To describe these routes is the next task—first, that by the way of St. Michael, and second—up the Yukon River.
Route, via St. Michael and the Yukon River.—This begins by a sea-voyage, which may be direct, or along the coast. The special steamers (and future voyages, no doubt) usually take a direct course across the North Pacific and through the Aleutian Islands to St. Michael, in Norton Sound, a bight of Bering Sea. The distance from San Francisco is given as 2,850 miles; from Victoria or Seattle, about 2,200 miles. The inside course would be somewhat longer, would follow the route next to be described as far as Juneau and Sitka, then strike northwest along the coast to St. Michael.
This town, on an island near shore in Norton Sound, was established in 1835 by Lieut. Michael Tébenkoff, of the Russian navy, who named it after his patron saint. Though some distance to the mouth of the Yukon entrance, St. Michael has always been the controlling center and base of supplies for the great valley. The North American Trading and Transportation Company and the Alaska Commercial Company have their large warehouses here, and provide the miners with tools, clothing and provisions. Recently the wharf and warehouse accommodations have been extended, and the population has increased, but if, as is probable, any considerable number of men are stopped there this fall by the freezing of the river, and compelled to pass the winter on the island, they will find it a dreary, if not dangerous experience.
The vessels supplying this depot can seldom approach the anchorage of St. Michael before the end of June on account of large bodies of drifting ice that beset the waters of Norton Sound and the straits between St. Lawrence and the Yukon Delta.
A temporary landing-place is built out into water deep enough for loaded boats drawing five feet to come up at high tide, this is removed when winter approaches, as otherwise it would be destroyed by ice. The shore is sandy and affords a moderately sloping beach, on which boats may be drawn up. A few feet only from high water mark are perpendicular banks from six to ten feet high, composed of decayed pumice and ashes, covered with a layer about four feet thick of clay and vegetable matter resembling peat. This forms a nearly even meadow with numerous pools of water, which gradually ascends for a mile or so to a low hill, of volcanic origin, known as the Shaman Mountain.
Between the point on which St. Michael is built and the mainland, a small arm of the sea makes in, in which three fathoms may be carried until the flagstaff of the fort bears west by north, this is the best-protected anchorage, and has as much water and as good bottom as can be found much farther out.
The excitement of the summer of 1897 caused an enlargement of facilities and the erection of additional buildings, forming a nucleus of traffic called Fort Get There. Here will be put together in the autumn or winter at least three, and perhaps more, new river steamboats, of which only two or three have been running on the lower river during the last two or three years. These are taken up, in pieces, by ships and fitted together at this point. All are flat-bottomed, stern-wheeled, powerfully engined craft, the largest able to carry perhaps 250 tons, such as run on the upper Missouri, and they will burn wood, the cutting and stacking of which on the river bank will furnish work to many men during the coming winter. To such steamers, or smaller boats, all the persons and cargoes must be transferred at St. Michael.
For the last few years there has been no trader here but the agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, and a story is told of the building of a riverboat there in 1892, which illustrates what life on the Yukon used to be. In that year a Chicago man, P. B. Weare, resolved to enter the Alaskan field as a trader. He chartered a schooner, and placed upon it a steamboat, built in sections and needing only to be put together and have its machinery set up, and for this purpose he took with him a force of carpenters and machinists. On reaching St. Michael Weare was refused permission to land his boat sections on the land of the Commercial Company's post, and was compelled to make a troublesome landing on the open beach, where he began operations. Suddenly his ship carpenters stopped work. They had been offered, it was said, double pay by the rival concern if they would desist from all work. Weare turned to the Indians, but with the same ill-success. The Indians were looking out for their winter grub. Here was the Chicago man 2,500 miles from San Francisco and only two weeks left to him in which to put his boat together and then hope for a chance to ascend the river before winter came on. There was no time in which to get additional men from San Francisco. In the midst of his trouble Weare one day espied the revenue cutter Bear steaming into the roadstead. On board of her was Captain Michael A. Healy. That officer, on going ashore and discovering the condition of affairs, threatened to hang every carpenter and mechanic Weare had brought up if they failed to immediately commence work. The men went to work, and with them went a gang of men from the Bear. The little steamer was put together in a few days, and the Bear only went to sea after seeing the P. B. Weare steaming into the mouth of the Yukon.
The Weare was enabled that summer to land her stores along the Yukon, and was the only vessel available for the early crowds of miners going to Klondike.
The mouth of the Yukon is a great delta, surrounded by marsh of timber—a soaking prairie in summer, a plain of snow and ice in winter. The shifting bars and shallows face out from this delta far into Bering Sea, and no channel has yet been discovered whereby an ocean steamer could enter any of the mouths. Fortunately the northernmost mouth, nearest St. Michael and 65 miles from it, is navigable for the light river steamers, and this one, called Aphoon, and marked by its unusual growth of willows and bushes is well known to the local Russian and Indian pilots. It is narrow and intricate, and the general course up stream is south-southeast. Streams and passages enter it, and it has troublesome tidal currents. The whole space between the mouth is a net-work, indeed, of narrow channels, through the marshes.
Kutluck, at the outlet of the Aphoon, on Pastol Bay, is an Indian village, long celebrated for its manufacture of skin boats (bidars), and there the old-time voyagers were accustomed to get the only night's sleep ashore that navigation permits between St. Michael and Andraefski. On the south bank of the main stream, at the head of the delta, is the Roman Catholic mission of Kuslivuk; and a few miles higher, just above the mouth of the Andraefski River, is the abandoned Russian trading post, Andraefski, above which the river winds past Icogmute, where there is a Greek Catholic mission. The banks of the river are much wooded, and the current even as far down as Koserefski averages over three knots an hour. Above Koserefski (the Catholic Mission station), the course is along stretches of uninviting country, among marsh islands and "sloughs," the current growing more and more swift on the long reach from Auvik, where the Episcopal mission is situated, to Nulato.
The river here has a nearly north and south course, parallel with the coast of Norton Sound and within fifty miles or so of it. Two portages across here form cut-offs in constant use in winter by the traders, Indians and missionaries. The first of these portages starts from the mainland opposite the Island of St. Michael, and passes over the range of hills that defines the shore to the headwaters of the Anvik River. This journey may be made in winter by sledges and thence down the Auvik to the Yukon, but it is a hard road. Mr. Nelson, the naturalist, and a fur trader, spent two months from November 16, 1880, to January 19, 1891, in reaching the Yukon by this path.
The other portage is that between Unalaklik, a Swedish mission station at the mouth of the Unalaklik River, some fifty miles north of St. Michael, and a stream that enters the Yukon half way between Auvik and Nulato. In going from St. Michael to Unalatlik there are few points at which a boat can land even in the smoothest weather; in rough weather only Major's Cove and Kegiktowenk before rounding Tolstoi Point to Topánika, where there is a trading post. Topánika is some ten miles from Unalaklik, with a high shelving beach, behind which rise high walls of sandstone in perpendicular bluffs from twenty to one hundred feet in height. This beach continues all the way to the Unalaklik River, the bluff gradually decreasing into a marshy plain at the river's mouth, which is obstructed by a bar over which at low tide there are only a few feet of water except in a narrow and tortuous channel, constantly changing as the river deposits fresh detritus. Inside this bar there are two or three fathoms for a few miles, but the channel has only a few feet, most of the summer, from the mouth of the river to Ulukuk.
Trees commence along the Unalaklik River as soon as the distance from the coast winds and salt air permit them to grow; willow, poplar, birch and spruce being those most frequently found.
The Unalaklik River is followed upward to Ulukuk, where begins a sledging portage over the marshes to the Ulukuk Hills, where there is a native village known as Vesolia Sopka, or Cheerful Peak, at an altitude of eight hundred feet above the surrounding plain. This is a well-known trapping ground, the fox and marten being very plentiful. From Sopka Vesolia (Cheerful Peak) it is about one day's journey to Beaver Lake, which is only a marshy tundra in winter, but is flooded in the spring and summer months. From the high hills beyond the lake one may catch a first glimpse of the great Yukon sweeping between its splendid banks.
The natives call Nulato emphatically a "hungry" place, and it was once the scene of an atrocious massacre. Capt. Dall, from whose book much of the information regarding this part of Alaska is derived, describes the Indians here as a very great nuisance. "They had," he explains, "a great habit of coming in and sitting down, doing and saying nothing, but watching everything. At meal times they seemed to count and weigh every morsel we ate, and were never backward in assisting to dispose of the remains of the meal. Occasionally we would get desperate and clean them all out, but they would drop in again and we could do nothing but resign ourselves."
The soil on the banks of the Yukon and that of the islands probably never thaws far below the surface. It is certain that no living roots are found at a greater depth than three feet. The soil, in layers that seems to mark annual inundations, consists of a stratum of sand overlaid by mud and covered with vegetable matter, the layers being from a half inch to three inches in thickness. In many places where the bank has been undermined these layers may be counted by the hundred. Low bluffs of blue sandstone, with here and there a high gravel bank, characterize the shores as far as Point Sakataloutan, and some distance above this point begin the quartzose rocks.
The next station on the river is the village of Nowikakat, on the left bank. Here may be obtained stores of dried meat and fat from the Indians. The village is situated upon a beautiful bay or Nowikakat Harbor, which is connected by a narrow entrance with the Yukon. "Through this a beautiful view is obtained across the river, through the numerous islands of the opposite shore, and of the Yukon Mountains in the distance. The feathery willows and light poplars bend over and are reflected in the dark water, unmixed as yet with Yukon mud; every island and hillside is clothed in the delicate green of spring, and luxuriates in a density of foliage remarkable in such a latitude."
Nowikakat is specially noted for the excellence of its canoes, of which the harbor is so full that a boat makes its landing with difficulty among them. It is the only safe place on the lower Yukon for wintering a steamer, as it is sheltered from the freshets which bring down great crushes of ice in the spring.
At Nuklukahyet there is a mission of the Episcopal church and a trading store, but there may or may not be supplies of civilized goods, not to speak of moose meat and fat. This is the neutral ground where all the tribes meet in the spring to trade. The Tananah, which flows into the Yukon at this point, is much broader here than the Yukon, and it is here that Captain Dall exclaims in his diary: "And yet into this noble river no white man has dipped his paddle." Recently, however, the Tananah has been more or less explored by prospectors with favorable results towards the head of the river, which is more easily reached overland from Circle City and the Birch Creek camps.
Leaving Nuklukahyet, the "Ramparts" are soon sighted, and the Yukon rapids sweep between bluffs and hills which rise about fifteen hundred feet above the river, which is not more than half a mile wide and seems almost as much underground as a river bed in a canyon. The rocks are metaphoric quartzites, and the river-bed is crossed by a belt of granite. The rapid current has worn the granite away at either side, making two good channels, but in the center lies an island of granite over which the water plunges at high water, the fall being about twelve feet in half a mile.
Beyond the mouth of the Tananah the Yukon begins to widen, and it is filled with small islands. The mountains disappear, and just beyond them the Totokakat, or Dall River of Ketchum, enters the Yukon from the north. Beyond this point the river, ever broadening, passes the "Small Houses," deserted along the bank at the time, years ago, when the scarlet fever, brought by a trading vessel to the mouth of the Chilkat, spread to the Upper Yukon and depopulated the station. This place is noted for the abundance of its game and fish.
The banks of the river above this point become very low and flat, the plain stretching almost unbroken to the Arctic Ocean.
The next stream which empties into the Yukon is Beaver Creek, and farther on the prospector bound for Circle City may make his way some two hundred miles up Birch Creek, along which much gold has already been discovered, to a portage of six miles, which will carry him within six miles of Circle City on the west.
Meanwhile the Yukon passes Porcupine River and Fort Yukon, the old trading-post founded in 1846-7, about a mile farther up the river than the present fort is situated. The situation was changed in 1864, owing to the undermining of the Yukon, which yearly washed away a portion of the steep bank until the foundation timbers of the old Redoubt over-hung the flood.
Many small islands encumber the river from Fort Yukon to Circle City, and the river flows along the rich lowland to the towns and mining centers of the new El Dorado, an account of which belongs to a future chapter.
This voyage can be made only between the middle of June and the middle of September, and requires about forty days, at best, from San Francisco to Circle City or Forty Mile.
Route via Juneau, the Passes and down the Upper Yukon River. The second and more usual, because shorter and quicker course, is that to the head of Lynn Canal (Taiya Inlet) and overland. This coast voyage may be said to begin at Victoria, B. C. (since all coast steamers gather and stop there), where a large number of persons prefer to buy their outfits, since by so doing, and obtaining a certificate of the fact, they avoid the custom duties exacted at the boundary line on all goods and equipments brought from the United States. Victoria is well supplied with stores, and is, besides, one of the most interesting towns on the Pacific coast. The loveliest place in the whole neighborhood is Beacon Hill Park, and is well worth a visit by those who find an hour or two on their hands before the departure of the steamer. It forms a half-natural, half-cultivated area of the shore of the Straits of Fuca, where coppices of the beautiful live oak, and many strange trees and shrubs mingled with the all-pervading evergreens.
Within three miles of the city, and reached by street cars, is the principal station in the North Pacific of the British navy, at Esquimault Bay. This is one of the most picturesque harbors in the world, and a beginning is made of fortifications upon a very large scale and of the most modern character. This station, in many respects, is the most interesting place on the Pacific coast of Canada.
Leaving Victoria, the steamer makes its way cautiously through the sinuous channels of the harbor into the waters of Fuca Strait, but this is soon left behind and the steamer turns this way, and that, at the entrance to the Gulf of Georgia, among those islands through which runs the international boundary line, and for the possession of which England and the United States nearly went to war in 1862. The water at first is pale and somewhat opaque, for it is the current of the great Fraser gliding far out upon the surface, and the steamer passes on beyond it into the darker, clearer, salter waters of the gulf. Then the prow is headed to Vancouver, where the mails, freight and new railway passengers are received.
From Vancouver the steamer crosses to Nanaimo, a large settlement on Vancouver Island, where coal mines of great importance exist. A railway now connects this point with Victoria, and a wagon road crosses the interior of the island to Alberni Canal and the seaport at its entrance on Barclay Sound. This is the farthest northern telegraph point. The mines at Nanaimo were exhausted some time ago, after which deep excavations were made on Newcastle Island, just opposite the town. But after a tremendous fire these also were abandoned, and all the workings are now on the shores of Departure Bay, where a colliery village named Wellington has been built up. A steam ferry connects Nanaimo with Wellington; and while the steamer takes in its coal, the passengers disperse in one or the other village, go trout fishing, shooting or botanizing in the neighboring woods, or trade and chaffer with the Indians. Nanaimo has anything but the appearance of a mining town. The houses do not stretch out in the squalid, soot-covered rows familiar to Pennsylvania, but are scattered picturesquely, and surrounded by gardens.
Just ahead lie the splendid hills of Texada Island, whose iron mines yield ore of extraordinary purity, which is largely shipped to the United States to be made into steel. The steamer keeps to the left, making its way through Bayne's Sound, passing Cape Lazaro on the left and the upper end of Texada on the right, across the broadening water along the Vancouver shore into Seymour Narrows. These narrows are only about 900 yards wide, and in them there is an incessant turmoil and bubbling of currents. This is caused by the collision of the streams which takes place here; the flood stream from the south, through the Strait of Fuca and up the Haro Archipelago being met by that from Queen Charlotte Sound and Johnstone straits. These straits are about 140 miles long, and by the time their full length is passed, and the maze of small islands on the right and Vancouver's bulwark on the left are escaped together, the open Pacific shows itself for an hour or two in the offing of Queen Charlotte's Sound, and the steamer rises and falls gently upon long, lazy rollers that have swept all the way from China and Polynesia. Otherwise the whole voyage is in sheltered waters, and seasickness is impossible. The steamer's course now hugs the shore, turning into Fitz Hugh Sound, among Calvert, Hunter's and Bardswell islands, where the ship's spars sometimes brush the overhanging trees. Here are the entrances to Burke Channel and Dean's Canal that penetrate far amid the tremendous cliffs of the mainland mountains. Beyond these the steamer dashes across the open bight of Milbank Sound only to enter the long passages behind Princess Royal, Pit and Packer islands, and coming out at last into Dixon Sound at the extremity of British Columbia's ragged coast line.
The fogs which prevail here are due to the fact that this bight is filled with the waters of the warm Japanese current and the gulf stream of the Pacific from which the warm moisture rises to be condensed by the cool air that descends from the neighboring mountains, into the dense fogs and heavy rain storms to which the littoral forest owes its extraordinary luxuriance. During the mid-summer and early autumn, however, the temperature of air and water become so nearly equable that fog and rain are the exception rather than the rule.
Crossing the invisible boundary into Alaska the steamer heads straight toward Fort Tougass, on Wales Island, once a military station of the United States, but now only a fishing place. Between this point and Fort Wrangel another abandoned military post of the United States, two or three fish canneries and trading stations are visited and the ship goes on among innumerable islands and along wide reaches of sound to Taku Inlet (which deeply indents the coast, and is likely in the near future to become an important route to the gold fields), and a few hours later Juneau City is reached.
Juneau City has been lately called the key to the Klondike regions, as it is the point of departure for the numberless gold hunters who, when the season opens again, will rush blindly over incalculably rich ledges near the coast to that remote inland El Dorado of their dreams.
Juneau has for seventeen years been supported by the gold mines of the neighboring coast. It is situated ten miles above the entrance of Gastineau Channel, and lies at the base of precipitous mountains, its court house, hotels, churches, schools, hospital and opera house forming the nucleus for a population which in 1893 aggregated 1,500, a number very largely increased each winter by the miners who gather in from distant camps. The saloons, of which in 1871 there were already twenty-two, have increased proportionately, and there are, further, at least one weekly newspaper, one volunteer fire brigade, a militia company and a brass band in Juneau. The curio shops on Front and Seward streets are well worth visiting, and from the top of Seward Street a path leads up to the Auk village, whose people claim the flats at the mouth of Gold Creek. A curious cemetery may be seen on the high ground across the creek, ornamented with totemic carvings and hung with offerings to departed spirits which no white man dares disturb.
FROM JUNEAU TO THE GOLD FIELDS.
The few persons who formerly wished to go to the head of Lynn Canal did so mainly by canoeing, or chartered launches, but now many opportunities are offered by large steamboats. Most of the steamers that bring miners and prospectors from below do not now discharge their freight at Juneau, however, but go straight to the new port Dyea at the head of the canal. Lynn Canal is the grandest fiord on the coast, which it penetrates for seventy-five miles. It is then divided by a long peninsula called Seduction Point, into two prongs, the western of which is called Chilkat Inlet, and the eastern Chilkoot. "It has but few indentations, and the abrupt palisades of the mainland shores present an unrivalled panorama of mountains, glaciers and forests, with wonderful cloud effects. Depths of 430 fathoms have been sounded in the canal, and the continental range on the east and the White Mountains on the west rise to average heights of 6,000 feet, with glaciers in every ravine and alcove." No Cameron boundary line, which Canada would like to establish, would cut this fiord in two, and make it useless to both countries in case of quarrel. The magnificent fan-shaped Davidson glacier, here, is only one among hundreds of grand ice rivers shedding their bergs into its waters. At various points salmon canneries have long been in operation; and the Seward City mines are only the best among several mineral locations of promise. A glance at the map will show that this "canal" forms a straight continuation of Chatham Strait, making a north and south passage nearly four hundred miles in length, which is undoubtedly the trough of a departed glacier.
Dyea, the new steamer landing and sub-port of entry, is at the head of navigation on the Chilkoot or eastern branch of this Lynn Canal, and takes its name, in bad modern spelling, from the long-known Taiya Inlet, which is a prolongation inland for twenty miles of the head of the Chilkoot Inlet. It should continue to be spelled Tiaya. This inlet is far the better of the two for shipping, Chilkat Inlet being exposed to the prevalent and often dangerous south wind, so that it is regarded by navigators as one of the most dangerous points on the Alaskan coast. A Presbyterian mission and government school were formerly sustained at Haines, on Seduction Point, but were abandoned some years ago on account of Indian hostility.
The Passes.—Three passes over the mountains are reached from these two inlets,—Chilkat, Chilkoot and White.
Chilkat Pass is that longest known and formerly most in vogue. The Chilkat Indians had several fixed villages near the head of the inlet, and were accustomed to go back and forth over the mountains to trade with the interior Indians, whom they would not allow to come to the coast. They thus enjoyed not only the monopoly of the business of carrying supplies over to the Yukon trading posts and bringing out the furs, and more recently of assisting the miners, but made huge profits as middle-men between the Indians of the interior and the trading posts on the coast. They are a sturdy race of mountaineers, and the most arrogant, treacherous and turbulent of all the northwestern tribes, but their day is nearly passed. The early explorers—Krause, Everette and others—took this pass, and it was here that E. J. Glave first tried (in 1891) to take pack horses across the mountains, and succeeded so well as to show the feasibility of that method of carriage, which put a check upon the extortion and faithlessness of the Indian carriers. His account of his adventures in making this experiment, over bogs, wild rocky heights, snow fields, swift rivers and forest barriers, has been detailed in The Century Magazine for 1892, and should be read by all interested. "No matter how important your mission," Mr. Glave wrote, "your Indian carriers, though they have duly contracted to accompany you, will delay your departure till it suits their convenience, and any exhibition of impatience on your part will only remind them of your utter dependency on them; and then intrigue for increase of pay will at once begin. While en route they will prolong the journey by camping on the trail for two or three weeks, tempted by good hunting or fishing. In a land where the open season is so short, and the ways are so long, such delay is a tremendous drawback. Often the Indians will carry their loads some part of the way agreed on, then demand an extravagant increase of pay or a goodly share of the white man's stores, and, failing to get either, will fling down their packs and return to their village, leaving their white employer helplessly stranded."
The usual charge for Indian carriers is $2 a day and board, and they demand the best fare and a great deal of it, so that the white man finds his precious stores largely wasted before reaching his destination. These facts are mentioned, not because it is now necessary to endure this extortion and expense, but to show how little dependence can be placed upon the hope of securing the aid of Indian packers in carrying the goods of prospectors or explorers elsewhere in the interior, and the great expense involved. This pass descends to a series of connected lakes leading down to Lake Labarge and thence by another stream to the Lewes; and it requires twelve days of pack-carrying—far more than is necessary on the other passes. As a consequence, this pass is now rarely used except by Indians going to the Aksekh river and the coast ranges northward.
Chilkoot, Taiya or Parrier Pass.—This is the pass that has been used since 1885 by the miners and others on the upper Yukon, and is still a route of travel. It starts from the head of canoe navigation on Taiya inlet, and follows up a stream valley, gradually leading to the divide, which is only 3,500 feet above the sea. The first day's march is to the foot of the ascent, and over a terrible trail, through heavy woods and along a steep, rocky and often boggy hillside, broken by several deep gullies. The ascent is then very abrupt and over huge masses of fallen rock or steep slippery surfaces of rock in place. At the actual summit, which for seven or eight miles is bare of trees or bushes, the trail leads through a narrow rocky gap, and the whole scene is one of the most complete desolation. Naked granite rocks, rising steeply to partly snow-clad mountains on either side. Descending the inland or north slope is equally bad traveling, largely over wide areas of shattered rocks where the trail may easily be lost. The further valley contains several little lakes and leads roughly down to Lake Lindeman. The distance from Taiya is twenty-three and a half miles, and it is usually made in two days. Miners sometimes cross this pass in April, choosing fine weather, and then continue down the lakes on the ice to some point where they can conveniently camp and wait for the opening of navigation on the Yukon; ordinarily it is unsafe to attempt a return in the autumn later than the first of October.
Lake Lindeman is a long narrow piece of water navigable for boats to its foot, where a very bad river passage leads into the larger Lake Bennett, where the navigation of the Yukon really begins.
"The Chilkoot Pass," writes one of its latest travelers, "is difficult, even dangerous, to those not possessed of steady nerves. Toward the summit there is a sheer ascent of 1,000 feet, where a slip would certainly be fatal. At this point a dense mist overtook us, but we reached Lake Lindeman—the first of a series of five lakes—in safety, after a fatiguing tramp of fourteen consecutive hours through half-melted snow. Here we had to build our own boat, first felling the timber for the purpose. The journey down the lakes occupied ten days, four of which were passed in camp on Lake Bennett, during a violent storm, which raised a heavy sea. The rapids followed. One of these latter, the "Grand Canyon," is a mile long, and dashes through walls of rock from 50 to 100 feet high; six miles below are the "White Horse Rapids," a name which many fatal accidents have converted into the "Miner's Grave." But snags and rocks are everywhere a fruitful source of danger on this river, and from this rapid downward scarcely a day passed that one did not see some cairn or wooden cross marking the last resting place of some drowned pilgrim to the land of gold. The above is a brief sketch of the troubles that beset the Alaskan gold prospector—troubles that, although unknown in the eastern states and Canada, have for many years past associated the name of Yukon with an ugly sound in western America."
It is probable that few if any persons need go over this pass next year, and its hardships will become a tradition instead of a terrible prospect.
White Pass.—This pass lies south of the Chilkoot, and leaves the coast at the mouth of the Shagway river, five miles south of Dyea and 100 from Juneau. It was first explored in 1887 and was found to run parallel to the Chilkoot. The distance from the coast to the summit is seventeen miles, of which the first five are in level bottom land, thickly timbered. The next nine miles are in a cañon-like valley, beyond which three miles, comparatively easy, take one to the summit, the altitude of which is roughly estimated at 2,600 feet. Beyond the summit a wide valley is entered and leads gradually to the Tahko arm of Tahgish lake. This pass, though requiring a longer carriage, is lower and easier than the others, and already a pack-trail has been built through it which will soon be followed by a wagon road, and surveys for a narrow gauge railway are in progress. At the mouth of the Shkagway River ocean steamers can run up at all times to a wharf which has been constructed in a sheltered position, and there is an excellent town site with protection from storms.
An English company, the British Columbia Development Association, Limited, has already established a landing wharf and is erecting a wharf and sawmills at Skagway, whence it is proposed (as soon as feasible) to lay down a line of rail some thirty-five miles long, striking the Yukon River at a branch of the Marsh Lake, about 100 miles below Lake Lindeman. By this means the tedious and difficult navigation between these two points will be avoided, and the only dangerous parts of the river below will be circumvented by a road or rail portage. Light-draught steamers will be put on from Teslin Lake to the cañon and from the foot of the latter to all the towns and camps on the river.
Dyea is a village of cabins and tents, and little if anything in the way of supplies can be got there; it is a mere forwarding point.
Pending the completion of the facilities mentioned above, miners may transport their goods over the pack trail on their own or hired burros, and at Tahgish Lake take a boat down the Tahco arm (11 miles) to the main lake, and down that lake and its outlet into Lake Marsh. This chain of lakes, filling the troughs of old glacial fiords to a level of 2,150 feet above the sea, "constitutes a singularly picturesque region, abounding in striking points of view and in landscapes pleasing in their variety or grand and impressive in this combination of rugged mountain forms." All afford still-water navigation, and as soon as the road through White Pass permits the transportation of machinery, they will doubtless be well supplied with steamboats. Marsh Lake is 20 miles long, Bennett 26, and Tagish 16½ miles, with Windy Arm 11 miles long, Tahko Arm 20 miles, and other long, narrow extensions among the terraced, evergreen-wooded hills that border its tranquil surface. The depression in which this group of lakes lies is between the coast range and the main range of the Rockies; and as it is sheltered from the wet sea-winds by the former heights, its climate is nearly as dry of that of the interior. The banks are fairly well timbered, though large open spaces exist, and abound in herbage, grass and edible berries. Lake Marsh, named by Schwatka after Prof. O. C. Marsh of Yale, but called Mud Lake by the miners, without good reason, is twenty miles long and about two wide. It is rather shallow and the left bank should be followed. The surrounding region is rather low, rising by terraces to high ranges on each side, where Michie mountain, 5,540 feet in height, eastward, and Mounts Lorue and Landsdowne, westward, 6,400 and 6,140 feet high respectively, are the most prominent peaks. "The diversified form of the mountains in view from this lake render it particularly picturesque," remarks Dr. Dawson, "and at the time of our visit, on the 10th and 11th of September, the autumn tints of the aspens and other deciduous trees and shrubs, mingled with the sombre greens of the spruces and pines, added to its beauty."
Near the foot of this lake enters the McClintock river, of which little is known. The outlet is a clear, narrow, quiet stream, called Fifty-mile River, which flows somewhat westerly down the great valley. Large numbers of dead and dying salmon are always seen here in summer, and as these fish never reach Lake Marsh, it is evident that the few who are able, after their long journey, to struggle up the rapids, have not strength left to survive.
The descent of the Lewes (or Yukon) may be said to begin at this point, and 23 miles below Lake Marsh the first and most serious obstacle is encountered in the White Horse Rapids, and Miles Cañon. Their length together is 2¾ miles, and they seem to have been caused by a small local effusion of lava, which was most unfortunately ejected right in the path of the river. The cañon is often not more than 100 feet in width, and although parts of it may be run at favorable times, all of it is dangerous, and the White Horse should never be attempted. The portage path in the upper part of the cañon is on the east bank, and is about five-eighths of a mile long. There a stretch of navigation is possible, with caution, ending at the head of White Horse Rapids, where one must land on the west bank, which consists of steep rocks, very awkward for managing a boat from or carrying a burden over. Usually the empty boat can be dropped down with a line, but when the water is high boat as well as cargo must be carried for 100 yards or more, and again, lower down, for a less distance. The miners have put down rollways along a roughly constructed road here to make the portage of the boats easier, and some windlasses for hauling the boats along the water or out and into it. It would be possible to build a good road or tramway along the east bank of these rapids without great difficulty; and plans are already formulated for a railway to be built around the whole three miles of obstruction, in the summer of 1898, to connect with the steamboats above and below that will no doubt be running next year.
The river below the rapids is fast (about four miles an hour) for a few miles, and many gravel banks appear. It gradually subsides, however, into a quiet stream flowing northwest along the same wide valley. No rock is seen here, the banks being bluffs of white silt, which turns the clear blue of the current above into a cloudy and opaque yellow. Thirteen miles (measuring, as usual, along the river) brings the voyager to the mouth of the Tah-Keena, a turbid stream about 75 yards wide and 10 feet deep, which comes in from the west. Its sources are at the foot of the Chilkat Pass, where it flows out of West Kussoa lake (afterwards named Lake Arkell), and was formerly much employed by the Chilkat Indians as a means of reaching the interior, but was never in favor with the miners, and is now rarely followed by the Indians themselves, although its navigation from the lake down is reported to be easy.
Eleven and a half miles of quiet boating takes one to the head of Lake Labarge. This lake is 31 miles long, lies nearly north and south, and is irregularly elongated, reaching a width of six miles near the lower end. It is 2,100 feet above sea level and is bordered everywhere by mountains, those on the south having remarkably abrupt and castellated forms and carrying summits of white limestone. This lake is a very stormy one, and travelers often have to wait in camp for several days on its shores until calmer weather permits them to go on. This whole river valley is a great trough sucking inland the prevailing southerly summer winds, and navigation on all the lakes is likely to be rough for small boats.
The river below Lake Labarge is crooked, and at first rapid—six miles or more an hour, and interrupted by boulders; but it is believed that a stern wheel steamer of proper power could ascend at all times. The banks are earthen, but little worn, as floods do not seem to occur. Twenty-seven miles takes one to the mouth of a large tributary from the southeast,—the Teslintoo, which Schwatka called Newberry River, and which the miners mistakenly call Hotalinqu. It comes from the great Lake Teslin, which lies across the British Columbia boundary (Lat. 62 deg.), and is said to be 100 miles long; and it is further said that an Indian trail connects it with the head of canoe navigation on the Taku river, by only two long days of portaging. Some miners are said to have gone over it in 1876 or '77, Schwatka and Hayes came this way; and it may form one of the routes of the future,—perhaps even a railway route. This river flows through a wide and somewhat arid valley, and was roughly prospected about 1887 by men who reported finding fine gold all along its course, and also in tributaries of the lake. As the mountains about the head of the lake belong to the Cassiar range, upon whose southern slopes the Cassiar mines are situated, there is every reason to suppose that gold will ultimately be found there in paying quantities.
This part of the Lewes is called Thirty-mile River, under the impression that it is really a tributary of the Teslintoo, which is, in fact, wider than the Lewes at the junction (Teslintoo, width 575 feet; Lewes, 420 feet), but it carries far less water. From this confluence the course is north, in a deep, swift, somewhat turbid current, through the crooked defiles of the Seminow hills. Several auriferous bars have been worked here, and some shore-placers, including the rich Cassiar bar. Thirty-one miles below the Teslintoo the Big Salmon, or D'Abbadie River, enters from the southeast—an important river, 350 feet wide, having clear blue water flowing deep and quiet in a stream navigable by steamboats for many miles. Its head is about 150 miles away, not far from Teslin Lake, in some small lakes reached by the salmon, and surrounded by granite mountains. Prospectors have traced all its course and found fine gold in many places.
Thirty-four miles below the Big Salmon, west-north-west, along a comparatively straight course, carries the boatman to the Little Salmon, or Daly River, where the valley is so broad that no mountains are anywhere in sight, only lines of low hills at a distance from the banks. Five miles below this river the river makes an abrupt turn to the southwest around Eagle's Nest rock, and 18½ miles beyond that reaches the Nordenskiold, a small, swift, clear-watered tributary from the southwest. The rocks of all this part of the river show thin seams of coal, and gold has been found on several bars. The current now flows nearly due north and a dozen miles below the Nordenskiold carries one to the second and last serious obstruction to navigation in the Rink rapids, as Schwatka called them, or Five-finger, as they are popularly known, referring to five large masses of rock that stand like towers in mid channel. These other islands back up the water and render its currents strong and turbulent, but will offer little opposition to a good steamboat. Boatmen descending the river are advised to hug the right bank, and a landing should be made twenty yards above the rapids in any eddy, where a heavily loaded boats should be lightened. The run should be made close along the shore, and all bad water ends when the Little Rink Rapids have been passed, six miles below. Just below the rapids the small Tatshun River comes in from the right. Then the valley broadens out, the current quiets down and a pleasing landscape greets the eye as bend after bend is turned. A long washed bank on the northeast side is called Hoo-che-koo Bluff, and soon after passing it one finds himself in the midst of the pretty Ingersoll archipelago, where the river widens out and wanders among hundreds of islets. Fifty-five miles by the river below Rink Rapids, the confluence of the Lewes and Pelly is reached, and the first sign of civilization in the ruins of old Fort Selkirk, with such recent and probably temporary occupation as circumstances may cause. Before long, undoubtedly, a flourishing permanent settlement will grow up in this favorable situation.
The confluence here of the Lewes and Pelly rivers forms the Yukon, which thenceforth pursues an uninterrupted course of 1,650 miles to Behring Sea. The country about the confluence is low, with extensive terrace flats running back to the bases of rounded hills and ridges. The Yukon below the junction averages about one-quarter of a mile in width, and has an average depth of about 10 feet, with a surface velocity of 4¾ miles an hour. A good many gravel bars occur, but no shifting sand. The general course nearly to White River, 96 miles, is a little north of west, and many islands are seen; then the river turns to a nearly due north course, maintained at Fort Reliance. The White River is a powerful stream, plunging down loaded with silt, over ever shifting sand bars. Its upper source is problematical, but is probably in the Alaskan Mountains near the head of the Tenana and Forty-mile Creek.
For the next ten miles the river spreads out to more than a mile wide and becomes a maze of islands and bars, the main channel being along the western shore, where there is plenty of water. This brings one to Stewart river, which is the most important right-hand tributary between the Pelly and the Porcupine. It enters from the east in the middle of a wide valley, and half a mile above its mouth is 200 yards in width; the current is slow and the water dark colored. It has been followed to its headquarters in the main range of the Rockies, and several large branches, on some of which there are remarkable falls, have been traced to their sources through the forested and snowy hills where they rise. These sources are perhaps 200 miles from the mouth, but as none of the wanderers were equipped with either geographical knowledge or instruments nothing definite is known. Reports of traces of precious metals have been brought back from many points in the Stewart valley, but this information is as vague as the other thus far. All reports agree that a light draught steamboat could go to the head of the Stewart and bar up its feeders. There is a trading post at its mouth.