of the mountain, now and again, henceforth may be had in bends of the river where the water presents an open foreground in its direction; but they are fleeting and must be watched for, and the difficulties inherent in the photog- raphy of distant snow-mountains wUl commonly refuse any record to the camera of the tourist. Upon niy first journey up the Tanana, the great mountain, flushed by the setting sun, stood out most prominently m the gap o the river made by the bold bluff below Tolovana, and I put the camera on its tripod and made several careful exposures. When they were developed they proved ex- cellent pictures of the scene save that they bore no trace of the mountain. There was the steamboat tied up to the bank in the foregound, there was the river bluff, there REMOTE SIGNAL STATION 283 was the gap beyond, but on none of them was the faint- est suggestion of the glowing dome that had filled that gap and delighted my eyes-and I began to learn some- thmg more of the limitations of photography. Only a correct combination of speed and aperture, with a ray- filter or colour-screen over the lens, will procure any picture at all of these distant views of Denali We leave the mountain ridges behind us at Tolovana and follow a great curve of the river, first to the north- east and then due south, until we return to them at Nenana, s,xty-five miles away, though it is no more than thirty miles in a straight line. This stretch of the river |s the stretch least occupied by any sort of settlement between Tanana and Fairbanks, and it passes with ex- tensive bed and wide expanses of drift-covered sand-bar through forested flats with no salient landmarks. The abandoned telegraph-station of Minto (built, like others on the Xanana River, in the absolute wilderness, because It was supposed to be electrically necessary to have sta- tK,ns exactly forty miles apart; a superstition which the Signal Corps has now outgrown) marks the half-wav point; but It must be looked for carefully or it will be missed. It was at first a curious experience to run in to this station where the two Signal Corps men lived wi.b .10 neighbours save perhaps some encamped Indians for many miles around, and where yet you could communi- cate with New York or London if you so desired; but since one usually desired to communicate with Nenana and the socalled Nenana station was just ten miles be- yond that place, with dependence upon chance passing i , t » I I: 11, h I. If;' 2g4 LOW TEMPERATURES boat or sled to deliver the message, the convenience to the public of this telegraph-line was not as great as it mieht have been. . This station of Minto revelled for several winters m ■he fame of being the coldest spot of all interior Alaska, its sensationally low temperatures were telegraphed to the Fairbanks newspapers and by them were spread all over the world, until a traveller provided with a standard registered thermometer happened to compare instru- mtnts and discovered that the one employed at this place read about lo degrees too low. x.ast winter the station at The Birches on the Yukon and the winter be- fore that the station at Richardson on the upper Tanana claimed the same distinction, I am confident on no better ^'°itts a .mall but characteristic Ulustration of the ineptitude with which Alaskan affairs are administered that while the United States Weather Bureau makes provision by both paid and voluntary observers for the recording of temperatures, furnishing accurate instru- ments that are correctly exposed and carefully read, the reports from its stations are commonly sent out by mail once a month; while these Signal Corps stations, fur- nished only with cheap commercial thermometers, which are nailed up on a post or a tree without shelter tele- graph their romantic readings every morning and an- nounce degrees of cold that have never been authenn- cally registered anywhere in the world except in Northern ' It was said of Tobias Smollett, in his decline, that his m M !||ii li'; .i J •'I i ' % M.'i *t J I, THE NEW ERA 38s comments on the works of art in Italy should have been reserved for his physician; similarly it may be said in general that the temperatures announced from the Signal Corps stations in Alaska have little interest save as showing the wide range of index errors in cheap thermometers. The mountains that border the north bank of the river are visible a long time before we reach them and appear tantalisingly near when yet they are far, and as we turn the endless bends towards them it may be expected that I will improve the time with prophecies about the future of interior Alaska, for the mountains look on Nenana and Nenana looks on the Railway. We approach the visible evidence of the New Era, an^ what writer so poor that he cannot kindle thereat and with glowing fancy expatiate upon the wonders he foresees .' But the pres- ent writer would protest with Amos cf Tekoa that he is no prophet nor son of a prophet, but a mere fig-gatherer, and will resolutely leave the business of prediction to others. Tn a year or two, if the Pelican still have occasion to use this part of the river, she will pass under a suspension bridge that cost a million dollars as she reaches Nenana, and she will tie up to the wharfs of the best-planned, best-built town of the interior, from which a Pullman car will carry one to a seaport on the coast in a night if one so desire. Crossing the river by the bridge re- ferred to, the railway will pass northeast behind the mountains, to Fairbanks. So much, I think, is certain. To my thinking this port at Nenana, where first the line if » % it h u Ml : vii' : .:!..: i SJ l!,'! I'.t j86 a land of promise touches the navigable waters of the intenor, will be its calt minus, and the people of Fairbanks seem to thmk ZZ iudgi'ng by the high prices they P. f^r Nenan town lots at the auction sale m September, 1916- But thTs verges upon the prophetic realm, from which I am ba^ed The coal will certainly come; the same 1 ne tht carries the anthracite coal from Matanuska to th stmships of the coast will bring the b— u -, from the Nenana River to the steamboats of the mtenor and some small hint has already been given o change that this will cause. It is expected that the farmers wm come and that the whole region which the ra way traverses, the Kenai peninsula, the valleys of the Su hi: and Chulitna, and the valley of the N— . w blossom with farms and ranches, while the Broad f ass by whTch it crosses the mountains is already staked out for quartz-mining on a large scale. , . .„„ -_j Meanwhile what of the native school and mission and the model village with which the town-site line marches Settled long before any railway --/^^jh "f, a ^ deal of time and no little money have been expended upon hem. The establishment includes a boarding- Zl for native children with some thirty PUP^^^^-^^^^^^^^^^ from the Tanana and Yukon Rivers, an infirmary, a con rrable tract of cultivated land, chiefly m potatoes for he sch^) and all sorts of outhouses and conveniences tw th" the new town has been thrust right upon 1 foThat the lower line of the one is the "PPer hne of h other, it is no longer eligible for its purpos s. Already the pool-rooms "down-town" attract the larger boys. A SOCIAL PROBLEM .g^ the megaphone announcements r.f r„ ■ and aci» ,1,, chiU™ ,1, " ""•" "«™"»n selves in the wdfare of the In ' '"'""'''' "^''"- proved at Moosehide, at Eade ^t C 7 n ''" I, 1 1 ' i JaI II |4' I if ii n 'ii ■m t lU' ^88 CYNICAL SELFISHNESS virulent way a fresh source ^^ ^^^^ ^^^.^^j , has received and that ^^^ ^^ ^^^, ,„^, „, selfishness. Just as mc .nreads into the h... struggM .o carry ,. on, must .» our « ^^ dU.«dul r.J', » '•* '°%"''rL"f "c„,°ng the in- ,™pe„ no organ«..ion »"'*■;; ^J'17,b.„d„„ „„ducti.» and p.»ng= of th. '■"■ »' °" '^^, „i. "'•Zlpr.o.cup.r-.on w„h .h. N™ Er. an^ rh. grr.r work. «.h which i, i> "t;"'°l'°„rr.hf I fb.„k ,u «f a considerable tributary ot tne icii. u the mouth °f.^;°°^^'' ^3 back half a mile and without noticmg it. i-et us g ^^ gather that fig. Lieutenant Allen, m 1885, IJ' ^i ':l ^ iC i( '•I ! 1, ,i '1 i,l i I; INDIAN NAMES 389 Indian with him to give him rhe native name, called this river the "Cantwell" in honour of an officer of the revenue service, and it so stood upon the maps until the mission was founded here in 1907, and then the National Board of Geographic Names, which decides all such matters, was prevail. ' upon to restore to the river its Indian name, Nenana, by which alone it had been commonly known. The lower Xanana has been more fortunate than the upper in retaining the beauti- ful Indian names of its tributaries. Nenana, Tolovana, Kantishna, Chatanika, Cosna, are surely more distinc- tive and appropriate, as well as more euphonious, than the Johnson and Robertson, the Gerstle, the Goodpaster and the Volkmar, which Allen succeeded in fastening above. The Nenana is a clear-water stream, not navigable many miles. Thirty or forty miles above its mouth it passes through a cafion up which poling-boats are some- times propelled, but it is not a highway of any travel. It drains the foot-hill and valley country, though its Yanert Fork pushes headwater streams into the Broad Pass, where it interlocks with tributaries of the Chulitna which drains into Cook's Inlet. The visitor whose steamboat lies any length of time at Nenana is advised that when he has exhausted the attractions of the new town, it is well worth while to procure some one who will set him across the river in a skiff and to climb the high ridge on that side. Not only will he gain from its crest (or even from its benches with- out proceeding to its crest) an adequate conception of ■ i I 1;i I jgo MISS FARTHING the wide expanse of the valley of the Tanana. but he 'l:^:Z in dear weather a ,plendid view of the lofty peak, of the Ala.ka Range m the distance. Denah wm 'till dominate the .cene. but the great serrated r 1 o mountain, will stretch far to the south and 1 j:..,nr i» Mt Haves. Standing will inci, peaks as distant as Mt. nay there the observer can trace the course of the ra Iway o he depression of the .ange-which indeed is almost an obliteration of the range-called B-ad Pas. nd can well conceive its course on the other side the eof down the sea. A little time spent thus on .xcasions w°il give a far juster impression of the country than the mere travelling of its rivers can ever give. Upon a bench of this ridge may be seen from the town a large Celtic cross of concrete. It marks the grave of a vet nob e gentlewoman. Miss Annie Cragg Farthing :Z started'this Indian school when there was naugh but a rascally liquor-peddling trading-post where the toin now stands, and a village of half a dozen cabins hTddled at the foot of the ridge on the opP-te ban ^ She not only devot.-d herself body and soul for three yc rst the children she had gathered, but in a very true Lr he laid down her life for them, for her death ws d e to the shock she received when a d-lute ha f- Ld, inflamed with the trader's liquor, brokcinto th house in the dead of a winter's night, gun in h^nd ■ tent upon killing her because she had refused h m a g.r he desLd to marry. "You may kill me if you lik , bu you shall not have that girl," was her response to h. threats as she faced him unflinching. Her brother, the CURRENT PRESSURE j,, BJ.hop of Montreal, and her colleagues of the Alaskan m.,.,on set up thi, cro« over her grave Our cour.e up the river continues to have rocky on f °" r f ?""' """ ''-' "P-- "^ ^--'«'l flat on our nght all the way to Fairbanks, which is seventy five m.le. above Nenana. Indeed, this is its general de- .cnpt.on up to the point where the Alaska Range ap- p^ache, close to the river, nearly three hundred mile, ■ts nght bank a most throughout its course, and I know not .f .ts general northwest direction of flow will be held to a.-ount for the circumstance, by the influence upon he water of the earth's revolution on its axis, sincef a, hem'iddr"'!, ."'• ?' ""' -cumstance obtains in the nuddle and lower Yukon, where the genera! direction the 7 n T': '"'^ ^' ''^"' fi"'' ^he same thing in the Koyukuk wh.ch has the same general trend as the middle Yukon. All these rivers press on their right oank nd .t .s d.fficu It to account for it. Certainly tL theory of Nordenskiold and Nansen fails to do so A number of clear-water streams draining the wide owlands are received from time to time on'the so h b.nk as we proceed, the Tatlanika, the Totatlanika. the "ood R.ver. navgable for some distance in poling.b;ats. he.r mouths dotted with fishing encampments anS wood: pies and. of late, smce the building of the new town Lk """"'/'• " '''^'""''- '^^' ^'^^'^S "-"P^ 6-ow in tied and sue as we approach Fairbanks, supplying and hab.tat.ons of one kind or another are frequenti; I 1: I t > ■I I 1,i n! i( %l IIJliM m ,002 when Barnette with a trading outfit went up the Tanana in the first steamboat that disturbed its waters. Barnette had no knowledge of the river nor even definite notion of where he wished to estabhsh himself, but he was anxious to reach the upper Tanana where he could tap a new country for furs. The di^'-^l^^\°['^^ Bates Rapids above Chena turned the boat back from the main river and the passage of the slough was at- tempted. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Fair- banks the captain decided that he could P^o«'d no farther and Barnette and his stock of grub were landed, despite, it is said, his vehement protests and expostula- tions. T^, It was a poor location for a trading-post. I here were no natives in its vicinity and few in its district; something had to be done to dispose of the stock. A little prospecting was perhaps attempted on the creeks in the immediate neighbourhood, but the story runs that before any pay or even prospects were found a Japanese in Barnette's employ was despatched across country to Dawson with news of a "strike, and this message precipitated the Fairbanks stampede in the winter of 1902 and the following spring. The men who came were indignant with the deception that had been practised, and there were threats of lynchmg Barnette and his Jap, but they went to work prospecting the coun- try and it was these men who actually discovered the gold they b.d been led to believe was discovered al- RIVAL TOWNS 295 ready. Coldstream was the first creek to yield pay and when Cleary Creek followed there came another and greater mflux of miners; a town was built and named for the well-known senator from Indiana, afterwards Vice- President of the United States; and the winter of 1903-4 was one of those starving times which mark the early history of every mining-camp in this country. Meanwhile the natural advantages of Chena had at- tracted traders and settlers, and a rival town was started th,.fc in the summer of 1903. It is said that when Bar- nette began to realise the extensive promise of the new camp he had accidentally called into being and the in- eligibility of his own town site, he offered the settlers at Chena to remove thither and abandon Fairbanks if they would give him water frontage to build upon— an offer which was scornfully rejected. I know that as much as two years later all building lots were held at a very high price and that the imminent abandonment of Fairbanks was still an article of faith at Chena. It was in the summer of 1904 that Fairbanks had its reasonable assurance of stability and its great fever of building. The federal judge had come over from the Yukon in the spring and had procured the building of a court-house and the remr -al of the federal officials thither from Eagle, thus makmg Fairbanks the adminis- tration centre of the interior, while the discovery of yet other rich creeks promised an output of gold second only to the Klondike. From the first, newcoming tradesmen, were welcomed with open hand and allowed to stake out building lots for themselves; lots were set aside for the 1- ii I' i I' If Mi 2g6 A MINING REGION government buildings, for schools and churches and hos- pital- and every additional business that was established was Ln additional bond to this location and against re- moval, until -heir cumulative power was far stronger than the natural advantages of Chena upon which that place had selfishly and blindly relied;-and so an end of Chena. , A railway from Fairbanks to the creeks and to the river at Chena, the first railway in interior Alaska, knit the district together a little later and provided for the transportation of people and supplies when the Fair- banks slough was too low for navigation. The visitor will thus find it easy to proceed to such examination of the gold-mines as his time and inclina- tion allow. He will find extensive workings still in prog- ress and more extensive abandoned, with the usual melancholy accompaniment of such abandonment. 1 dwelt somewhat upon this feature of a placer-minmg country in the Kantishna, rather than here, since in the Kantishna are few left to shudder at a memento mon, while Fairbanks not only lives but confidently expects to live. J . Placer gold-mining in the north has worked out its own special technique, and while differences in the na- ture and depth of soil and the supply of water involve differences of operation that are of interest to the miner and indeed of so much concern to him that upon them may turn the financial success or failure of his enterprises, there is a general sameness in the processes employed. "Pay" being discovered at the bottom of a shaft, the PLACER-MINING 297 gravels that carry it are thawed by s-eam, removed by pick and shovel and wheelbarrow fro: i the drift to the shaft, and lifted therefrom by a self-dumping hoist, which, when it has brought the loaded bucket to the surface,' carries it up an inclined wire to the top of the dump, and there at the precise moment the bucket is automatically tripped and its contents discharged upon an ever-rising, ever-broadening cone of pay dirt. This process contin- ues at one spot and another all the winter, until by the spring a creek where active mining is going on is covered with conical dumps that look like gigantic ant-hills. Then, when water is available once more, the sluice- boxes are set up and the dump is gradually shovelled into them while the water runs through them; the gold by reason of its greater weight sinks and is caught by the riffles at the bottom of the box, while the lighter dirt passes off with the rush of water on top. If conscientious care be taken to keep track of the gold content of the dump by continual "panning" of average buckets (or of a handful taken from every bucket), the operator should know within pretty close bounds what his dump will "clean up." But it is surprising how many men permit themselves to delude themselves that their dumps carry much more gold than the water reveals. The tempta- tion to pan the known good dirt is strong; the known poor dirt does not exercise the same fascination. Improvements and refinements in the methods of mining are continually made; there is just now a device of underground excavation by which a steam-shovel digs out tunnels that hitherto have been dug with picks, U « ' 1 » > 'I !i h .; i. 298 DIFFICULT NAVIGATION which some think will revolutionise the working of deep placers; and with the coming of cheaper fuel will doubt- less come many other economies of machinery. But we are bound yet much farther up the Tanana River if the Pelican can compass the voyage; a cache of gasolene had been made during the previous winter at "McCarthy's" about eighty miles above; and there ;s choice of routes either up the slough to its issuance from the river forty miles or so above, or down the slough to Chena again and then up the main stream. The obstacle to the voyage up the slough is its shallowness, for after passing the mouth of the Big Chena its waters dwindle and will only rarely afford passage to a craft drawmg sixteen or seventeen inches. But there has been much rain and the slough is rising and we resolve to attempt the passage. June is the propitious month for the upper Tanana and this is a wet June. We make good time to the confluence with the Big Chena (so called not because it is itself particularly large, but by contrast with a smaller stream of the same name), but from that point we ad- vance with increasing difficulty. The freshet water is coming out of the Big Chena, the course is very tortu- ous, and the channel actually right up against the bank on one side or the other, with overhanging trees that continually brush against the side of the launch. The pennons and ensign that proudly fluttered as we left the water-front at Fairbanks— crowded with spectators m- terested in the attempt-are taken down lest they be torn off; the three flagstaffs are themselves removed lest they be broken off; the decks and the roof of the cabin NARROW QUARTERS 399 are soon covered with leaves and twigs from the over- hanging foliage through which we are forcing a way and presently in one such arboreal passage, a bough threads Itself m the rmg on the top of the starboard light, i.ooks the lantern out of its socket as neatly as you please and drops It m the water. The open windows of the cabin and engine-room are continually invaded by the green- ery, and when we close them against intrusion the glass IS in danger. The Pelican soon loses her accustomed trimness and her condition is a mute appeal against such usage. We continue, however, to find a narrow way until we are within half a mile of the head of the slough and then there is a shallow gravel crossing over which we cannot pass. The water spreads in a broad sheet over the gravel, and try it where we will the depth is insufficient. One of our boys puts on the rubber hip- b'iots, takes a graduated sounding-pole and passes over «ver/ part of that crossing with the same result. There is another arm by which water enters from the river, and we drop down a little and try that, but with no better fortune. It is tantalising and mortifying to have the mam river so nigh and yet not be able to recch if but there is no help for it and we turn back, the more' hastily that the water is evidently falling instead of rising and we fear being caught in the slough-unable to return. At a bridge where the overland trail crosses the slough we are but twelve miles from the Salchaket where is a mission to be visited, and here the bishop decides to make that journey on foot and we put him and another passenger ashore, ourselves resolved to IK if 300 BATES RAPIDS w I V I. lit I': iV 1/ Hi 'km go round and attempt the main river passage and picii liim up. We reach Fairbanlcs, crestfallen, in the gloom of such twilight as the latter part of June affords, and are glad to tie up unobserved. Another starboard light secured (we do not nerd it now but shall by and by), additional gasolene obtained with difficulty-for there is shortage - and some slight repairs made, we drop down the slough to Chena next morning in pouring rain. Allen named the long stretch of broken water on the main river, between the leaving and returning of the slough, the Bates Rapids, after an Englishman who made the first journey of which there is any record down this part of the Tr.nana in company with Arthur Harper. It is not unlike the Yukon in the Flats in that the water is spread over miles of country instead of being confined in one channel. But the Xanana here is much swifter than the Yukon anywhere, and instead of large spruce- covered islands are innumerable sand-bars loaded with driftwood between which the shallow water pours in many channels. The main stream does not sweep around bends as on the Yukon, but roars and rushes where it will amongst these bars. We made some thirty miles in eleven hours for our first run and tied up; and the next morning it was evi- dent that the water was rising considerably, for drift- wood began to come down. After a run of little more than an hour a nut became loose in one of the "inter- rupter levers" of the make-and-break cam-shaft, and it was necessary to stop in order to tighten it. That :'■ :ll' li t KM'ii) Hinrri.in\'; \ ki \\ nw-^ \rn i| 1 1, ii !J 1 ■ H hi' 1 II I n\ .1"; I ■* I ml ■m I li; .1 1 A TIGHT PLACE 301 makc-and-break ignition lyjtem was a lource of con- stant trouble to us and I do not think it had any com- pcnsating advantages. Certainly since jump-spark ig- nition was substituted for it we have had no ignition troubles to speak of, and are able to get fifty revolutions per minute more from the engine. There was always something going wrong with the make-and-break ig- nition. So we stopped to make this adjustment, and while endeavouring to set up the loose nut so tight that it should not again jar loose, my boy put too great a strain upon the wrench and it slipped and broke the cast-iron bracket which supported the sparking mechan- ism of No. I cylinder. It looked as if our voyage were already done, and there seemed nothing for it but to hobble back to Chena upon :he three cylinders th.it would stil! explode: b-it the absence of repair-shops on the Yukon and its tribu- taries induces an amount of self-reliance and ingenuity not common, I think, on more convenient waters, and Walter has these qualities highly developed. If he had a block of hard wood, he thought it would be possible to shape another bracket and hold it in place with wire. There was only one piece of hard wood on board and that was the stock of our shotgun, and, knowing the boy's resourcefulness, I gave the Word to use it. He sawed it <)ff and whittled it up and actually succeeded in fashion- ing a serviceable bracket, wiring and rewiring it to keep it in place, and again all four cylinders were exploding. It was a very creditable exploit, I thought, and still think, and the Indian pilot we had picked up at Chena it |- '1 •! I'! pt'? f .' mt il ^ ^ 30J DRIFTING LOGS was so much impressed that when he returned home he told his friends that "when engine break, Walter he make new engine out of wood." But all day had been taken up in this repair and so rapidly had the river risen that when we were ready to start, the little island to which we had tied the launch was gone, and the painter was fast to a tree st.ckmg out of the water. Worse still, the drift was heavily moving; in addition to swift water we had henceforth to dodge trees and logs and all the floating trash that comes down with a freshet. Certainly the Pelican had never been set such a task before, nor has had such since. In the very gut of a little rapid between two sand-bars, where she was just able to stem the current, here would come a log swinging and rolling towards her, and she had to drop back and lose what she had so laboriously gained to avoid a col- lision. Several times the engine had to be reversed suddenly to escape such an impact, for it is not possible always to judge with accuracy what a drifting log will do and the sudden reversing of an engine at full speed is not the best thing in the world for the machinery It is, h.-wever, in just such crises that the stanchness of the Pelican's machinery gives one a satisfactory confidence that it will stand the strain. The bracket held well with constant vigilance and occasional tightening of its wiring. Mile by mile, all night, she fought her way up-stream but her progress grew slower as the water rose higher ; nd the drift came down in ever-increasing volume. I began DANGERS OF ALCOHOLISM 303 to doubt that we should succeed in ascending the river under the conditions present, ;>,,<^ [ knew that we were passing through one of the worst (/ ii; stretches and that above the Salchaket th jibing grev better. Then we began to have trouDle wit! the carburetter. When all the gasolene procurable at Fairbanlcs had been bought and our tanlis were not yet full, I had bought what kerosene was procurable, for that was also scarce, and because there still was room I had poured in five gallons of denatured alcohol, which was a foolish mis- take. The forward tank held fifty gallons of pure gaso- lene; we keep the forward tank as a reserve and do not draw upon it at all unless we have to; in the after tank, holding two hundred gallons, was this pernicious mixture of gasolene, kerosene, and alcohol. The kerosene mix- ture explodes very well, if it be not in too great propor- tion, but almost as soon as I had put in the alcohol, my mind misgave me about it. I might almost as well have used shellac varnish. I know not what chemical processes went on in the darkness of that rear tank, what mysterious synthesis, but from the perfectly clear liquids poured in, some sticky, gummy substance was precipi- tated in the carburetter that interfered with the action of the float-valve so that the thing began to flood. That meant tying up again and taking down the carburetter and cleaning it, with the prospect of repeating the proc- ess every few hours. So we switched on to the forward tank until the present stress should be relieved. Shortly thereafter came the boat's crucial test. She was making six hundred and forty revolutions, which '!■ : .1 ' ' 'I 30^ IN THE DRIFT was the very best she would do with her make-and- Tak ignition, and she came to a drift-laden bar bes.de which the current rushed so fiercely that somet.rr>es the laves leaped up to the forward deck and -pt over For a whUe it seemed that she could not pass that bar, ignoring the mad swirling waters and takmg a tree on the dis?ant bank as a mark, for minutes at a .me he boat seemed stationary. Then we edged m yet a htt^ closer and with the pike-poles that we always carry ought the bottom to help her by pushing, but there was Tbtttom to be found. Yet a little closer -"we Pressed until we could grab some projecting pieces of drift, and ;: a precarious purchase on them with the poles and !o we made that passage. But when in an hour there- after we had drawn away from that .lace no more than a mile, I knew in my heart that the game was up Could we have stopped and waited a few days for the subsidence of the flood, we ^-1V"''m 't "f eVb Salchaket and, that much compassed would. I judged be able to proceed to the Xanana Crossing, some two hundred to two hundred and fifty miles farther, which was our hope and expectation, for there was a mission le to determine upon at that place. But the bishop . iLrary would not permit of that delay; he had to go to Point Hope on the Arctic Ocean that summer, and the revenue cutter Bear was his only means of doing so, and she had her fixed date of saiUng from Nome and waited for no one. , , •, „,„^ The boys were as reluctant to turn back as I was, and I think it was as much on Walter's account, that his A C'UTICAL TIME 305 wooden engine" should take us through the Bates Rap- ids as on my own or the bishop's, that her head was .nil kept up-stream, and I was rather glad than other- wise that something happened to turn us back and that we did not withdraw from the contest merely on mv resolution to do so. We were passing another such drift-laden sand-bar and at top speed were no more than inching along beside It, the Indian pilot on the forward deck and Walter on the after deck, each with a pike-pole, while I had the wheel, when with a snap the wooden bracket gave way Its cylinder immediately ceased exploding and we began to drop back right on to a cheval-de-frise of drift-poles that bristled behind us. "Grab that drift," I shouted to the boy on the forward deck as I turned her head in, and he grabbed a projecting tree trunk and, lock- ing his feet around the gipsy windlass, held on like grim death with both arms while the water swept over the deck and over him, and Walter, hurrying forward, got a line around it. Then we got a stern-line out, and, re- leasing the bow-line, let her swing down-stream, and so, with engines reversed, dropped to an eddy behind the sand-bar and there tied up. The damage was still reparable; more wires were wound and another pur- chase for them secured ;-there are no limits to Walter's ingenuity; and presently all four cylinders were at work- but we all realised that further prosecution of the at- tempt would be but wasting gasolene and courting dis- aster. *■ What a wild journey that was back to Chena, shooting ' i :1 1 I, 1,1, IN' I I'M og NAVIGATING RAPIDS !hc Bates Rapids !-one of the most exciting boat-rides the «3"^ /^='P ^i^i, „o more engine speed than ,^. and n»,h., .f *■". ** " ° .^^ „,„„ A,r\r to see the world stream deliriously by. °" "That felow Bates must sure have been .0.. tr..- ,«.Mt^d it remarked by one who had had a similar lene enough, bhe dia n ^^ ^^^^^ could not pass through in ^he Bates KP It IS a baa , ^^^^^ ^^^, ^5. Ui |j m i ii i( r t 3i8 ANIMAL LIFE :i5 Pl ;ancties disappeared and rose agam. I"^'>« ^ffjj air while we ay ^J^^'^^' ^,^^^^, „p,o,ions of a other --- ^J^'J^^^^;';^^^^ its exhaust; every few should be preserved. At one place, where dearth) app.ano" «»< »»!«'» »' «'"" '-Z^trhunTS and «.. ««=• f™ -k' "* ({ f I J !( .1 If ( l) I iV:^i "4 m II THE HCXJATZATNA 319 give us them first on the starboard and then on the port, now dead ahead and now almost astern. They form a shapely group, very welcome after the weary lowlands, and an earnest of plenty of mountains by and by. Foi all our two hundred and fifty miles of travel we have made not much more than a degree of latitude, so sinu- ous was the course, so often did it leave its main di- rection. It takes the Pelican full five hours to traverse the "cut-off" going up, and a little less than two hours go- ing down— the sum of these times is, say, seven hours, and half of seven is three and a half, which is very roughly the time she would take were there no current at all. Since she is making better than eight miles with the six hundred and forty revolutions per minute we keep her at, I should estimate the length of the "cut- off" at about thirty miles; if it really saves twenty miles it is a good gain in that distance. The current has now increased considerably and will continue to increase steadily as we proceed, and when we enter the main stream again a little below the Ho- gatzakaket no one would call the Koyukuk water slack. The Hogatzatna, confluent on the right bank, which the maps corrupt to Hogatza and the white men curtail to the Hog River, is the most considerable tributary the Koyukuk has yet received— Hogatzakaket or Hogat- zachaket is its mouth; the native speech of these parts being the same as that of the middle Yukon. The Hogat- zakaket is reckoned at some three hundred miles from the Yukon, and lies just on the 66th parallel of latitude. ii id a i V J-1 f j,0 A RARE EXPERIENCE thoueh after touching it the river bends to the southeast aga^ and does not definitely cross it for another twenty fif. miles The Hogatzatna has tributar.es that mter- follh tributaries'of the Kobuk. and affords a route fo Kotzebue Sound and the Arctic Ocean. U was when we had been tied up near Hogatzakake one nieht that the boy in the engine-room, nsmg m the mornSbefore the rest of us to get the boat un^, way saw a sight I would have given a good deal to see^ A aTge eagle that had been perched upon a tree swooped drn into the water, seized a salmon in us talons, and oTe with it. flying off to a height of rock where .tr- ably had its nest. His excited descr.pt.on of the plunge to the stream, the beating of the bird's wmgs upon he water as it emerged with its prey, the struggles of h gr t fi Is the bid rose, the flashing of its dnppmg Jver scales in the sunshine as it twisted and squ.rmed, ir rem d us effort the bird had to put forth to bear Ualofl made us all envious of the good fortune of the "lomedmes upon reflection one is surprised at the rareneTs with M the common sights of the wdderness ar s en. This, for instance, must be a common th.ng am" always Accomplished in much the same way w,th aSompanim'ent of sp! hing and disturbance, yet I h.n Jew have ever seen it. After ten wmters spent almo.t Xly in travel over the trail in all parts of the mter.or Thavl never seen a live wolf, though I have o ten seen a'clss of a caribou which had been part^Uy -"^ by wolves, and have been kept awake by their how EXPERTS DISAGREE 33, ing. And I know at least one full-grown Indian, hunter and trapper from boyhood, who has never seen a live wolf save m a trap. The same i, true in even greater degree of the wolverme, the most destructive and most crafty of all our predaceous animals-and the most hated in con- sequence. It is somewhat less remarkable, however, that prowlers of the night should be so rarely observed than that the great diurnal bird of prey which subsists largely on fish m the summer should be able to conceal h.s operations so closely. I have seen bears catching fish a lynx and a fox catching fish. I have seen dogs catching fish, I have seen the remains of a fish that an eagle had devoured, but the swoop of the eagle into the water I have never seen, and I would rather see it once than have dead specimens of all the varieties of eagles ■n the world carefully stuflFed and mounted Live creatures of all kinds have intense interest for me but when they are dead they have very little; and certainly a well-pamted picture of an eagle or a well-carved fig- ure gives me much more pleasure than the poor actua' bones and feathers, however artfully wired and glued together and provided with glass eyes, varnished claws and a belly full of sawdust. There was much discussion of the incident I thought that little more than the talons of the eagle could have entered the water and that the fish must have been seized in the swoop as I have seen a tame owl se'ze a rat, without pause in flight, but Arthur declared that the bird went down under the water to get the fish and described the strenuous flappings that were neces- i I >i tl ill if ) !. i t !li1 BLIZZARD REMINISCENCES l:'? I*! for him to ri« again. The box wa. .urpri«d and sary lor nun » diitance off, r jhirShX a:;:;^ tc -. ana .... 'irntum of the original ..woop -«J--"f ^Vof lift bird and fi.h a little into the a.r again. TJ; J' ° Z wings would doubtless beat ^^^^--^ta 'ma a fr«h start with even a ten-pound burden was mauc "^* ""^h., .hough, .h. h.h -" "If^"- r.:r.t!ir;i'r»ir,s.-..h>. :=r.2^^r;r.hr£r^^^^^^^^ -^r:;:^rorrrrJr.;sr:.. - ALLEN'S JOURNEY 323 of the voyage, off which we lay when we woke up on the 23d of September to find ourselves frozen in. and into which we warped the launch laboriously with a "Span- ish windlass" and made her snug for the winter when it became evident that we could not hope to proceed Beside It IS Martin Nelson's little hut that wc helped him build, and there is the cache on which we stored the freight and gear. And ahead of us for one hundred and twenty- five or one hundred and thirty miles wind the reaches of the river, over the "first ice" of which we pulled a sled by the back of the neck " at all sorts of hazard two weeks later, as I have described in another book. Twenty miles or so farther comes in the Batzatna, and near it on the map I am using just now is boldly imprmted "Muggins Island," which brings Lieutenant Allen on the scene again and opens a whole new chapter of Koyukuk history and geography to those who care to pursue it. We met Lieutenant Allen on the Tanana River, and the reader will recall that remarkable journey of his, one of the most important and venturesome of the early explorations of the interior, which gave the world the first definite knowledge of the greater part of the two largest tributaries of the Alaskan Yukon. But I had better reserve him till we reach the point where he first reached the Koyukuk. I have mentioned him here because we are approach- ing a place where a few years ago the white men started a town which they called Hughes City, now already de- serted. Gold was found on a creek tributary to a stream called Indian River, confluent on the east bank, and t i 'I, PIONEER EXPLORATION ? 'i ! 3*4 . a small camp was started and this ^wn -s .ts ^^^^J pot and port while the diggings yielded. Allen m i88S S L Lself the first white man that »- -" b^^ on this part of the Koyukuk, a matter m wh.ch explorers ometil delude themselves, but the P'o-r P-pe^ tor was before him, if a tradition amongst the old-t.me w'ite men be true, and Hughes Bar - t^.s v m.y is the site of the first gold-workmg on the nver and Ts named for a man who, it is said, came up a year Tefore Allen. I have no means of determ.nmg the mat- ter nor do I think such means ex.st to-day, and . .s of no mportance. I mention it mere y as a trad.non L Kovukuk The town, which dates from 1910, ll hSeen named in honour of this man, but as a matter of fact it was named for the then governor of the "tate of New York. It does not really detract from the ^::Jo^ exploration that some one else has already passed through the region explored, and it may sately Ee safd that there are very few parts of the mter.or that wee nof visited by prospectors before they were .sued r ,n„nneelse These men made no maps and left no :^::^::;Lt:ridwas.t.e..r^.^^^^^^ SuT'orprirs ttir have t.d me that uponTeaching'some remote creek -to -h.ch they .m- .Led "they were the first that ever burst perhaps a r^^fra ment of iron implement, an almost obhterate Tt quite unmistakable disturbance of the surface, or weathered axe-mark upon a tree, would bear mute on- dus ve wtness to the priority of others. In this Ind.an m t iLi RED MOUNTAIN 325 River camp behind Hughes City the miners say they found Signs of earlier working, quite forgotten even of mmers' tradition. The life of Hughes City was brief even for a placer- minmg town. Started in 19,0, it was almost deserted in 191S. though in 1917 a little store still languishes; pres- ently the natives attracted hither will return to their old haunts with some half-breed children and some chronic diseases, and the wilderness will resume its own. Ten miles or so above Hughes City one of the first real difficulties of Koyukuk navigation is encountered At the lower end of an island which divides the stream there is a sharp declivity in its bed which at the same time turns at almost a right angle, so that for a short distance there is a veritable rapid, in the midst of which It IS necessary to swing the hozc half round. This bad water is known by the expressive name of "The Measlv Chute." ' The next point of interest is Red Mountain, a bare- topped bluff described by its name, which serves as a land- mark. For some distance past we have met small groups of natives camped upon the bank fishing with nets. The Koyukuk is not a good salmon river, nor is the country a good game or fur country, and its natives are sometimes hard pressed for a living. They know the Pelican and hail us as we pass, and we stop and shake hands and greet them and have a little conversation and a short service pleased with their warm welcome. Perhaps there is a' new baby and then the vestments are got out and there IS an al-fresco christening with a few words about the I ! m I* h m ;l 326 A SHORT CUT nurture of the child; perhaps some one is sick, and if it be a simple ailment a remedy is administered and some advice given. The tents and the racks of red salmon Eive brightness and variety to the bank. And now we come to the Kornuchaket, the mouth of the Kornutna, miswritten on the maps "Kornuti, known amongst the whites as Old Man Creek, tributary from the east. The Kornutna draws its headwaters from a high basin where the Dall, certain branches of the Melozitna and of the South Fork of the Koyukuk all have their rise, and it has long afforded a means of reach- ing the upper, without traversing the lower, Koyukuk. By the course the Pelican has followed from the town of Tanana to this point a distance of nearly s« hundred aad fifty miles has been travelled; by the wmter tra.l across country it is no more than one hundred and twenty miles. . , . . „» It was at this point, and virtually by this route, that Lieutenant Allen reached the river on his pioneer ex- ploration. Leaving the Yukon a few miles below Tanana, with one soldier and a party of guides and packers, he pursued the ridge between the Tozitna and Meloz.tna Rivers, crossing tributaries of the one and the other until the height of land between Yukon and Koyukuk waters vas reached; then over flats and swamps and around lakes (fifty-five lakes were counted from one vantage- ground) he passed to a tributary of the Kornutna and so to that stream and the upper KoyukuK, making the journey from Tanana to Kornuchaket with re- markable expedition in six and a half days. It takes ,.H . U METHODS OF CARTOGRAPHY 327 four and a half days over the winter mail trail with a dog team. Taking canoes, Allen went up the Koyukuk as far as the present town of Bettles and thence descended the river to its mouth, mapping its course and naming a number of islands, of which Huggins Island, by some strange chance, has found its way to modem maps, while almost all the other names are forgotten. Honouring friends by naming islands on the lower Koyukuk after them reminds one a little of the "Bel- gica" people, who, in default of land, are said to have named icebergs after the contributors to their singular Antarctic expedition of twenty years ago,* on which ex- pedition, as one gathers from Jean Charcot, the notori- ous pseudodiscoverer of the north pole. Doctor Cook, first began "to stray outside the bounds of honest ob- servation." A map-engraver loves symmetry; if it be wilderness that he is mapping he is willing to leave open spaces provided they be distributed with reasonable regular- ity. Here, he will say, is too large an emptiness which a little script would relieve; so a name of some sort is hunted for in the field-notes or on the sketch, and Huggins goes down to posterity while Waite and Treat and Howard and Stout are forgotten. The irony of it is that Huggins is precisely the one of the whole group who needs no such "frail memorial." Brigadier-general in the United States army, thrice wounded at Chicka- *"The Voyage of thtfFky NotT in the Antarctic," p. 109. Hodder and Stoughton. ) m ¥ i !'J hi II ' 11 i m - reconnoissance." he does not burden his page, with plans of campaign against fish camps, but grasps at once the fact that from any military point of view the natives of interior Alaslca were utterly negligible. Allen has his errors just as Dall has. but of all the military explorers he alone is not unworthy of mention with Dall. The Koyukuk is not a good Indian country. Game animals and fur-bearing an:mals are alike scarce and compared with the Yukon, fish is not plentiful; while the freight rates to its upper waters are so high that wh«e man's grub" is much more expensive than on the Yukon. So the native people must always work hard to secure a scanty living. Fish is the main de- pendence, and in 1909 when a partial failure of the previous summer's fishing was followed by one of the periodic disappearances of rabbits, the situation passed the handling of the recently established mission and an appeal had to be made to the government to come to the rescue with relief work-the one instance in which this has been necessary within my knowledge of interior Alaska, and I think within its history. J take pleasure m recording that so soon as the pressing need became known the aid was promptly forthcoming through the channel of the Bureau of Education. The amount actu- ally expended did not. I think, exceed five hundred dol- lars, but it averted acute distress and even saved lives at a pinch when the mission was stripped to the bone and could procure no further supplies. The occupation of the river two hundred miles farther up by the white men of the mining-camp afl'ords some 'ill I ' i. . •If li \. 331 RIVAL THERMOMETERS opportunity to the native, of earning a little money by freighting with their dogs, cutting wood for steamboats, snowshoe-making. and similar services; lu.t the wandermg and more enterprising Kobuk Eskimos secure the most of this work, and it remains a hard country for nd.ans to make a living in. It is, of course, easy to talk of re- moving them bodily to some better district, but the difficulties are great if not insuperable, nor does one re- gard with complacency the complete depopulation of so large an area, sparsely peopled as it is to-day; rather the efforts of the mission are in the direction of urgmg and aiding the natives to make the most of its meagre re- sources. Here I would like to introduce an excursus on rab- bits, for the world at large does not realise what Alaska owes to this prolific rodent. Just as the American buffalo is, or was, a bison, so I know that the snowshoe rabbit is a hare; but it never troubles me when the vast and blessed inertia of common usage disdains the petty efforts of scientific accuracy. I have watched with amuse- ment for many years, for instance, the indignant denun- ciations of the Fahrenheit thermometer by the Centi- grade; and there is little or nothing that the Fahrenheit can say in reply; yet if I were looking for a "safe bet I would wager that for generations to come water will freeze at 32 degrees and boil at 212. After all what more is there in names of animals or standards of mea- surement than convenience?-and if the common world find it more convenient to adhere to an old standard IMPORTANCE OF RABBIT 3J1 which it comprehend, rather than adopt a new one which .t doe, not-that i, the common world', priviJege The measurement of heat, if it did not fir,t become po,,i: •be at fir.t became general by Fahrenheit", in.tru- mcnt, ,t ,erve, .t, purpo,e as well tcvH,v a, it did then; ,ts reading, are in,tantly compr ■! .n.lcd ber.„„e they refer to a standard generally f, ,. I, „ „ .| ., common world is not troubled abo,., . |,nt I i,avc sccome an excursus on thermometers, so let u, retum ,o o„r rodents. ' In setting down the chief «,urc« of the subsistence wh,ch mtenor Alaska affords, next in importance to the salmon must come the rabbit. At times and in places „H Tu I ""''°"' '° "'^ "°'* '""8 of the black ad the brown bear or the mountain-sheep. are plentiful; at times and m places enormous quantities of such meat are secured and consumed. But at other times and places no b.g game will be found at all. And it is often just when a man is dependent on the country that the big game fails him. Sir John Franklin's men starved to death in a region that teems with musk-ox and caribou tinn'T Vr' °^ '""'" y"^^- ^"»' ^'^h an excep- lon which will be noted presently the rabbit never faij and IS found of one species or another throughout the whole counto^ even to the shores of the northern ocean. Moose and canbou hunting, not to mention bear hunt- ing, require strength and skill, but even a child can pro- i* m iii 'I ^' 334 PORCUPINE AS FOOD SUPPLY cure a rabbit-small Indian boys kill --^crs °f t^';^^ with arrows-and the phrase used amongst he Indians To describe the last extremity of female decrepitude means "too old to snare rabbits. "hVrabbit has been just as valuable to the white „.an as to the native. I think there njight have b en actual starvation in the first winter of the Fairbanks Zl and again in the first winter of ^^.e Iditar^ cam but for the rabbits; and many a prospector has eked o^ an "outfit" W h rabbits that would not have sufficed "r h^ living without them. I know of a Swede who ted for a Jhole winter on straight rabbit while pros- oectine a claim in the Koyukuk camp. 'Sough this digression is confined to rabbits, I may add that there is another common rodent, more succulent han the rabbit, that has saved many a m.n from stan^a- tion in the northern wilderness-the porcupine. He ITn more easily caught, for. secure in his de ens.ve a. mament. he makes no attempt to flee and a stout stick TkiU him; but though common he cannot compare m ribs wi;h the rabbit. The rabbit's numbers are indtd at times prodigious. Sometimes the sloughs he Yukon are crisscrossed for miles together with the.r racks and the dense willow shoots along the same d - Tee 'completely denuded of bark as high as^ a rabbit teeth can reach when he is standing on his hind legs a eeular and evenly marked a belt as an inundation leaves ?hind ^ and mich more striking. The raM,its increa. and multiply all over the land for a period of years commonly! I believe, seven, and then, almost at a stroke, PERIODICITY OF RABBITS 335 they are gone. Whether it be that their numbers be- come at last too great for the amount of food which the country provides them or that ttiey upset some other careful balance of nature I know not, but a rapidly fatal, contagious disease appears amongst them and they simply disappear. The year when this is written (1917) there are no rabbits in the country. In almost con- tinual travel during the first three months of the year not more than ten or a dozen were seen. By and by they will begin to return; they will not be plentiful next winter probably, but by the next they will be numerous enough, and the cycle will repeat itself. Beside his direct food value and the value of his skin (which, especially when quilted between blankets, makes very warm bedding), the rabbit has other importance. For our poor bunny is the chief dependence of all the predatory animals and birds in the country. Hand in hand with the increase in the rabbits goes usually the increase in the lynxes. This past winter the lynxes have been devouring one another; the skins brought to the traders are all of full-grown large animals; the kittens and undersized animals have all been eaten; and many a man going to his traps has found but the leg of a lynx —a free animal having devoured a captive. So next winter there will be very few lynxes. The fox, the marten, the ermine, the wolverine— all these fur-bearing animals are dependent chiefly upon rabbits, and furs are our only export besides gold. How hard pushed the foxes were this winter was evident from the many places on the trails where they had been at great pains to dig I' I ' ' I ill ^1} ii f '1 I 336 RABBITS PREY OK OWLS out field-mice from their little burrows in the fro-n earth _I think foxes do not usually trouble w.th such small ''"The rabbit is also the chief dependence of the preda- tory birds. It does not take an eagle or even a hawk to kill a rabbit. Poor bunny is the most defenceless creature in the world, and anything that has wmgs to pouL on him with and claws and beak to tear h.m wuh. makes a meal off him. "^disturbed an impudent little screech^wl thaU am sure was not six inches high, a ver.table Tom Thumb of an owl, in the midst of such a meal last wmter, and h^ rl with angry snappings of his beak to a near-by tree and sat till my departure permitted the resumpt.on "hi. repast. And the scene held such an mterestmg snol-print of just what had occurred that I detamed h.m f^m his dinnJr to trace it out. The rabb t was runnmg .,,n nlace when the bird struck. He struck, :^rh"thTa:^Ihtd^upposed,butwiththe^s^^^^^^ ofthe wing, and there on the snow was the dehcate >m- preso of every feather of that outspread wmg. Th Sbit was knocked over, but the bird must have fa, d to seize him; here were further leaps acrc«s the -ow; th ..ush where he would be safe was only a few ,um ahead; but the bird was at h.m agan. with another troke leaving another beautiful mtaglio of a wmg o„ he snow, and this time the beak and claws .nust have secured a hoW, for there was blood. For two or three fl there were all the marks of a rough-and-tumble Sug^, and r.ght on the edge of the brush lay the CAT AND OWL FIGHT Zi7 torn carcass, from which the owl had sullenly arisen ?s we approached. Let me, in concluding this digression, tell of a similar incident in which the tables were completely turned upon a much larger and more powerful bird-the great horned owl, common in Alaska, and, I think, everywhere else Seeing what he thought a rabbit at the foct of a tree hard by a cabin in the dusk of a winter evening, the owl made his customary noiseless swoop— and caught a tartar; for it was a full-grown white cat belonging to the man who lived in the cabin. Aroused by the noise, the man ran out, and he said that he never saw fur and feathers fly so fast and furiously in his life before. At last the cat managed to turn on his back although the owl's talons were fixed in him, and with the claws of his hind legs ripped open the owl's belly and disembowelled h.m, and I saw the skin and what was left of the feathers nailed to the cabin door. The cat's injuries were severe, but when I saw Him he was completely recovered and bore no trace of the fight. The observation of animals is not infrequently mis- taken. Here at the Allakaket is a Kobuk boy with a great scar on his face that he will carry as long as he lives. It was made by a wolf when he was a little child, the only instance I recall hearing of in Alaska of a 'woif attacking a human being, and the boy's parents were lonvinced that the wolf seized the child by mistake. He was playing near their hut clad in a long pnrkec made "f mountain-sheep skin with hood and mittens „f the same material complete, and they believe the wolf mis- iii'i: w^u 338 ALLAKAKET MISSION took the child for a lamb. A wonderful sure shot killed the wolf without injuring the child-a piece of marks- manship almost equal to William Tell's. The danger with an admittedly discursive book .s that there is like to be no due control of its divagation. Here have I wandered from rabbits to owls and from owU to wolves and had almost gone off into rnarksmanship^ The rabbits led me further than I intended, but should like to feel that I have contributed '"-f^ a b tter understanding than ha. hitherto prevaded outs d of the part they play in Alask.m economy. If their per odic year ./ general mortality had not coincided w L an unusual scarcity of fish, it had not been neces- sary to ask help in feeding Indians of the interior of Al^ka on the only occasion, to the best of my knowledge, when it has ever been asked. The wolf did, at any rate, bring me back to the Al- lakaket, where the mission nurse and the teacher tw'. lone white women in the Arctic wildemess-and all the nadve population, are crowded on the bank to welcome the Pelican. . . , ■ It is always a great pleasure to visit this place be cause its happy isolation from the usual mal^n inflaence. that hinder work amongst the Indians allows of en- tinuous improvement. The people were dying off b - L the mission came, now they are steadily increases. That is positively the first thing to secure, for what m- spiration is there in working U. a d.x,med c ,.nmun,t>^ The children are far and away the most important p > ,le in any community, but in an Indian commun.n 1' : 'Ih I ' 1 1 1 ! UiW^ I ! I UNIQUE MISSION WORK 339 they are everything, and work for their parents is chiefly necessary because of the parents' influence upon the children. At one of our mission stations where the people are not increasing the man in charge boasted to me that there was not an illegitimate child or a half- breed child in the village. "But there are no children at all!" I cried. And I am afraid I shocked the good man, as I may shock some of my readers, by saying that I much preferred half-breed children or even illegitimate children to no children at all. By the grace of God much may be done with half-breed children and even with illegitimate children, but what, in the name of all that is hopeless and preposterous, can be done with no children at all ? So it delights me to see the Allakaket mission swarm- ing with healthy children, and to know that the death- rate is much below the birth-rate year after year; to go into the schoolroom and see the docile eagerness of many of them, the wide-eyed wonder of the beginnings of an acquaintance with the great world; to gather the folk in the church, Kobuks on one side, Koyukuks on the other, and laboriously by the mouths of two interpreters endeavour the beginnings of their acquaintance with the Oreaier World. For this is the one mission that I knov/ of anywhere that ser\'es two totally different races, speaking totally different languages, Indians and Eskimos. A high bluff bank of clay, seamed with gullies and continually weathering in landslides, rises just behind the Eskimo village on the opposite side of the river about a 'I t * I: .■m-'wt. 340 INTERRACIAL EXCHANGE PLACE „.ilc belov. the mission and is crowned with the crosses and fluttering streamers of Esk.mo B-« . .^ - notes that it bears an Indian --^.^- "^'^^ ^^ wonders that so comparatively ms.gnificant a feature lu receive a distinctive name while high mountam oeaks have no des . .tion. The reason is that the ig plateau abo . this bank was of old the meeung- pl ce of Eskimos nd Indians for tradmg^ Notw.th- standing the traditional hostility between the races the xgencfes of native commerce demanded some mter- S of commodities, and this high open land was hZ as a rendezvous because it afforded no co^er for ambuscade. Avoiding the lower Matna the Kobuks Tossed the ridges to this plateau and announced the.r a" "al by signal-fires. To them the Indians repa.red, Zbtg the bluff by the steep gullies, and the vantage J po"L compensated the Eskimos for the d.s.dvan- ;^of their presence in enemy country. Mutua^ ^^ pidon and fear are bred of mutual .gnoranre; of lat ye rs the two races dwell harmoniously side by s.de and IZl is even some tendency towards mtermarr.age. which we do not think it wise to encourage^ Yet how real the old fear was, received .Uustrat on .wo or three years ago when an Indian ^^ y f rom ^ Allakaket, absent in hunting-camp, hearmg some foohsh AuaKan. , ^ Malemutes are coming, Z ""Yut ant stayed on the Yukon for a tuple of years, le..ing their cabin and all its contents . Nis^Hl^^U i. the actu.l nam., and i. mean, "the place where .h. scone* tfA\ down." INDIAN GAMES ,^, unvisited behind. And I have seen the village of Nulato on the Yukon deserted on a similar rumour. If we are at the mission for the Fourth of July as some years we try to be, there will be sports and conte'sts. The boys and girls and the women will run races; there will be wrestling-bouts for the men; that the elders be not left out, there will be leaping upon a tightly stretched moose hide held by a dozen men for the old women which they have b rowed from the Eskimos as their spe- cial diversion, with a prize for the one who leaps highest -and the agility of these ancient dames is sometimes astonishing; while for the old men there will be a con- test in making fire with wooden drills, an art neglected since the introduction of matches. The last time I saw the fire-making the victor caught his smouldering saw- dust in the shavings he had ready and blew it to a blaze in two minutes and four seconds from the time the word was given to start twirling the drills. Allakaket is almost universally corrupted to Allen- kaket by the white men of the Koyukuk, and there is a notion amongst those of them who know something of the history of the region that the place was named by Lieutenant Allen in honour of himself-bascd perhaps on the circumstance that he calls the Alatna the "Allen- kaket River." This notion is, of course, ridiculous; but one is curious to know whence he obtained the name. Ail Allen's rivers are "kakets"; he did not discover that Ij kaket" means "mouth," but I am sure he never got "Allenkaket" from any native lips, and can only con- jecture that he heard the white traders on the Yukon ;iF Si- 3^ PHONETIC CHANGES speak of this tributary of the Koyukuk and retained Tmen will often retain, an original n..spronunc.at.on despite the subsequent hearing of a correct one many time One judges that the "n" first dropped .nto the Tme simply^ecause it is easier of ""-« to a wj ^an with the nasal consonant than w.thout . as Samt Leger" came to be pronounced '■S.llenger _or S d lenger." John Evelyn in his d.ary wr.t s my lady Selleneer" just as. I fancy, Allen wrote "Allenkaket. tmThe Ire confirmed =n this -jecture because "chaket" is really the KoyukuK usage; whereas kaket p evai «; the middle Yukon whence Allen started for trKorkuk. "Allakaket" established itself on our the KoyuKUK sufficiently aware mission stationery before 1 was mys-c „_,,i.,d of the local usage. Dall alone, as I th.nk I remarked before, had both eyes and ears. It is at the Allakaket that the mountains of the En dicott Range, which separates Koyukuk water from the w t of the northern slope, first begin to appear m the Ts tanc Lookine "P ''^^ ^latna, some southwestern turs of the range lift their heads, snow-covered save Eg the heat of summer, and the most P— ^P^f from this vantage has received the name of the Young ' torr^iltr so of serpentine river in a wide valley, the bant generally low though there are t^J«;~; ally where ridges bound the stream, brmgs us to he mouth of the South Fork, tributary from the east, h Ta gt affluent which the Koyukuk receives on .ts le^" bank, and here is another native village of e.ght or ten Miaocorr iisowtion ibt cH«n (»HSI and rSO TEST CHAKT No. 2] 1.0 ■ w ^^= •»U£ 12.2 H-i^ I.I e-^ 1 y£ ^ APPLIED ItvMGE m It! H w SOME INDIAN STATISTICS 343 cabins, the second and last Indian settlement now ex- isting on the Koyukuk. It has at least one distinction; the snowshoes made by the people now are considered the best in Alaska. This place we count a dependency of the mission at the Allakaket, so far as the schooling of the children and the instruction and care of the people are concerned, for they come down usually for a month at Christmas and for the fishing in the summer. Allen found thirteen souls in this neighbourhood. There are now upwards of forty, some of the increase a natural increase of late years, though there has been emigration from other parts of the river. Allen counted two hundred and seventy-six souls as the total population of the Koyukuk, ranging from this point to the mouth, and is confident that his enumeration is much more correct than most Indian censuses. Of these he found the greater part on the lower river, now entirely deserted save for early sum- mer fowling and fishing, as we have seen. Most of these lower Koyukuk people must have withdrawn to form the village on the Yukon just below the Koyukuk mouth, where they preserve the somewhat sinister reputation they gained long ago, for neither Allen nor Stoney mention any village there in 1885. Since we count about one hun- dred and fifty Indians all told, as attached to St. John's- in-the-Wilderness, including the Hogatzakaket folk, and there must be about one hundred at the Koyukuk mouth when they are all at home, it is probable that there has not been greater diminution than these figures would in- dicate in the total number of Koyukukans in the past thirty years, while on the upper river in the last ten ii I' ! 1 I 344 TYPICAL STAMPEDE years there has been a steady increase. It may be noted in passing that it is, of course, easy to count exactly the number of Indians present at a village on any day one may visit it, but that to give the exact number who belong to a given place is not always easy amongst a wandering people. Sometimes a whole family will migrate to the Yukon at Xanana, remain there for two or three years and then return— or they may not return at all. Because the author finds his Indians of inexhaustible interest it does not follow that the reader will; there may be those who will be glad to learn that we are done with Indians for the remainder of the Koyukuk River. For here at the South Fork we begin to approach the domain of the miner, which is the domain of the white man. It was to this region of the river that the "rush" of 1898 reached. Ocean vessels arriving at St. Michael full of men on their way to the Klondike, learned at the same time of the overcrowded condition of that camp and of a new "strike" on the Koyukuk; and river-craft of all kinds, knocked-down boats brought thither on the ocean-going vessels, boats newly constructed at the port, boats that had braved the perils of the ocean passage un- der their own power, turned aside from the journey up the Yukon and ascended the Koyukuk. Some got no farther than the neighbourhood of Bergman, some went a little way up the Alatna, but most of them reached the moath of the South Fork, above which the difficulties of '■ gation greatly increase; some went a little way u^ clie South Fork, some a little farther up the main river, and A DOG-MEAT FEAST '345 at this point or that, at the limit of their draught on the falling waters, tied up and froze in for the winter. It is said that upwards of fifty steamboats all told and nearly a thousand men wintered in this region that year. Where they tied up mattered not at all; there was httle or no attempt at mining or even prospecting, and next summer all that extricated themselves from the ice at the break-up went down the river again. When first I knew the Koyukuk several wrecks still remained, but I think they are all gone now. They came, they win- tered, they went— these Koyukuk stampeders. Some of the men from the boats made their way up to the actual diggings— and some of them are there yet; some came out from the diggings by various overland routes to the Yukon. I remember a cabin on the Dall River, the logs of which bore written comments on the country,' the climate, and the trail that would not stand tran- scription, and fr i. the dates appended I judged that these valedictory compliments were made by bands of "busted" stampeders. They straggled out by the Dall River to Rampart on the Yukon. One party of three or four having con- sumed all their food, killed and ate a dog, and they still tell with glee at Rampart of the hot dispute about pay- ment for the same. The owner insisted upon a pro rata contribution from those who had participated in the feast, and was scarce dissuaded from hauling before the magistrate one who insisted that he "wasn't going to pay no ten dollars for a piece of dog leg," which was all he got; "let them as ate the white meat pay for it." 346 EPHEMERAL CITIES (i. m m But there are exigencies of thr trail, especially with "chechakos" that it is better to draw a curtain upon. Whenever a steamboat tied up a few cabins were buUt on the bank for the boat's company. One boat that struggled up the main river above the mouth of the South Fork happened to have some sort of official from the General Land Office on board, and he laid out a town site with church and school and court-house, with First Avenue and Second Avenue and so forth. The town was named Peavey, and blue-prints of it were made that looked quite imposing. One of the boats that went up the South Fork had a dynamo on board, and the town built by its company was lit by electric lights that winter. When the Land Office man returned to Washington he carried with him the names and locations of these settlements, and this is how the upper Koyukuk River came to be dotted all over with towns that still appear on most maps, though they had no more than one winter's existence and no possibility of permanence. They have been stricken from the late edition of the government maps. Seaforth, Union City, Jimtown, Soo City, these on the South Fork; Beaver City on the Alatna; Arctic City and Peavey on the main stream, are all in this class; and Bergman which had a little longer existence as a warehouse depot. When last I saw Peavey some years ago the superincumbent snow of a winter had crushed the two remaining cabins to the ground. We now draw to the end of the navigable Koyukuk, for Settles, between forty and fifty miles above the iv THE ENDICOTT MOUNTAINS 347 South Fork, is the head of steamboat navigation. At a low stage of water the boats cannot reach Settles with any load, and frequently it is necessary for them to double-trip and treble-trip, and even on the last jour- ney of the season, to leave caches behind that cannot be carried up at all. "Dorothy" Slough with its whirl- pools at held and foot, the "Crimmins" Bar, the "Bad- ger" Bar with its snags— all named for craft that came to grief— are special difficulties of navigation in this part of the river. The Koyukuk rises and falls with much ra- pidity; a heavy rain upon its upper basin will give good water for two or three days upon which a boat may easily reach its destination; but if this be missed a long wait may be necessary ere another opportunity serve, or much laborious relaying and warping over bars must be re- sorted to. The steamboats employed were specially designed and built for this work; of very light construc- tion, drawing only a few inches of water, they are pro- vided with powerful engines and unusually strong steam capstans and winches and similar tackle. On a clear bright day the visitor approaching Hetties will enjoy the sight of the long range of the Endicott Mountains stretching like a wall from east to west, as though to bar any farther advance. Their sharp rocky peaks carry snow well into the summer, though no point of them passes the line of perpetual snow and there are therefore no glaciers. They bear the same gen- eral appearance which gave the name "Rocky Mountains" to the western sierra of the United States, and the visitor should remember that they are in fact a part of !3 ( i 348 CALL OK THE MOUNTAIN that same range; for when that range in .ts northern extension reaches about the 68th parallel of latitude it turns at right angles to the west, and stretches ail across northern Alaska as we see it stretching here, forming the watershed between the interior drainage to the Yukon and the drainage direct into the northern ocean. It gives one some conception of the grand scale upon which the North American continent is laid out to realise that these finely sculptured, jagged peaks are part of the same continuous mountain range as the peaks of Colorado. Did any one who retains any vivacity of imagination ever gaze at such a barrier range as this without longing to know what is on the other side ?— without being pos- sessed by at least a momentary desire to cross it and see ? Kipling, who has voiced so many of the commonly inarticulate desires of the human mind has put some suggestion of this feeling once and again into his verse, and many lesser men, including our own northern poet, Robert Service, have taken the suggestion for a text and have exceedingly amplified it if they have not much further elucidated it. The feeling is not the same as that aroused by some great, isolated, or dominating uplift; in that case the appeal is, I think, much less universal, and the lure lingers upon the height itself and urges to the attain- ment thereof, urges entrance upon its lofty and remote recesses hitherto reserved from the foot of man. But the challenge of a long level range is precisely the chal- lenge of a wall, and I have had the same feeling when passing by the high enclosing masonry of the garden of a VIEW FROM LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 34,^ Roman palace. It make, little matter what is behind; klmg m. .,Ie fountams bedecked with classic statuary or whether .t be merely the Arctic desert. The th ngis a concealment and a barrier and that is why it has s, ta ns p„haps fifty or sixty miles wide, has behind it ent .nd therefore mysterious. The range marks the vrtual hrnit of timber, on the other side 1 nigh W.I0W tufted tundra sloping very slightly and gradual y to the polar sea. All who have traversed that plain! from Frankhn to Stefansson, describe it as the drearies waste m the world. =pt by merciless bli^^ards all th Tnir/' ]fr"^""^ "^y '""Edible clouds of venomous insects all the summer. tain^Th J°R " T "'T ' '"'"''*'* '''^ Lookout Moun- tarn behhd Settles and looked up the valley of the John R.ver. wh.ch seems to cut right through the range as it comes down from the north to its confluence with the K yukuk at th.s point, and to present, as -n fact it does present, the beginning of the most direct highway to the Arctic coast. And as I gazed upon the rows oJ sharp da^zl ngly white peaks between which the valley passes llTllr K^f J''' ^■°""'"'' '° "°'^ ^•'^ --"tains' and get behmd them and see for myself that vague ZLTr °K ''' ^°'''' '""' ^'^'^ '^^ --°t«= and' 'Uttered hype.boreans who dwe-1 upon its icy shore eIevIr"'r''''"/""°'' ^"^" ''="' "°° 3Sa VICIOUS INDIANS yette and restored to McQuesten, Harper, and Mayo, the owners. . It were easy to conclude the narrative of this prompt retribution with the lines of Kipling: "Then a silence came to the river And a hush fell over the shore And Bohs that were brave departed And Sniders squibbed no more." I have told of several crimes of the Koyukuk Indians and of their bad repute from the day of the Nulato massacre, yet it would not be just to assume that such bloody and treacherous acts represent common occur- rences, since they are, in faet, the only, or almost the only such occurrences in seventy years' intercourse with the whites. Men still living in the country who knew these people thirty years ago, at the time of Bremner s murder, speak of them as gentle and kindly and remark- ably honest. Chapman, of Rampart, the discoverer of coarse gold in the Koyukuk at Tramway Bar, between Bettles and Coldfoot, who knew Bremner and his part- ner tells me that his caches were never violated, thougn they often contained articles of the utmost value to the Indians, such as knives, guns, and ammunition, and that in all his long intercourse with them he had nothing but kindness at their hands. There is no doubt in the case of the murder of Brem- ner as in the case of the Nulato massacre, that the crime was instigated by the medicine-men, who wielded almost always the sinister influence in the lives of these Indians, and on the lower river, to some extent, do so yet. But, A MINING ENTREPOT jjj aside f™„, that, here is a tribe with, at the most, let us ades. That hardly warrants a very evil name. It is by contrast w.th the other Indians of the interior that a bad name has attached itself to the Koyukans. and that bad name, therefore, bears tribute to the gentleness and peaceableness of the aborigines of interio? Alaska asf nver that Bremner was so much interested in as "Old John s R.ver," and "John River" has become f«ed upon the^stream to the ent.re displacement of the name Allen rfennt";'''' u^'"^- '■ "" '''""^ '^' ^^th parallel, is the depot for the mmmg-district which begins here and stretches a farther seventy-five miles up the river. The brought h,ther by steamboat, are carried hence by othT and slower and more expensive means of transportation to the creeks where there are diggings. Chief amongst th m .s the horse-scow, a large, flat, double-bottomed bateau, wh.ch .s propelled by gasolene-engines through the deeper reaches and hauled by the horses over the shallows and the ...s, one of its bottoms being scraped and torn off each season .„d replaced before the next Ihe pomt of maximum mining activity varies from year to year, but is commonly at the other end of the district and the bulk of the supplies are carried from sixty-five an end before all the freight is removed, and when the ii t'i 354 THE KOYUKUK FORKS winter is set in, horse-sleds and dog-sleds are used and Weighting goes on more or less all the wmter over the e The employment of horses depends upon the we the and the precipitation. In the last winter (.0.^17) the ana tne prcL y j^^^. ^^ snowfaU was so heavy and the spells 01 coi long that horses could be used very httle an. ate^^h heads off several times over m the stables. Winter Shting with dog teams gives employment to a ba^ of eight or ten Kobuks, who. with the.r fam.hes, make Betdes their headquarters, and the white men come and „o so that the place is not without activity wmter as iVas summer. A new strike on the John River, con fluent at Bettles. was still further contnbutmg to the business of the place when last I was there The Koyukuk flows roughly parallel with the Endi- cott Range until Bettles is reached, and there turns from a general westerly to a general southwesterly direction^ TuLg therefore to the east f ^^^^^'^^r^U- stream, we pursue the course "^ ^l^^Tft td ^ie rid«e tween the Endicott Mountains on ^h^ ^t -n<| ^J^ ""^se that divides the Middle Fork from the South Fork on the right, with not much scope for tributary dramage, fo .t p L the two forks of the river are only a few m.les pa't. and the streams that come down from th^ rno n tains are little more than mountam torrents. Between B "and Coldfoot the North Fork. Wild Creek and "?welve Mile" are received and money has been take^ out of all three. Great expectations, were entertamed orWild Creek a little while since, but they have not been realised. jitf I li iA M'l MINING ECONOMICS 355 It will be understood that it is not every gold de- posit that will pay for working in a mining-camp where the cost of operation is as great as it is here. Not only is the Koyukuk camp the most northerly in Alaska and perhaps in the world (I do not think the Siberian placers are so far north), but its difficulties of transportation are greater than any other. Even ground that would be counted very rich in other districts may yield but a narrow margin of profit when the balance between receipt and expenditure is struck. By reason of the higher latitude the season is shorter here than in any other Alaskan camp, and the winters are on the average more severe; while the proximity of the .nountains causes a heavier snowfall than the Yukon receives. There is only one limit to the overcoming of physical difSculties in gold-mining, and that is the limit of cost. If sufficiently rich defxisits were discovered on the north coast of Greenland or Grant Land, thither the adven- turous spirits would flock, nor would three months of total darkness prove any deterrent. If nuggets were brought down from the highest rock-ridge of Denali (Mt. McKinley), from nineteen thousand fe there would soon be men digging and blasting at that attitude and incidentally teaching the scientific world something fresh about the possibility of human labour under a pressure of half an atmosphere. New conditions would be met by new expedients; cylinders of oxygen might become part of the miner's "outfit," and a two-hour law replace the eight-hour law, but if gold were present in M' 1 ii !^!ll. ^ M 356 A SPECULATIVE INDUSTRY sufficient quantity to warrant the cost of obtaining it, it would be obtained. . . Some of the men who make money in placer-mmmg go outside with it at once and enter upon some busmess they have always contemplated with the capital they have secured. Probably all of them have the purpose of returning when they come into the country. I thmk very few deliberately intend to spend their lives here. But it is commonly true that the man who makes money in one gold-mining venture is easily moved to mvest it in another. There is never much difficulty in obtaining the capital to develop a mining-claim that "looks good. And such are the chances inherent in this occupation that all the money taken out of one hole in the ground may very quickly be sunk in another. Good prospects are obtained on a new creek; a hole is laboriously driven to bed-rock and indisputable "pay" is discovered; any one who is interested may go down and "pan for him- self But in order to work the claim to any advantage, perhaps even to work it at all, machinery must be pro- cured, and a half-interest awaits any one who will pro- vide the money to procure it. So the man who has made money on another creek goes into partnership with the new discoverer, and operations on a substantial scale are undertaken, only to find, perhaps, that the original shaft was sunk on a "pocket" and that no drifting however extensive and expensive will disclose a pay streak. And the man that had a "home stake" and was hesitating between an immediate withdrawal and "one more shot finds himself working for wages again, or starting off on THE ELEMENT OF CHANCE 357 a prospecting trip with nothing left after buying his winter's outfit. On the other hand, the venture may succeed, and with increased capital comes the itch to mcrease it still more; with judgment justified comes a pride of judgment which may lead to a heavier fall. The most dangerous delusion of the placer-miner " I have heard it said, "is that he can tell what is under the ground from looking at the surface." Yet the very man of whom this was said has gone from success to success until he is now a very wealthy man. Here is an occupation in which sheer luck is the prime factor, and luck runs in strange streaks. A claim-owner on Nolan Creek gave away one hundred feet of the upper part of his claim and one hundred feet of the lower part to two diflFerent men be- cause the holes they would sink would prospect the re- mamder of the claim-would locate the pay, if pay they found, and mdicate to him where best to s-'nk. Such a deal is not uncommon in placer-mining in sep ground Both of these men took out "home stakes, ' but on the remamder of the claim no pay at all has been found. It must not be supposed, however, that technical skill and business ability play no part in placer-mining. Many a claun, with no large margin between the "clean- up" and the expenses, has driven its owner into bank- ruptcy through careless and extravagant m?r>,gement, and, on the other hand, many a substar.ial "home stake" has been gathered from such a riaim through skilled operation and careful husbandry. Some who take their fortunes and go outside after a ~K i; * i' ml 358 MINING-CAMP AITRACTIONS number of years in this country find the humdrum rou- tine of business insupportable and return. The cherished desire of many a miner is to buy a "fruit-farm" of some sort in one of the Pacific coast States, or a dairy-farm or a chicken-ranch. A good many such enterprises have been started by men from Alaska, and a good many of them have been abandoned after a few years' trial; and men who had shaken the dust of Alaska off their feet turn up again one summer in the old haunts amongst the old companions, with loud expressions of relief at their escape from the trammels of civilisation. Because of its isolation and remoteness and difficulty, and the qualities which they evoke, the Koyukuk camp has always been the most interesting in Alaska to me. It is a small camp, averaging perhaps two hundred men, and while much of the population is shifting and immigra- tion and emigration constantly occur, there always re- mains a substantial proportion of "old Koyukukere" who have worked on one creek or another in the district for a number of years and maintain certain standards and conventions not always to be found elsewhere. I think some of the best men that Alaska contains are to be found in the Koyukuk, and I will not say that some of the worst are not there also. It is commonly said, and I think with ground, that more whisky is consumed here per capita than in any other community in Alaska and perhaps in the world, and that the cost of it exceeds the whole cost of the food imported into the camp, high as that cost is. Yet at the election in November, 1916, when the voters were called upon to declare their wishes EVILS OF ALCOHOL 359 on the question of the prohibition of alcohohc liquors in the Territory, the vote of the Koyukuk was over- whelmingly "dry." It is this remarkable circumstance, not confined to the Koyukuk though conspicuous there, the circumstance that the vote for prohibition was so largely the vote of habitual drmkers, that gives me hope about the execu- tion of the bone-dry " law which Congress has just passed in response to that vote. Here is not a deprivation miposed by exterior power, here is virtually a petition from the users of alcohol praying that they may be de- prived of It. Such a vote is the best justification of the prohibition movement. "We like it; if we have the chance we will drmk it. but we know it is keeping us poor and turning body and soul, and we ask that it be taken away and not allowed any more to come in." Total abstinence being thus self-imposed, I do not think there will be the efforts to evade it that I should expect had the measure been othenv.se secured. The weight of public sentiment will, I think, be with the prohibition law instead of being against it. The benefit that will result to Alaska from the thor- ough execution of this measure is incalculable. At a blow it will remove the chief provocation of crime and lust, the most fertile breeder of thriftlessness and pov- erty and, if not one of the largest direct causes of disease certainly the chief exacerbator thereof and hindrance to healmg. I think a large proportion of mishaps on the 'ce and on the water, above ground and underground are directly referable to it. Our experience at the ho.- hi Itf I I u 360 GOVERNMENTAL DUALISM pital in Fairbanks led us to believe that three-fourths of all cases of severe frost-bite have liquor behind them. It will mean new hope for the native people. The denial of li.iuor to them while permitting it to the white man has alv ays chafed a certain percentage of them as a stigma of ii feriority. With the removal of all tempta- tion to intoxication will go the great threat against their survival as a race. There remains, there cannot but remain, to the man familiar with Alaskan conditions, the great administra- tive If. Now, that no license fees will be obtainable in the Territory, will the treasury officials interest themselves in hunting out illicit stills ? Alaska, it should be remem- bered, was once before under a congressional prohibition law, and it stands on record to the lasting disgrace of the most cynical department of the United States Gov- ernment that its officials made their regular rounds and collected their regular fees from liquor-dealers openly defying the law, despite the protests of the governor. Moreover, who that knows the feebleness of our system of magistracy and police can place much confidence in its efforts to enforce any law ? With unpaid justices of the peace engaged in small merchandising and timid lest they injure their business, with bibulous deputy marshals such as I have known scheming their own in- dulgence, who can be without fear that offences against the liquor law will be connived at .' The remoteness and difficulty of the Koyukuk camp have engendered a feeling of comradeship amongst the miners that is not found, I think, in any other camp. A COSMOPOLITAN CAMP g of "Mohawks " Uv M ^ Preposterous name much chance of "strii^nVrrL'^s at'one^ ^"" ^^ ,. Coldfoot, at the .outh o Slate Crir^'L , , 362 PICTURESQUE C»LDFOOT name to the orisinal intention of its lettleri of going farther up the river, an intention which succumbet' to difficulty and fatigue— they "got cold feet!" Racy of the climate and of the people, it i« a name to be cher- ished, one of our few settlement names, other than na- tive names, that are neither grandiose nor commonplace; "Anchorage" on Cook's Inlet ii another, a happy acci- dental naming, "Sunrise" on the same Inlet is another, and if the storekeepers had allowed the miner's name to remain we should have "Twilight" in the Iditarod in- stead of one more "city." Coldfoot, little more than a way r* 'tion now, with a road-house and store combined, a number of empty cab- ins and a very few occupied ones, lies in as picturesque a setting of lofty, jagged mountains as any town I know, but the business has gone from it to Nolan, at the mouth of Wiseman Creek, some fifteen miles farther up, and here the principal stores, the saloon, the post-office, the magistrate and the marshal, will be found; for Nolan Creek, a tributary of Wiseman, is at present the chief producer of the district. Six miles above Nolan the Hammond River comes in, whence a good deal of gold was t'.ken tw. or three years since, but at present there Is not much mining activity there. Creeks above the Hammond River and creeks between Nolan and Coldfoot have yielded gold, and there is always a number of men scattered in twos .nd threes here and there throughout the district making a little money by the cruder methods of mining, but the main output of the camp for a number of years past has been UNNAVIGABLE STREAMS 363 from Nolan Creek and the Hammond River. A little beyond the mouth of the Hammond River (which i, no ".ore than a creek) the Koyukuk forks near the 68th parallel mto the Settle, and the Dietrich River, which are mountam ,tream. quite unnavigable, and ,eem, to paw beyond its auriferou, belt. I i I CHAPTER XI THE CHAGELUK SLOUGH. THE INNOKO AND IDITAROD RIVERS Turning straight across the broad river from Holy Cross Mission, we enter the Chageluic Slough, and are surprised and pleased to find ourselves in clear water again. Save for the few hundred yards that we turned up the Anvik River, this is the first clear water that we have seen for a long time, and the Pelican is glad to have it running through her cylinder-jackets and her cooling system, washing out the mud that, despite all filtering anH settling, has been deposited. The Chageluk Slough is an arm of the Yukon River that left it forty miles above Anvik to wind far away from the main stream and make a great island twenty- five or thirty miles wide in places by its return after a tortuous course of nearly one hundred and fifty miles. Some twenty miles or so after leaving the Yukon the slough receives the waters of the Innoko River, greatly in excess of the small stream that it withdrew from the Yukon, and, the Innoko being a clear stream, the slough itself is clear from that time. Until the gold discoveries on the Innoko in 1906-7, indeed until the stampede to the Iditarod in 1910, the Chageluk Slough was little frequented by white men. Remote from routes of travel, its native inhabitants were perhaps the most primitive of all the inhabitants of in- )64 ■;m 1 ' ( A MOSQUITO RENDEZVOUS 365 Anvik and traversed h/!! w '"terpreter from -ce then, L onV^^^X^Z ^ 'r ''''''''' quitoes. I think third t , ^''^"S^d-the mos- The Yukon N hm.^ i '°' mosquitoes. .<" bank. ,h, „„, ZZt'-J^ 27'1 "','"1 *"" ■" vocal with ,hdr hum i, ' "''* '*» ful summer night in New DrU ^^''" fo Cose,, do th^e suhtro^^^dl^S/r ^f" ■mate m certain respects at certain times """" Native hfe at such seasons is miserable . u mosquito nets are rare and nn. ■ "^'''' ^"°"8h; ^or the young children' whose I: TT'' ^°^'^ «ith the red punctures oTTh ''^''" '°^"«'' "smudge" is the chief ' ^'""'"""^ P«^^- The threshcSdofeve' .atfor"?'" '^'T^' ^"'^ °" ^""^ -^^".ofits;:;^:— s;^^;^ !iii 366 ESKIMO CLUB-HOUSE V! 1 the lesser of the two irritating to the eyes, but that evils. It was on this occasion that I first saw the inside of a Kazhime. The mosquitoes were so bad that an out- door gathering was impossible, and the peculiar insti- tution to which reference has been made in dealing with Anvik was put at my disposal. The Kazhime is the men's sweat-bath and club-house, the abode of the un- married men and the entertainment house for '••■.itors. The large cavernous chamber, more than half under- ground, with a roof rising only slightly above the level of the earth, was entered by a tunnel closed with a raw- hide flap. In the midst the fire yet smouldered, its smoke eddying up to the domed roof and there escaping through the only vent in the building. All around were shelves on which nude men were reclining, the sweat-bath just over, their forms dimly visible in the gloom; and beside each man was the little pot containing the excrementary detergent he had been using to remove the grease from his body. Soap has superseded it now all through the country, but one must remember that before the white man came there was no soap nor knowledge of how to make it, and let that remembrance temper one's dis- gust. The men drew on some garments, the fire was dampened down, and the place was ready. I do not think women are commonly admitted to the Kazhime at all, but at my request they were presently allowed to gather at the inside of the entrance, and by the mouth of an excellent interpreter I spoke to the strange audience in this strange gathering-place. Now i tim I i P i 11 ffi I Wjk nt ^ M llf 1' m 11 PRIMITIVE MAN'S CLAIMS 367 and then the dying embers lit up the savage surrounding. With a lur.d glare which was reflected from the column of smol;e upon the dusky faces of the assembly There was an indescribable odour, ancient and fish-like, mil- dewed and sudorific, that was almost overpowering at first but that one gradually grew accustomed to. It was fittmg scene for witchcraft and ghoulish rites, and I won- dered what pagan mysteries had last been celebrated there, what w>ld sorceries it would next witness. Then a^l at once while I was speaking there came to my mind the recollecfon of the subterranean stable in which one It' T t^ '"°'^"" ""'"'"^ ''^^ P'^"'J 'he nativity of our Lord. There were the same heavy beams of rough- hewn timber the same general grime and gloom, the same half-clad, simple-minded, wondering folk grouped at the entrance; and I hailed the resemblance as of happy auguiy. I dare say that most memorable stable aid not smell any too sweet. It is so foolishly easy to be scornful of primitive people, to sweep them aside with a contemptuous epithet or two as unworthy a white man's notice. I have heard a hoodlum from the slums of San Francisco (and not London or Paris can produce worse) speak in such way of the Yukon Indian, and I once heard a gentleman of education from the East say that he did not know what dirt was unfil he had visited some native villages of Alaska. Yet I learned afterwards that this man owned tenements m the slums of New York. I do not think I like dirt more than others and I am engaged m a ceaseless campaign against it, but there is a i I m Mi t \ l.\: m IS IM ! 368 RACIAL SNOBBISHNESS certain snobbish consciousness of cleanliness that I grow very wearied with. If " Kind hearts are more than coro- nets and simple faith than Norman blood," so, we were told long ago, are they more than the washing of hands and the cleansing of pots and platters; and if the cher- ishing of a scrupulously clean habit in all things g.ve rise to a feeling of large superiority, then I think that for those so unfortunate in their environment as to be al- most unavoidably debarred therefrom, or in their igno- rance as to be indifferent or even disinclined thereto, it should produce a correspondingly large compassion in- stead of mere scorn and cpntempt. Aside from this particular matter, I find myself per- haps too easily vexed by the calm assumption of the in- finite distance that separates the Indian from the white man, merely because he is a white man. I am no foe to racial distinctions any more than I am to social dis- tinctions, and certainly no friend to the admixture of bloods; I do not view with complacency the solution of racial problems by the absorption of the "lesser breeds into the overwhelming white race; I hate the thing even though I cannot shuc my eyes to it. I do not see why different races should not perpetuate themselves,, with their special cultures and their special tongues; and I think the world will be a much less interesting world, and not on that score one whit the better world, when all the little peoples shaU have been absorbed, all pic- turesque distinction of custom and costume broken down, and a thousand vigorous, elastic, indigenous languages superseded by "pidgin English." From some points of COMPULSORY ENGLISH ^g, view the vaunted "march of civilisation " >. . ^ ape's marc, that l„ds nowhere " '° ■"« =« -"^re 'ong that therc::„T7orc: t VnVtt^ ' '""^ ^^ ^^^ throats of their InlV .^ as S ^^^ '°^" speech, and it i, th^ ». j '•""'a" as the common Education to s every ::fsS ""'"" °' ^'''^ «"-- "^ the native tongues ^et '"''"' "'' ^^^•"P'"S °"t -tdea,of^:-,initrrJ:rt;7"^^^ the i: n",;;~ ^^V%dah tongue by ado tLg years.' •• OnrnSrth" "^"^''^P^'^-g town in five village of these H ZZ'J^:'-' '^^' "P"" 'he nativesofthesoutheasternlst ;;X^^^ as well as the most skilful artificers -with „ '"?' ' h-hethi^^^tiXoS^sSefr-^^' out a thing like that gives one J A '''""""S "Bannochar's,..^. ro:rsrga?r:;Ld^::;-^^^ Scott's "Hail to the Chief" J^ ' " ^^''" later in an interes i„g ^ ol" "' "^''""'' '° '"^ f i J I ^lil.l ,"ilit: 370 PRESERVING NATIVE SPEECH to chatter and shout their mother tongue rather than twist their mouths around the unaccustomed combina- tions of consonants with which English bristles ? The fetters of a strange tongue may be endured in the school- room, but how can there be relaxation and recreation until they be thrown off ? To my mind the policy is unwise and futile. It is probable that the English speech will prevail over the native speech of these peoples by natural process, though in many places it will be a long time yet and I cannot see to s?.ve my life why it is so devoutly to be wished; but there is no sort of advantage in seeking to expedite the process beyond its natural rate, nor in repressing the In- dian tongue by speaking contemptuously of it, and, as far as may be, proscribing its use. It smacks too much of the Prussians in Poland ?nd, while it may enlist some "smart- Alec" youths who like to feel themselves superior to their elders, will arouse the latent conservatism of the race to a deliberate retention of what might otherwise unconsciously lapse. Such a course is, indeed, not un- likely to perpetuate the tongue'.. There has been a government school for some years now on the Chageluk Slough, and I suppose there is the same effort to make the children speak English. I am not sure if it were the second or the third of the teacher- (they change every year) who announced in my hearing that the teacher and his wife "has came"; and my mis- sion-bred native boy, after some talk with him, puzzled with his ungrammatical speech, said: "I think he must be some sort of foreigner, he talks broken English." TYPES OF TEACHERS j^, a duly commissioned I^L' ' " ''""''"' '^'' ^e was sent 7!::^z^^tr '' '^'"■"' °^ "-^ -^"-^ contrary, he wrtheLt "" "' '^'"""'°"' °" '"e undertake the l.Te o r " '"' "°'''^" °'' ^""-^ to We have hi o f^: tS ""^ -'?'^'' '' Solves, own incompetents even nl '" "'"""« "°'-''"''> °"r though we ha" not se^ thefeT °" ''"" '"'""'«' But I think there is st. tt .' '' '^''°°'-'"---hing. anybody can teach L. "''^ '" assumption that dispensing with tt".''"""^ "''°°'^' '"^ -ady a era.cultufe: cht ;;reSrV^^'' ^^ ''' «-- efficiency and broadTulXrpVtlr ^ ret ^ ''T -'■^'' to add that I have known ,.^ P^'^^' ^« me hasten of the bureau who hro ^ 1,^^:'"°"^"/''^ ^"^''- qualities and training ofmin" an T "' '''"'''' and who brought aiso^Inl^ ? character required, can hire.* '°^' ""^ ^ ''^^°»''°" that no money The difference between thp t„j- ■»•», ..idc f.o™ ,1,, cluTo 1 , "- '"■' "■" "'"■« 'i (• If.' i t N i' !!' 372 CONDITIONS OF INDIAN PROGRESS inheritance. I have seen Indian boys, mission-bred, who were more intelligent, more advanced in the usual subjects of study, better-mannered, kindlier, and higher-minded, than the average white boy of similar years— and who spoke much better English, besides speaking their native tongue. I do not mean that they were better in these respects than the average white boy would have been had he had the same training; I mean just what I say. And I would venture that if I might take my pick of the boys of this fish-eating Chageluk village, whose fathers lay around the shelves of the sweat-bath availing themselves of the ammoniacal constituents of their own urine to remove the grease from their bodies; that if I might take my pick of the young boys of this village and submit the one selected to the same mission regimen— physical, mental, and moral— there would be good chance of the production of a man who should excel in all that makes and adorns real manhood. The waterway that we are pursuing is tortuous and the scenery tame. Densely wooded banks bar any pros- pect beyond them, and mile after mile we wind amidst the willows and the cottonwood and the spruce. Oc- casionally a hill rises to break the monotony; here and there a fish camp appears, here and there a little native village. The current is not swift, and the launch makes good time against it, her engines rejoicing, as I always think, in the clean water that is circulating through them. Just at the mouth of the Innoko, when we have tra- versed nigh an hundred miles of this placid and monoto- nous waterway, we come to the most important village on CONTRASTS OK R.VER .sce^krv „, visit the place; noLany yea. ,f„;;'''" """" "''' '" ''i»^c.ve.ip,e.o..i:^^-;':;:~-;^y'He vi".«ena.e^^n:r;;;:"ts'^tv"r-'"^ beautiful «r,,™ ■ i. ■ "*■""'• ' he Innoko s a vers,- ed w rb";h^:'; "'"^'' '"'-'y ''-''' "'- ^ Iditarod coils and twists partakes of the nature of the tundra country, and the river itself resembles a tundra stream. There is the same total absence of trees, the same attractive and delusive grass-land as far as the eye can see— delusive because so soon as foot is set upon it it is found to be swamp — the same low, even, sharply defined banks as though the bed had been artificially excavated. A bright beauti- ful day of warm sunshine, the sky flecked with fleecy clouds, the clear yellow water sparkling, leaves a very pleasant recollection behind of the lower Iditarod. I spoke of the sluggishness of the current, and, of course, only a sluggish stream would follow such a chan- nel; a brisker one would cut through many a place where ! '■' ii CONFUSED NAVIGATION 375 but a few feet of earth separates the outward curve of one bend from the inward curve of another. Coming down Che river with the bishop aboard one summer eve- ning, r score or so of miles perhaps from its mouth, the n«d r;f a slight adjustment of the machinery caused us to tie up for a while to the bank. It was daric and a breeze rippled the surface of the water. When the launch was started again the boy at the wheel set her head in a di- rection that I was sure was up-stream, but that he was sure was down-stream. No one had taken special notice of the bank when we tied up and the wind pre- vented observation of the very slight current. A con- troversy followed in which the four people on board were evenly divided. The bishop as owner and I as master of the craft held opposite opinions decidedly and per- tinaciously. We threw chips on the water, but they gave no sign, for the wind was stronger than the current, and the merry-go-round of a course we had followed for hours had driven all sense of direction out of our heads; nor, indeed, would such sense have helped in the least since the immediate direction of the river is so rarely the real. By this time it grew dark, and since the puzzle was still unsolved we decided to tie up for the night, although we had intended running to Anvik without stopping. The amusing part of the incident is that no one save the boy who rose early and started the launch before we in the cabin were up, knew which side had been in the right the evening before— and he laughingly refused to tell. I have always felt confident, however, that it was the realisation of his error that sealed his lips.' 376 THE NEW ARMADA :1 • 1 In the high water of the early summer this whole region becomes an inland sea, and amusing stories are told of the fleet of craft of every conceivable shape and kind— stern-wheelers, paJdle-wheelers, screw-propellers— that "rushed" in from Fairbanks and every Yukon town at the opening of navigation in 1910 and knew not whither to steer when they reached this wide expanse of water. At length came along a "company" steamboat that had made the trip once before, and the heterogeneous flotilla fell in line behind. I saw many of those boats on the Yukon bound for the Iditarod the summer of the rush to the new goldfield— gasolene-boats, poling-boats, rowboats, home- made steamboats with prospecting boilers and hoist- engines rudely installed, to be removed and used for mining when the diggings were reached. Full of men and household effects and supplies, sometimes with a team of dogs and a sled on deck, sometimes with a loud- mouthed phonograph playing popular airs, they passed along, in hope and glee, to the new Eldorado. There is a freshness, a vivacity about these stampedes, whether on the water or over the ice, that is exceedingly attrac- tive. Grizzled "rough-necks," the veterans of a score of similar adventures, plunge in once more with all the sanguine spirit of the young men who accompany them; the word-of-mouth reports from the new diggings grow more alluring with every repetition; this time success is certain; the long-expected chance has come. And there is about these old-timers a capability, an ingenuity, a clever utilisation of meagre resources, an elastic adap- ! 't| It!i A RECENT STAMPEDE 377 tation of means to ends, and an equanimity of patient endurance that arouses new surprise and admiration con- tmually. The sordidness of the underlying motive is lost m admiration of the qualities it evokes; is lost in the men themselves in the sheer zest of new adventure. Here IS the zeal that no length of experience can dampen; the vision that no past disappointment can dull. And they float on, dogs barking, graphophone shrieking, tw,i- cycle motors, that explode frequently but not always, chugging their ragtime, they float on down the river,' out of sight round the bend, to that region "over the hdls and far away" whence come the latest stories of treasure hid in the earth. But the stampede on the first water from other parts of the interior to the Iditarod in the summer of 1910 was nothing to the rush from the outside that followed when the ice had gone out of Lake Lebarge and the steam- boats ran. The magazines of the winter before had just discovered "The Incalculable Riches of Alaska"; a spectacular shipment of gold-dust had gone across coun- try to Seward and had thence been conveyed with drums and trumpets into Seattle; the steamship companies and the newspapers had worked hand in hand in the usual way So eager were the people for passage that they crowded the boats long after all accommodation was exhausted. It was said that at one time three thousand people were on their way between Seattle and Dawson, which was doubtless an exaggeration, for these rumours always fatten themselves upon the excitement they create, but that number is not too r I : J' W) 378 DISGRUNTLED PASSENGERS great for those who went into the Iditarod that summer. I was at Eagle when the first through steamboats arrived and was much amused at one incident. A party of men came from one of the boats with a complamt to the United States commissioner. They had paid first- class passage, notwithstanding which they were made to sleep in "standees" (tier upon tier) on a barge. This they were willing to submit to, but since leaving Dawson the steamboat people had stabled horses between the standees, and they resented the presence of the horses and demanded their removal. One man said that a horse's tail switched him across the face in the night and nearly blinded him; another said that a horse had knocked down his trousers and stamped on them, and he pro- duced the broken handle of a pocket-knife in evidence. But there was no redress in law, nor do I think there was need These men would not wait, they insisted on crowd- ing a boat already fuU-and they had to take things as they found them. No old-timer would have said a word about it. He would probably have done somethmg to relieve the situation, would have hit upon some expedi- ent to make things more tolerable, but he would never have gone whining to a magistrate about a congestion of which he was himself the cause. There was a good deal more need of horses in the Iditarod just then than there was of more people. In comfort or discomfort, by one means or another, they reached their eagerly desired destination, each ready for his share of "The Incalculable Riches" aforesaid, and ACCESS TO IDITAROD CITY 37,^ that summer Iditarod City was the largest city of Alaska and the next winter it was estimated that u^warHa thousand men were living on one meal a d ,y When perhaps an hundred miles of anfractuosities has been p,,,ed the anfractuousness ceases and the I Lod dver Th^elf 7'^"'" """^^ ^'""^^ ^"^ - -binary mg h,Ils. The smgular tundra character of the country AlaTa'ard' T' ^^'".'"".f-"' ^PP^^-ce of inS Alaska and of mter.or Alaska's rivers is resumed for nearly another hundred miles to Dikeman Th,s place was established at the time of the "rush- as a general depot and warehouse point, for, save at the h.ghest stages of water, this is the head of steamboa Place for the m.nes wh.ch are yet eighty or ninety miles fate of overbuddmg, so that the banks are lined with empty cabms. I know of nothing which illustrates better the re sourcefulness and ingenuity of the white men of Alaskt han the way in which the difficulties of navigating h Iduarod between Dikeman and Iditarod City were overcome The river is not really navigable at aH any outs.de" sense of that term. It Is a moun ah stream m which swift shallow reaches are separated by bars and nffles from deep pools, and in the heat of summer water and the bars protrude. At the lowest stage of 38o MAKING A RIVER NAVIGABLE water all traffic is necessarily intermitted, but during much the greater part of the season th ; boats ply back and forth with freight and passengers. Swift, shallow water calls for powerful, light-draught boats, and I think the development of such craft was probably carried further on the upper Iditarod than it has ever been anywhere else; for the reason that a com- merce based upon the product of rich gold-mmes can stand a greater expense of operation than any other except perhaps a commerce based upon the product of rich diamond-mines. Will the output stand the coast of operation ?-that is the only question; if it will, then however great that cost may be, in the language of the country there is only one thing to say, "Go to it !" Rich placer deposits hke those, say, of Bonanza Creek in the Klondike would stand the cost of operation had all supplies to be brought in by aeroplanes and dirigible balloons. So the "transportation men" went to it. They con- structed the lightest, shallowest-draught flat-bottomed boats ever made, drawing but two or three inches of water, and installed therein powerful automobile engines that turned stern paddle-wheels at a high rate of speed, and the paddle-wheels did but touch the surface of the water These boats pushed barges that carried the freight, drawing little more with their loads than the boats drew with their machinery. By the most skilful handling, by loading and unloading, by jockeying and jack-knifing, mile by mile, the freights were pushed up the river, and sometimes a couple of horses were earned ill' h" w. .V-M mm 'I II I "U LIGHT-DRAUGHT DEVICES were w.ng-dammed. that what water there was might be thrust into one channel. * The scre« -propeller men were put to it. as well as the stern-wheel men. I do not know that th "knu kle o.nt etween shaft and propeller was invented o„te tl; ca" H 7" "" ' ''''''■ ^y "^'^ •'-'« ' Terv sh.II , """ "'''" '■°^«'"8 "P-'-='"> over very shallow places, and the latter when drifting down- stream over riffles. ^ " The Pelican draws her full sixteen inches of water and her tunnel stern forbids a knuckle-joint. Once gomg up as far as Dikeman. she had to turn back, since tailed for ten days twenty miles below Iditarod City untd ram swelled the stream to her draught. More than once a fr.endly line from a lighter-draught boarh w^ flat" t ^ r"'-.'"- ^"^^ -■'= ''' '-« -" '-rs v,th flat metal-bound ends made .so that we can put on the rubber boots and get out in the water and pry he^ bodily off bars with them. In the first two or three summers of her life her poor bottom was gouged and torn and scarred by gravel from L ke Lebarge to the Koyukuk and the Iditarod, but^ late years we do not get aground so much. from ^7"!°'' 'T" ''"""^ '^' *"'' "°' '°"^h bottom from the time she was launched to the time she was pulled out; but I have become chary of talking abouT 1 3H2 MUSHROOM GROWTH and really think that I had better not have mentioned it at all. At the opening of the next season, with the bishop and a guest aboan' I was boasting of it and pluming myself upon it, with the wheel in my hands, running down the broad Yukon; and while the vaunts were yet on my lips, bang f— she went so hard upon a sand-bar that it took an hour or more to get her off. Pride sometimes comes just before a fall, and constant watchfulness is the price of constant floatage on the Yukon. Iditarod City had one season of feverish building and ofir "season of fairly remunerative usufruct thereof, and then it collapsed. During those two years it was, I think, the largest town of interior Alaska. Tradesmen of all kinds from Dawson, from Fairbanks, from Nome, from the "outside," came hither with stocks of mer- chandise; sawmills were set up, and since local timber is scarce and poor their output was supplemented by large lumber shipments from other places, and the town sprang out of mud lying upon ice (such is its foundation) in a few weeks' time; chiefly of wood and tar-paper with saw- dust for insulation from the cold. Two banks were es- tablished, and two newspapers, and pretty soon the in- evitable "Chamber of Commerce" was organised and a new full-fledged mining-camp town sprang to life. The saloons, the gamblers, and the prostitutes were, of course, amongst the first arrivals. There was only one creek of any richness— Flal Creek, about ten miles away— and that was not onlj rich but shallow, so that gold was soon forthcoming I' j II MISSION EXPERIENCES 383 But a creek that is rich and shallow is precisely the best creek for dredging, and that word had ominous sig- nificance for Iditarod City. A little town grew up at the mouth of Flat Creek, following the usual course of mining-camps which provides an immediate town, and, so to speak, an ultimate town; but that Iditarod City might not lose more than was unavoidable, a tram-line was constructed across the hills between the two. The next summer the bishop sent me in to build a hospital, and the Guggenheims sent in experts to report on the outlook for dredging. Two nurses and a full hospital equipment arrived a little later, and the same boat brought diamond drills for dredge-prospecting. I tramped the niggerheads and the muck from claim to claim, from creek to creek (for there were some other creeks), week after week, raising money, and the Gug- genheim people took options on the whole of Flat Creek, and cross-cut every claim with the diamond drills in their customary thorough way. Some of my experiences that hot, mosquito-laden summer were interesting, could they with any face be dragged into a book about river cruises. Asking for money is not the pleasantest work in the world, even when it is to build that necessary thing — a hospital; and tramp- ing through thick tenacious mud, or jumping from nigger- head to niggerhead all day long is fatiguing. I envied my pet Malamute "Muk," who inhabited the after-deck of the launch that summer and several others, and ac- companied me on my tramps, because his light weight enabled him to skip over bog that would not carry me; i 384 BUILDING A HOSPITAL and four legs are a great advantage over two in the mere matter of locomotion— there is no doubt about that. Muk grew rolling fat on that excursion, for while I was addressing the men on a claim as they ate their dinner or supper (the only chance of getting them all together) the cooks would feed the handsome, ingratiating little beast. He had bones buried all over Flat Creek away down to Discovery on Otter Creek, and was so thoroughly spoiled that when I got back to Iditarod City I had to give him a good thrashing and put him on the cham for a week. It was fortunate for the undertaking that all my ad- dresses were not as barren as the- one that I delivered to the largest gang of men on the creek. The proprietors of the claim were absent, but the foreman gave me per- mission to ask for contributions readily enough, and I took my stand between the long tables and began my plea to the usual accompaniment of clattering knives and forks. The reader can divine for himself the general tenor of the talk, which did not vary much. Here in the camp were several thousand men engaged in hazardous work and no place where an injured or sick person might be taken care of. Last week I had buried a man killed by the caving of an open cut; at this time there was a man with a broken leg lying at a road-house for lack of any other place; the doctors in the camp were hampered by that lack; no man knew whether or not he would be the next. The bishop had sent a nurse and a complete hospital outfit; all we wanted from the camp was enough i; WASTED ELOQUENCE jgj money to put up the building; it was nor . m„ bu I m.d, ,1,, p,„ .. „„„„ ^, , '™P . ». "O. .m.„ any on,-. p,„ic„|„ „,„,i„ '„'"'"' cone™. f„ ,1,, „^„ fc„„„„ J » S-'J »• no oi tne plea I had made, and it was only when thev h,^ gone and the tables were being cleared 1^1 .^ . that they were all Montenegrins and thafnnJ "'' the. understood any En'g|- ^ ^ '0^^;::.?;; some one who "listened with incomprehenlrand . spect these men hstened with the former only if thev may be sa.d to have listened at all ^ When my immediate chagrin was over I could ioin heartdy m the laugh against myself, and 7l'Z .a™_„. .Hen they returned were the mo:;!;;; With the help of the women of Iditarod Citv I ,„,n aged to secure three thousand dollars, and thaf'suS oftered at an advantageous price, though not to 386 SMALLPOX EPIDEMIC complete the payment. Almost simultaneously the drill- prospecting was finished (it is said that fifty thousand dollars was spent upon it), and the Guggenheim corpora- tion threw up all the options it had bought because the ground did not justify the very high prices asked. And just then came a telegram from Fort Yukon that smallpox had broken out at the Rampart House and a quarantine was established at the mouth of the Porcupine and ray return was urged. An earlier outbreak at Dawson (whence it was carried to the Rampart House) had given me warning, and I had telegraphed to New York for vaccine-points ahd knew they awaited me at Anvik. So, the hospital housed and started, I left on the Peli- can in a hurry, and we bumped and dragged our way over the bars to Dikeman, for the water was low, and battered our propeller and jarred loose its stern bear- ing so badly in getting through that she rattled and shook like an old Ford car all the way to Anvik. Here I picked up not only the vaccine-points but a physician - Doctor Loomis, on his way outside from Tanana— and, impressing him into renewed service, cruised up the eight hundred miles to Fort Yukon, stopping at every native camp along the whole journey and vaccinating every one. Including those vaccinated by Doctor Burke at Fort Yukon and the nurses at the various mission stations, upwards of three thousand natives received such protection against smallpox as vaccination affords during this summer (191 1). But to be done with the chronicle of the Iditarod as ;f||'t ■' THE NEW RIVAL 387 we leave it. The next summer, 191 2, the Guggenheim agents returned and were able to buy at their own prices (which must have been fair or the owners would not have sold) the claims they had declined a year be- fore. Dredges were installed on Flat Creek and are still operating; but the Guggenheim purchase meant the de- cay of Iditarod City, for as I have previously pointed out, a dredge takes the place of several hundred men so far as work is concerned, but not in the upkeep of a town's catering and merchandising. Such business as remained centred at Flat City, and when last I visited it Iditarod City was largely deserted. There was, indeed, a perfect exodus of tradesmen the next summer, and rather than carry their stocks away again at high freight rates, goods were sold cheaper than I ever saw them sold in interior Alaska before or since. INDEX ARriculture, 134, 135, 188, j86 Alatna, 342 Allalaket, 142, 337, 338, 339 Allen, Lieutenant, 267, 288, 3^3. i^i, 326. 327. il9, 341.343.349 Andreafsky, 200, 201 Anfractuosites, 374 Animism, 185 Anvik, 176, 179, 190 Anvik River, 176, 177 Aphoon, 199 Archeology, 140, 141, 142, 143, Arctic slope, 349, 350 Army posts, 147, 148, 214 Aurora, 160, 161 Barnard, 166, 167 Barnette, 393, 294, 295 Bates Rapids, 206, 300, 323 Bears, 84, 333 Beaver City, no Beaver Creek, 143 Bell, John, 221, 243 \ Bennett Lake, 15, 16 Bergman, 328 Bering, 3 Bering Sea, 201 Klled up by Yukon, 204 mud flats, 204 scenery, 204 shores, 203, 205, 207 storms in, 209 Bering's Straits, discovery, 207 delineation, 208 Bering, Vitus, 208 Bettles, 347, 349, 353, 354 Birch Creek, 85 Black River, 225 Bompas, Bishop, 104 Boncyard, 200, 201, 214 Boundary line, ij, 67, 69, 70, 77, 101, 234, 236, 239, 240 Bremner, John, 350, 351 289, Broad Pass, 290 330. Brooks, Alfred, 281 Bureau of Education, 331, 371 Caches, 352 Calico Bluff, 74 Campbell, 36, 37 Campbell River, 35 Canada Jay, 122 14s Canadian Mounted Police, 28. C7 to Can-Alaska, 243 " Carbureter troubles, 303 Caribou, 83, 84, 333 Caribou Crossing, 16 Carmack, 45 Caro, 258 Cartography, 9, 32, 34, 42, 76, 81, 102, tao, 121, 113, 126, 222, 246, 288, 251, 324, 327, 328, 346. 362 Cats, 337 Chageluk Slough, 175, 363 Chageluks, 372 Chandalar, 109, 247 Chandalar, East Fork, 250 Chandalar Lake, 261 Chapman, Dr., 176, 190 Charley River, 83 Chemical Experiment, 303 Chena, 292, 293 Chilkat Indians, 36 Chips, 375 Chrijtian Lake, 251 Christian Iliver, 249, 250 Circle City, 90 Climate, 138, 157, 355 agricultural possibilities, 134 approach of spring, 317 389 390 INDEX M i at St. Michaelt, 114 effect of winter cold on loil, 107 in Muthcrn itretch of Yukon, 174 low temperaiure, 94. <'4i >'4 moiiturc, 124 ■pring and early vegctablei, 17 itormi in Bering Sea, 109 summer heat, 326 thawi on river, 107 warm weather, 9J wet June, 298 Oub-houte, 3^ 367 Coal-mines, 32, 132, 171, 271, 286 Coal-mining, 67, 81 Coldfoot, 361 Coleen River, 233 Commercial companies, 36, 100, loi, 140, 153,195,200,210,211,212, 258 Conway, 2, 3 Cook, Captain, 3, 140, 152, 207, 208 Cook, Doctor, 327 Cornell, Jack, 253, 254, 255, 257 Coschaket, 267 Cribbage boards, 215 Crime, 155, 156, 317. 359 Cross Creek, 194, 195 Current phenomena, 291 Customs houses, 71 Cut-oifs, 319 Dall, 127, 128, 131, 136. '5!, '66. 168, 202, 211, 331, 342 Dall River, 127, 130 Dawson, 51, 218 Decoy geese, 318 De Long, 212 Dcnali, Mt., 146, 272, 278, 290 Derabin, 166 Deserted City, 133 Dewey, Mt., 10 Dikeman, 379 Dogs, 96, 110, III, 112, 264, 354, 383 Drift-poles, 305 Driftwood, 78, 79 Drowning, 307, 308 Duncan, Fr., 7 Dyer, 11 Eagle, 37» Eagles, 73, 320, Jll Education, 177, «*4t '»7. 309i JW 371 Electric lighu, 346 Endicott Mts., 34a, 347, 354 Erosion phenomena, 150 Eskimos, 78, 177, 251, 3>9> 340 appearance, 216 attire, 21s benefit from reindeer, 218 boat builden, 217 club>house, 366 contact with whites, 215, 217 examples of man's supremacy, 217 food, 195 graves, 202 handicraft, 215 industries, 216 influence, 184 navigators, 216 on Yukon, 196 picturesque people, 318 reduction in numbers, 217 riparian, 196 stature, 216 temperament, 216 trading, 201 zone, 195 Evelyn, John, 342 Explorers, 100, 127,350 Fairbanks, 52, 291, 292, 293, 295, 296,334 Farthing, 290 Fauna, 38, 81, 84, 125, 131, 227, 273, 315, 3'8, 320, 321, 332, 334. 336 Fire making, 341 Fires, 131 Fish, camps, no, 174, 182, 183 canneries, 8 catching, by animals, 321 diet, 341 dip nets, 113 migration, 55 tales, 322 wheels, 113 Five Finger Rapids, 33 INDEX * STO- 17 icy, 117 Flat City, 387 Flaxmin Iiland, 15$ Flin, lit Flora, iji, J71 poiionoui plant, 169 ■mall-sized timber, 68 iretf at Hnt .Springi, 170 Foreit scrub, 124 Fort Gibbon, 139 Fort Hamlin, 90 Fort Liicum, 214 Fort Reliance, 42, 60 Fort Selkirk, 35, 37 Fort Yukon, 96, I02, 103, loj, 108, Forty Mile Camp, 64, 66 Foxea, 335 Fox-farminfi, 181, 281 Franklin, Sir John, 166, 240, 333 Freight rates, 33 1 Fur trade, 335 Game, 275, 317, 318 Geography: identification problems, local names, 362 pedantic place names, ■ ' ; persistence of place nam 60 personal nomenclature, . , 62 place names, 76, 78 uncharted region, 250 Geology, 75 Glaciers, 12, 39, 40, 263, 272, 275, 276, 277, 280,313 Goodpaster River, 309 Government: in Canadian territory, aid, 331 and crime, 155, 253, 251., 316 cartography, 126, 132 ceremonial, 147 crime investigation, 118 dealing with Indians, 56 defects of, 59 early days, 72, 103 education policy, 369, 371 finances, 71 geological survey, 76 39' illiteracy, 126 ineptitude, 284 land office work, 346 legal methods, 117 local, 14s, 163 military posts, 72 military telegraph, 74 mortality, 338 neglect of medical attention, 169 policy, 190 prohibition, 359 railways, 210, 284, 288, 295 red tape, 308 reindeer, 188 road building, 310 school methods, 369, 370 subsidy to agriculture, 135 tax-collecting cynicism, 360 unpaid magistracy, 117 Grant Creek, 153 "Greeley, 91, 125 Guggenheims, 385, 387 Guide books, 4 Haida Indiana, 369 Hammond River, 362 Harper, Arthur, 42, 86, 293 Herbert, John, 232 Hogatzakaket Mts., 318, 320 Hogatzatna, 319 Holy Cross Mission, 187, 188, 189, 198 Horse-scow, 353 Horse-sleds, 354 Horses, 378 Hospitals, 103, 148, 169, 385 Hot Springs, 269 Hudson's Bay Co., 85, 95, 98, 100, 222, 234, 236, 241 Huggins, Genl., 327, 328 Huggins Island, 327 Hughes City, 324, 325 Hunting, 333 Ice, 25, 221 break up, 247 travel on Tanana, 264 Iditarod, 163, 373 yjz INDEX Idiiirod City, 3l>> ]>7 Ulao,78 Indiani: inhaoliio'. 5> '4'>> M'l ■ 4], 141. 14? archiici'iurc, 188 bad repuration, 146 cannibalUnit 166 chieftain, >3>, >49 children, 339 ' Chriitianity, 137 coait, 6 crime, 115, I16, 118, 164, 155 dangeri of deterioration, aM dcfteneration, 7 depopulation, 105, 106, 144, I4S< 175. 'S9 deterioration, 56, 13} development, )7a Eikimoi, JJt, 340 ethnology. M' evolution of, I4> fish campa, 1 11 folk-lore, 315 food, 96, 178. 331 fur trapping, 17a future of, 191, 19' gamea, »l government relief work, 331 half-breeda, 133 hardy tribe, 3*9 Hudson's Bay Co., 14" hunters, 81 hunting, 174. 3 '8 Koyukuk, 166, 168, 315 language, 126, l$i language discouraged, 370 legends, 252 longevity, 242, 243, 244 magic, 186 marriage with whites, 108 massacre by, at Andreafsky, 199 massacre by Nulati Indiani, 167 medicine-men, 237, J52 migratory nature, 344 military movements, 330 mixed, 177 mortality, 189 native food, 182 nomadic tribe, 14I nomenclature, 32, 189 pilot, 30s prohibition, 360 protected by missions, i«| provenance of, 14a racial difficulties, 89 raid, 36 religion, 179, 184, iSSi ^ rights, 368 sleep in daylight, 97, 98 statistics, 343 superiority, 57 trade, 139 translations into Indian language, 104 uprising, 72 village desaibed, 267 village, white man'a town, 287 with white race, 193 Innoko River, 173, 373 Inside passage, I, a, s Interpreters, 339 Jack knifing, 23 Jackson, Doctor, 21S Jesuiu, 188 Jette, Father, 143. 3>4 John River, 353 Johnson, Doctor, 374 Journalism, 161 Juneau, 8 Kaiyuh, Mts., 173 Slough, 174 Kaket, 152, 34> Kaltag, 171, 172 Kantishna, 272, 27S KazheJm, 184 Katmai Mt., 185, 186 Kazhlme, 366 Kennan, 128 Kerosene, 303 Khotol, 174 Kipling, 348, 3S> Klondike Era, 14, S3. 54, 64, 88 genesis, 41, 41, 85, 86, 103 gold seekers, 46 INDEX 393 ilincrarw^, 49 littraty mrmoriali, 4], 44 newt of gold diiCDVery, 4$ output of minM, 101 K(ion of (old, 47 ■cdiiion 11 Dawioii, jj •hipping, II) ■tampcde, 48 Klondike River, jo Knuckle Joint, 381 Kobuki, 339, 340, 354 Kokerinet, 156, 158 Kornutna, 316 Kotzebue, IS4 Kotzebue Sound, 168 Koyukuk, 99, 165, 361, Koyukuk, Camp, 355, 358 Korkt, 354 Mt., 313 Kuailvak Mt., 198 Kuikokwim, 155 Kuikokwim River, 19J Kwikpak, 99 Lakei, 113, 124 Lake Unknown, 250 Lebarge Lake, 24, 27 Lewii Landing, 16] Lining up, 306 Liquor tralBc, 56, 103, 115, 145, '92, 193. Ill, 212, 259, 290, 358, 360 Livengood, 280 Log Jam, 280 London, Jack, 44 Longitude, 239, 240 Lookout Mt., 349 Lowden, 163 Lynxei, 335 Mackenzie, 77 Malemutes, 329, 340 Mammoth remains, 154 Marshall, 197 Mastodon Creek, 86 Maya, Alfred, 153 168, 268, McDonald, 8;, 104 McKinley Fork, 276 McQuestin, 62 Meali, 385 4eaney, Fiofoior, 4 Measles, 189 Medical missioni, 148, 189, 190 Medicine-men, 185, i85, 237, jji Meloiikaket, 157, 160, 161 Meloiitna, 157 Mensuration, 311, 319 Meridian, 141, 239 M'Jnight Sun, 97 Mike Hess, 132 Minchumina Lake, 273 Mining, 73, 83, 357 agriculture, 135 camps, 197. 295, 358, 361, 38s camps deserted, 273, 274 camps' growth, 382 copper, 18 geology, 259 gold. 30, 280, 397, 298, 350, 383, 387 life, 87 life, a luxurious hotel, 270 mechanical, 53 placer. 63, 65, 297 placer, at Ruby, 162 placer, conditions. 356 placer, transportation problemi, 380 pro«pecting. 294 prospectors' dangers. 253 quartz. 8, 259. 260 shifting population, 262 temporary prosperity, 43 town life, in romance, 44 towns. 13. 51. 162 towns, decayed, 88, 133 Minto, 283. 284 Lake. 280 Missionaries. 127 Missions. 16, 37. 89. 127. 176, 206, 237.238, 251, 286, 310, 329, 331, 339. 383 Anglican. 138 policy with natives, 199 394 INDEX Roman Catholic, 156, 188, 189, 190 Runian, 195, 196 Mohawks, 361 Moosehide, SS Mosquitoes, 95, 97> "S, 183, >I4> 257. 365 Motor boats, 223 engines, 228, 301, 303 boat, Hfe on a, 230 Mountain, Bishop, 164 Mountain, scenery, 11, 129, 130, 343, 178, 290, 319, 349, 350 sheep, 83 snow, 77 village, 169, 206 Mouse Point, Ij; Mt. McKinley, c/. Denali Muir Glacier, 12 Muir, John, 12 Muldoon Glacier, 276, 277 Murray, 9S, 99, 240 Nahoni, 24^, 246 Lakes, 80 Nansen, 150, 229 Narratives, exploration in Alaska, 330. Nation, 81 National Park, 279 Navigation, 23, 25, 305, 306, 312, 3>4, 347. 375. 380, 381, 382 accidents of, 231 dangers, 246, 270 sluggish, 373 Nenana, 285, 286, 289, 290 Nesseltode, loi New Rampart House, 242 Nolan, 362 Nordenskiold River, 32, 149, !$! North American Trading and Trans- portation Company, 213 Norton Sound, 207, 208 Norway, 192 Nowikaket, ijs, 161 Nu-cha-la-woy-ya, 140 Nuclayette, 351 Nulato, 16;, 169 massacre, [67, 352 Nushagak, oldest Russian post, 211 Ogilvie, 16, 17, 41, 45, 68, 69 O. Henry, 62, 385 Old Rampart House, 236 Ophir, 373 Owls, 337, 338 Ox Bows, 373 Peary, 346 Pelican, 17, 157, 191. 203, 222, 228, 229, 230, 242, 24s, 265, 266, 281, 286, 298, 299, 301, 302, 304, 305, 306, 322, 323, 329 Pell River, 35 Photography, 282, 283 Picturesque scenery, 136 Pike-poles, 304 , Pilot Station, 198 Pimute Portage, 193 Pioneer Life, 116, 123, 315, 356, 368, 384 Pioneers, 12, 14, 24, 42, 48, 49, 63, 221, 267, 324, 334, 376 Pneumatic cushions, 22S Point-no-Point, 132 Poling boat, 275 Porcupine, 80, 109, 334 its upper course, 245 narrow channels, 246 Pribilof Islands, 153 Primus stove, 230 Prospectors, 257, 293, 294 Rabbits, 332, 333, 335, 336, 33* Railways, 9, 15, 18, 25, 262, 271, 27% 28s, 287, 296 Rainbow, 159 Rampart City, 133 Ramparts, 131, 138 of the Porcupine, 233, 234 Raymond, Capuin, 100 Red Mountain, 325 Reindeer, 188 Restaurants, 20, 21 Rex Beach, 134 River John, 350 Road building, 310 INDEX Road house, 82, S3 Roads, 259 Roman Catholic Church. 206. CJ. Missions Romanoff Point, 207 Rotation of earth, 150 Rowe, Bishop, 87, 88 Rowikaket, 161 Roy River, 130, 132 Ruby, 139. 161, 162, 163 Russian Alaska, 98. loi, 156, 168, >94. I95» 196. 199 St.- John-in-the- Wilderness, 329 St. Michael, antiquities, 211 attempt to eliminate, 210 canal to bay, 209 climate at, 214 described by De Long in 1879, 212 deserted plants at, 214 distance from Yukon on bar, 207 foundation, 211 harbor conditions, 209 its early settlers, 212 Klondike era, 213 route from fCaltag, 172 Salchaket, 308 Salmon, 182, 183 diet, 178 fishing, 227 migration, 179, 180, 181 Sand-bars, 247 Schwatka, 15, 17, 31, 32, 34, 35, 67, 68, 72. 153 Service R, 348 Sheep Creek, 77 Sheep hunting, 38 Shumogin Island, 141 Siberian rivers, 149 Signal Corps, 137 Sim Vincent, 237 Skagway, 9, 13 Sleds, 48 Sloughs, 114, 292, 298, 299, 334, 364 Small-pox epidemic, 386 Smudge, 365 Snow, impressions, 336 water, 275, 276 39S Soap, 366 South Fork of Koyukuk, 343 Stampede, days, 134, 328 economics, 387 food, 334 Kantishna, 273 Stampedes, 294, 344. 345, 375, 377. 378 Standees, 387 Stankus, 92 Starter, 20 Steamboats, 22, 29, 92, 100, 103, 136, 241,258,307,344,345,347,35, 378, 380 abandoned, 214 and driftwood, 78 disused, 200 stranded, 202 wrecked, 201 Stefansson, 349 Stephen's Village, 125, 126 Stone Axe, 140, 143 Stoney, Lieutenant, 313 Summer travel, 253 Summers, 97 Surveys, 69, 76, 80, 250 Suspension Bridge, 285 Sweat bath, 366 Table d'hote, 20 Tanana, 139, 140, 143. 144, ,45, ^^^ . '47. 149. 312,313 importance commercially, 262 need of sailing marks, 270 swift stream, 263, 264 water, effect on motor engines, 265 Tanana Crossing, 306, 310, 311 Telegraph lines, 172, 173. 382 Teslin River, 30 Thermometers, 284, 332, 333 1 hirty Mde River, 28 Thunder-storm, 157 Tips, 21 Tobacco, 244 Tolovana, 279, 280, 281 Totems, 5 Tozitna, 151 Trade, 102 396 INDEX m pi Trading companies, 37 Traffic routes, I, 2, 14, 15, iS, 25, 27, 32, 49, 56, 108, 112, 117, 136, 139, 140, Mt, 147. <7»» 19J. "o> 213, 223, 242. 251. iS3» 254. 255, 259, 273, 280, 286, 309, 3»7.3a6» 331. 340, 353. 379 Trondeg River, 45 Tundra, 349 Turner, J. H., 120, 236, 239 Unalaklik, 172, 215 Vancouver, 3, 4, 9 Victor, story of, 117, 119 Victor's Place, 114 Vital statistics, 105 Volcanoes, 34, 35, x86 ' Wasky, Frank, 206 Weather bureau, 284 Western Union survey, 1 27, 1 28 White Horse, 19 White River, 41 Wireless stations, 173 Wolves, 84, 337. 338 Wood cutting, 271 Yanert, William, 120, I2I, 123 Young Eagle Mountain, 342 Yukon, agriculture on, 191 / bank-saving device, 108 boneyard, 153 channel, 92 confluence, 38, 40 confluence with Koyukuk, 164, 165 confluence with Porcupine, 221 confluence with Tanana, 138, 139, Crossing, 32 current, 91 current deviation, 149, 150^ 151 dangers of navigation, 114 deaths by drowning, 27 decline in river tonnage, 172 delta country, 198 drainage area, 129 drainage basin, 348 erosion, 106, 107, 205 Eskimos, 196 exploration, 137 father of the, 62 fish migration on, 55 Flats, 90, 93, 94, 95. 96, [09> 121, 249 Flau scenery, 119 Flats map, 123 flora, 174 forest-fires, 131 freight navigation, 172 geography in Flats, 123 geology, 75 high water, 79 ice in, 25, 94 ice jamming, 83 increased stream after Tanana con- fluence, 149 inundation, 82 islands, 32 jack knifing, 23 Klondike era, 201 Koyukok Flats Keneiy; 164 length of, 17 loneliness, 137, T75 mining on bars, 65 monotonous scenery, 60 mountain scenery, 22, 130 mouths, 199, 205, 207 mudd}', 180 navigable near source, 16 navigation, 29 pilots, 92 police patrol, 58 rabbits on, 334 Rampart section, 77, 129 River islands, 32 gelation of shores, 107 rapids, 33, 136 sand-bars, 382 scenery, 39 slough, 364 source, 30 tributari^ 248 tributaries explored, 323 unknown re^on, 80 southern stretch, 174 INDEX , 121, spring, 26 stretch Rowikaket and Mdoza- Kaket, 161 summer, 94 thunder-storm on, ic8 timber, 68 397 unknown, 99 unpopulated region, 173 width, 196 winter, 94 Zagoskin, 136, 137 iM JLL3f£: L L »v»»%f^ans»V',i< «5liS!«;\r,'.':iS&t?-.*is~'r:as?