Lake Marsh gave us four days of variable sailing on its waters, when, on the 29th of June, we emerged from it and once more felt the exhilaration of a rapid course on a swift river, an exhilaration that was not allowed to die rapidly away, by reason of the great amount of exercise we had to go through in managing the raft in its many eccentric phases of navigation. On the lakes, whether in storm or still weather, one man stationed at the stern oar of the raft had been sufficient, as long as he kept awake, nor was any great harm done if he fell asleep in a quiet breeze, but once on the river an additional oarsman at the bow sweep was imperatively needed, for at short turns or sudden bends, or when hearing half-sunken bowlders or tangled masses of driftwood, or bars of sand, mud or gravel, or while steering clear of eddies and slack water, it was often necessary to do some very lively work at both ends of the raft in swinging the ponderous contrivance around to avoid these obstacles, and in the worst cases two or three other men assisted the oarsmen in their difficult task. Just how much strength a couple of strong men could put on a steering sweep was a delicate matter to gauge, and too often in the most trying places our experiments in testing the questions were failures, and with a sharp snap the oar would part, a man or two would sit down violently without stopping to pick out the most luxurious places, and the craft like a wild animal unshackled would go plowing through the fallen timber that lined the banks, or bring up on the bar or bowlder we had been working hard to avoid. We slowly became practical oar makers, however, and toward the latter part of the journey had some crude but effective implements that defied annihilation.

As we leisurely and lazily crept along the lakes somebody would be driving away ennui by dressing down pins with a hatchet, boring holes with an auger and driving pins with an ax, until by the time the lakes were all passed I believe that no two logs crossed each other in the raft that were not securely pinned at the point of juncture with at least one pin, and if the logs were large ones with two or three. In this manner our vessel was as solid as it was possible to make such a craft, and would bring up against a bowlder with a shock and swing dizzily around in a six or seven mile current with no more concern than if it were a slab in a mill race.

I believe I have made the remark in a previous chapter that managing a raft—at least our method of managing a raft—on a lake was a tolerably simple affair, especially with a favorable wind, and to tell the truth, one can not manage it at all except with a favorable wind. It was certainly the height of simplicity when compared with its navigation upon a river, although at first sight one might perhaps think the reverse; at least I had thought so, and from the conversation of the whites and Indians of south-eastern Alaska, I knew that their opinions coincided with mine; but I was at length compelled to hold differently from them in this matter, as in many others. Especially was this navigation difficult on a swift river like the Yukon, and I know of none that can maintain a flow of more even rapidity from source to mouth than this great stream. It is not very hard to keep a raft or any floating object in the center of the current of a stream, even if left alone at times, but the number of things which present themselves from time to time to drag it out of this channel seems marvelous.

Old watermen and rafting lumbermen know that while a river is rising it is hard to keep the channel, even the driftwood created by the rise clinging to the shores of the stream. Accordingly they are anxious for the moment when this driftwood begins to float along the main current and out in the middle of the stream, for then they know the water is subsiding, and from that point it requires very little effort to keep in the swiftest current. Should this drift matter be equally distributed over the running water it is inferred that the river is at "a standstill," as they say. An adept can closely judge of the variations and stage of water by this means.

In a river with soft or earthy banks (and in going the whole length of the Yukon, over two thousand miles, we saw several varieties of shores), the swift current, in which one desires to keep when the current is the motive power, nears the shores only at points or curves, where it digs out the ground into steep perpendicular banks, which if at all high make it impossible to find a camping place for the night, and out of this swift current the raft had to be rowed to secure a camp at evening, while breaking camp next morning we had to work it back into the current again. Nothing could be more aggravating than after leaving this swift current to find a camp, as evening fell, to see no possible chance for such a place on the side we had chosen and to go crawling along in slack water while trees and brushes swept rapidly past borne on the swift waters we had quitted.

If the banks of a river are wooded—and no stream can show much denser growth on its shores than the Yukon—the trees that are constantly tumbling in from these places that are being undermined, and yet hanging on by their roots, form a series of chevaux de frise or abatis, to which is given the backwoods cognomen of "sweepers," and a man on the upper side of a raft plunging through them in a swift current almost wishes himself a beaver or a muskrat so that he can dive out and escape.

Not only is the Yukon equally wooded on its banks with the average rivers of the world, but this fringe of fallen timber is much greater in quantity and more formidable in aspect than any found in the temperate zones. I think I can explain this fact to the satisfaction of my readers. Taking fig. 1 on this page as representing a cross-section perpendicular to the trend of a bank of a river in our own climate, the stumps ss representing trees which if undermined by the water as far as c will generally fall in along the line cd, and carry away a few trees, two or three at most, then, as the roots of no more than one such tree are capable of holding it so as to form an abatis along the bank, trees so held will lean obliquely down stream and any floating object will merely brush along on their tips without receiving serious damage. Figure 2, above, represents a similar sketch of a cross-section on the banks of the Yukon, especially along its numerous islands, these banks, as we saw them, being generally from six to eight feet above the level of the water. This is also about the depth to which the moist marshy ground freezes solid during the intense cold of the Alaskan winter in the interior districts, and the banks therefore have the tenacity of ice to support them; and it is not until the water has excavated as far as c (five or six times as far as in Figure 1), that the overhanging mass csd becomes heavy enough to break off the projecting bank along cd. This as a solid frozen body falls downward around the axis c, being too heavy for the water to sweep away, it remains until thawed out by the river water already but little above freezing, by reason of the constant influx of glacier streams and from running between frozen banks. I have roughly attempted to show this process in Fig. 3. I think any one will acknowledge that the raft R, carried by a swift current sweeping toward c is not in a very desirable position. Such a position is bad enough on any river which has but a single line of trees along its scarp and trending down stream, but on the Yukon it is unfortunately worse, with every branch and twig ferociously standing at "charge bayonets," to resist any thing that floats that way. In Fig. 3, the maximum is depicted just as the bank falls or shortly after; and it requires but a few days, possibly a week or a fortnight, for all the outer and most dangerous looking trees to be more or less thoroughly swept away by the swift current, and a less bristling aspect presented, the great half frozen mass acting somewhat as a breakwater to further undermining of the bank for a long while. In many places along the river, these excavations had gone so far that the bank seemed full of deep gloomy caves; and as we drifted close by, we could see, and, on quiet days hear, the dripping from the thawing surface, c s (fig. 2). In other places the half polished surface of the ice in the frozen ground could be seen in recent fractures as late as July, or even August.

Often when camped in some desolate spot or floating lazily along, having seen no inhabitants for days, we would be startled by the sound of a distant gun-shot on the banks, which would excite our curiosity to see the savage sportsman; but we soon came to trace these reports to the right cause, that of falling banks, although not until after we had several times been deceived. Once or twice we actually saw these tremendous cavings in of the banks quite near us, and more frequently than we wanted we floated almost underneath some that were not far from the crisis of their fate, a fate which we thought might be precipitated by some accidental collision of our making. By far the most critical moment was when both the current and a strong wind set in against one of these banks. On such occasions we were often compelled to tie up to the bank and wait for better times, or if the danger was confined to a short stretch we would fight it out until either the whole party was exhausted or our object was attained.

Whenever an island was made out ahead and it appeared to be near the course of our drifting, the conflicting guesses we indulged in as to which shore of the island we should skirt would indicate the difficulty of making a correct estimate. It takes a peculiarly well practiced eye to follow with certainty the line of the current of the stream from the bow of the raft beyond any obstruction in sight a fair distance ahead, and on more than one occasion our hardest work with the oars and poles was rewarded by finding ourselves on the very bar or flat we had been striving to avoid. The position of the sun, both vertical and horizontal, its brightness and the character of the clouds, the clearness and swiftness of the water, the nature and strength of the wind, however lightly it might be blowing, and a dozen other circumstances had to be taken into account in order to solve this apparently simple problem. If we could determine at what point in the upper end of the island the current was parted upon either side (and at any great distance this was often quite as difficult a problem as the other), one could often make a correct guess by projecting a tree directly beyond and over this point against the distant hills. If the tree crept along these hills to the right, the raft might pass to the left of the island, and vice versa; this would certainly happen if the current was not deflected by some bar or shoal between the raft and the island. And such shoals and bars of gravel, sand and mud are very frequent obstructions in front of an island—at least it was so on the Yukon—indeed the coincidence was too frequent to be without significance. These bars and shoals were not merely prolongations from the upper point of the island, but submerged islands, so to speak, just in front of them, and between the two a steamboat could probably pass. Using tall trees as guides to indicate on which side of the island the raft might pass was, as I have said, not so easy as appears at first sight, for unless the tree could be made out directly over the dividing point of the current, all surmises were of little value. The tall spruce trees on the right and left flanks of the island in sight were always the most conspicuous, being fewer in number, and more prominent in their isolation, than the dense growth of the center of the island, as it was seen "end on" from above. People were very prone to use these convenient reference marks in making their calculations, and one can readily perceive when the trees were near and the island fairly wide, both of the outer trees would appear to diverge in approaching, and according as one selected the right or the left of the two trees, one would infer that our course was to the left or right of the island. As one stood on the bow—as we always called the down-stream end of the raft, although it was shaped no differently from the stern—and looked forward on the water flowing along, the imagination easily conceives that one can follow up from that position to almost any thing ahead and see the direction of the current leading straight for it. Eddies and slack currents, into which a raft is very liable to swing as it rounds a point with an abrupt turn in the axis of the current, are all great nuisances, for though one may not get into the very heart of any of them, yet the sum total of delay in a day's drift is often considerable, and by a little careful management in steering the raft these troubles may nearly always be avoided. Of course, one is often called upon to choose between these and other impediments, more or less aggravating, so that one's attention is constantly active as the raft drifts along.

In a canal-like stream of uniform width, which gives little chance for eddies or slack water—and the upper Yukon has many long stretches that answer to this description—every thing goes along smoothly enough until along toward evening, when the party wishes to go into camp while the river is tearing along at four or five miles an hour. I defy any one who has never been similarly situated, to have any adequate conception of the way in which a ponderous vessel like our raft, constructed of large logs and loaded with four or five tons of cargo and crew, will bring up against any obstacle while going at this rate. If there are no eddies into which it can be rowed or steered and its progress thereby stopped or at least slackened, it is very hard work indeed to go into camp, for should the raft strike end on, a side log or two may be torn out and the vessel transformed by the shock into a lozenge-shaped affair. Usually, under these circumstances, we would bring the raft close in shore, and with the bow oar hold its head well out into the stream, while with the steering oar the stern end would be thrown against the bank and there held, scraping along as firmly as two or three men could do it (see diagram above), and this frictional brake would be kept up steadily until we slowed down a little, when one or two, or even half-a-dozen persons would jump ashore at a favorable spot, and with a rope complete the slackening until it would warrant our twisting the rope around a tree on the bank and a cross log on the raft, when from both places the long rope would be slowly allowed to pay out under strong and increasing friction, or "snubbing" as logmen call it, and this would bring the craft to a standstill in water so swift as to boil up over the stern logs, whereupon it would receive a series of snug lashings. If the position was not favorable for camping we would slowly "drop" the craft down stream by means of the rope to some better site, never allowing her to proceed at a rate of speed that we could not readily control. If, however, we were unsuccessful in making our chosen camping ground and had drifted below it, there was not sufficient power in our party, nor even in the strongest rope we had, ever to get the craft up stream in the average current, whether by tracking or any other means, to the intended spot.

Good camping places were not to be had in every stretch of the river, and worse than all, they had to be selected a long way ahead in order to be able to make them, with our slow means of navigation, from the middle of the broad river where we usually were.

Oftentimes a most acceptable place would be seen just abreast of it, having until then been concealed by some heavily wooded spur or point, and then of course it would be too late to reach it with our slow craft, while to saunter along near shore, so as to take immediate advantage of such a possible spot, was to sacrifice a good deal of our rapid progress. To run from swift into slacker water could readily be accomplished by simply pointing the craft in the direction one wanted to go, but the reverse process was not so easy, at least by the same method. I suppose the proper way to manage so clumsy a concern as a raft, would be by means of side oars and rowing it end on (and this we did on the lakes in making a camp or in gaining the shore when a head wind set in), but as our two oars at bow and stern were the most convenient for the greater part of the work, we used them entirely, always rowing our bundle of logs broadside on to the point desired, provided that no bars or other obstacles interfered. We generally kept the bow end inclined to the shore that we were trying to reach, a plan that was of service, as I have shown, in passing from swift to slack water, and in a three mile current by using our oars rowing broadside on we could keep at an angle of about thirty degrees from the axis of the stream as we made shoreward in this position. The knowledge of this fact enabled us to make a rough calculation as to the point at which we should touch the bank. The greater or less swiftness of the current would of course vary this angle and our calculations accordingly.

Our bundles of effects on the two corduroy decks made quite high piles fore and aft, and when a good strong wind was blowing—and Alaska in the summer is the land of wind—we had by way of sail power a spread of broadside area that was incapable of being lowered. More frequently than was pleasant the breeze carried us along under "sweepers" or dragged us over bars or drove us down unwelcome channels of slack water. In violent gales we were often actually held against the bank, all movement in advance being effectually checked. A mild wind was always welcome, for in the absence of a breeze when approaching the shore the mosquitoes made existence burdensome.

During hot days on the wide open river—singular as it may seem so near the Arctic Circle—the sun would strike down from overhead with a blistering effect and a bronzing effect from its reflection in the dancing waters that made one feel as though he were floating on the Nile, Congo or Amazon, or any where except in the very shadow of the Arctic Circle. Roughly improvised tent flies and flaps helped us to screen ourselves to a limited extent from the tropical torment, but if hung top high, the stern oarsman, who had charge of the "ship," could see nothing ahead on his course, and the curtain would have to come down. No annoyance could seem more singular in the Arctic and sub-Arctic zones than a blistering sun or a swarm of mosquitoes, and yet I believe my greatest discomforts in those regions came from these same causes, certainly from the latter. Several times our thermometer registered but little below 100° Fahrenheit in the shade, and the weather seemed much warmer even than that, owing to the bright reflections that gleamed from the water upon our faces.

"Cut offs" through channels that led straight across were often most deceptive affairs, the swifter currents nearly always swinging around the great bends of the river. Especially bad was a peculiarly seductive "cut-off" with a tempting by swift current as you entered it, caused by its flowing over a shallow bar, whereupon the current would rapidly and almost immediately deepen and would consequently slow down to a rate that was provoking beyond measure, especially as one saw one's self overtaken by piece after piece of drift-timber that by keeping to the main channel had "taken the longest way around as the shortest way home," and beaten us by long odds in the race. And worse than all it was not always possible to avoid getting in these side "sloughs of despond," even when we had learned their tempting little tricks of offering us a swifter current at the entrance, for this very swiftness produced a sort of suction on the surface water that drew in every thing that passed within a distance of the width of its entrance.

Of submerged obstructions, snags were of little account, for the great ponderous craft would go plowing through and casting aside some of the most formidable of them. I doubt very much if snags did us as much harm as benefit, for as they always indicated shoal water, and were easily visible, especially with glasses, they often served us as beacons. I saw very few of the huge snags which have received the appellation of "sawyers" on the Mississippi and Missouri, and are so much dreaded by the navigators of those waters.

Sand, mud and gravel bars were by far the worst obstruction we had to contend with, and I think I have given them in the order of their general perversity in raft navigation, sand being certainly the worst and gravel the slightest.

Sand bars and spits were particularly aggravating, and when the great gridiron of logs ran up on one of them in a swift current there was "fun ahead," to use a western expression of negation. Sometimes the mere jumping overboard of all the crew would lighten the craft so that she would float forward a few yards, and in lucky instances might clear the obstruction; but this was not often the case, and those who made preparations for hard work were seldom disappointed. In a swift current the running water would sweep out the sand around the logs of the raft until its buoyancy would prevent its sinking any deeper, and out of this rut the great bulky thing would have to be lifted before it would budge an inch in a lateral direction, and when this was accomplished, and, completely fagged out, we would stop to take a breath or two, we would often be gratified by seeing our noble craft sink down again, necessitating a repetition of the process. The simplest way to get off a sand bar was to find (by sounding with a stick or simply wading around), the point nearest to a deep navigable channel and then to swing the raft, end for end, up stream, even against the swiftest current that might come boiling over the upper logs, until that channel was reached. There was no more happy moment in a day's history than when, after an hour or so had been spent in prying the vessel inch by inch against the current, we could finally see the current catch it on the same side upon which we were working and perform the last half of our task in a few seconds, where perhaps we had spent as many hours upon our portion of the work. At one bad place, on the upper end of an island, we had to swing our forty-two foot corvette around four times. Our longest detention by a sand bar was three hours and fifty minutes.

Mud bars were not nearly so bad, unless the material was of a clayey consistency, when a little adhesiveness would be added to the other impediments, and again, as we always endeavored to keep in the swift water we seldom encountered a mud bar. But when one occurred near to a camping place, it materially interfered with our wading ashore with our heavy camping effects on our backs, and would reduce our rubber boots to a deplorable looking condition. Elsewhere, it was possible to pry the raft right through a mud bank, by dint of muscle and patience, and then we could sit down on the outer logs of the deck and wash our boots in the water at leisure as we floated along. Our raft drew from twenty to twenty-two inches of water, and of course it could not ground in any thing deeper, so that good rubber boots coming up over the thighs kept our feet comparatively dry when overboard; but there were times when we were compelled to get in almost to our middle; and when the water was so swift that it boiled up over their tops and filled them they were about as useless an article as can be imagined, so that we went into all such places barefooted.

The best of all the bars were those of gravel, and the larger and coarser the pebbles the better. When the pebbles were well cemented into a firm bed by a binding of clay almost as solid and unyielding as rock, we could ask nothing better, and in such cases we always went to work with cheerful prospects of a speedy release. By simply lifting the raft with pries the swift current throws it forward, and since it does not settle as in sand, every exertion tells. By turning the raft broadside to the current and prying or "biting" at each end of the "boat" alternately, with our whole force of pries, leaving the swift water to throw her forward, we passed over gravel bars on which I do not think the water was over ten or eleven inches deep, although the raft drew twice as much. One of the gravel bars over which we passed in this manner was fully thirty or forty yards in length.

In aggravated cases of whatever nature the load would have to be taken off, carried on our backs through the water and placed on the shore, and when the raft was cleared or freed from the obstruction it would be brought alongside the bank at the very first favorable spot for reloading. Such cases occurred fully a score of times during our voyage. When the raft stranded on a bar with the water on each side so deep that we could not wade ashore, the canoe was used for "lightering the load," an extremely slow process which, fortunately, we were obliged to employ only once on the whole raft journey, although several times in wading the water came up to our waists before we could get to shore. In fact, with a heavy load on one's back or shoulders, it is evidently much easier to wade through water of that depth and proportional current than through very swift water over shallow bars.

Looking back, it seems almost miraculous that a raft could make a voyage of over thirteen hundred miles, the most difficult part of which was unknown, starting at the very head where the stream was so narrow that the raft would have been brought at a standstill if it swung out of a straight course end on (as it did in the Payer Rapids), and covering nearly two months of daily encounters with snags and bowlders, sticking on bars and shooting rapids, and yet get through almost unscathed. When I started to build this one on Lake Lindeman I had anticipated constructing two or three of these primitive craft before I could exchange to good and sufficient native or civilized transportation.

The raft is undoubtedly the oldest form of navigation extant, and undoubtedly the worst; it is interesting to know just how useful the raft can be as an auxiliary to geographical exploration, and certainly my raft journey was long enough to test it in this respect.

The raft, of course, can move in one direction only, viz.: with the current, and therefore its use must be restricted to streams whose upper waters can be reached by the explorer. The traveler must be able to escape by the mouth of the stream or by some divergent trail lower down, unless his explorations prove the river to be navigable for such craft as he finds on its lower waters, when he may use these for returning. The building of a raft requires the presence of good, fair-sized timber along the stream. The river too, must offer no falls of any great size. My journey, however, has demonstrated that a well constructed raft can go any where, subject to the above restrictions, that a boat can, at least such a boat as is usually employed by explorers.

I know of nothing that can give an explorer a better opportunity to delineate the topography of the surrounding country with such instruments as are commonly used in assisting dead reckoning, than is afforded by floating down a river. I believe the steady movement with the current makes "dead reckoning" much more exact than with a boat, where the rate of progress is variable, where one hour is spent in drifting as a raft, another in rowing, and a third in sailing with a changeable wind, and where each mode of progress is so abruptly exchanged for another. Any steady pace, such as the walking of a man or a horse, or the floating of a raft carefully kept in the axis of the current, makes dead reckoning so exact, if long practiced, as often to astonish the surveyor himself, but every thing depends upon this steadiness of motion. The errors in dead reckoning of Mr. Homan, my topographer, in running from Pyramid Harbor in Chilkat Inlet to Fort Yukon, both carefully determined by astronomical observations and over a thousand miles apart, was less than one per cent., a fact which proves that rafting as a means of surveying may be ranked with any method that requires walking or riding, and far exceeds any method in use by explorers ascending a stream, as witness any map of the Yukon River that attempts to show the position of Fort Yukon, before it was astronomically determined by Captain Raymond. Meridian observations of the sun for latitude are hard to obtain, for the reader already knows what a task it is to get a raft into camp. This difficulty of course will vary with the size of the raft, for one as large as ours would not always be needed and a small one can be more readily handled in exploration. While rafting, field photography, now so much used by explorers, is very difficult, as it can only be achieved at camping places unless the apparatus is carried ashore in a canoe, if the raftsmen have one; and the ease with which separated persons can lose each other along a river full of islands makes this kind of work a little uncertain, and the services of a good artist more valuable.

This summary covers nearly all the main points that are strictly connected with geographical exploration, in the meaning ordinarily accepted; but on expeditions where this exploration is the main object there are often other matters of a scientific nature to be taken into account, such as the geology, botany, and zoölogy of the districts traversed, to which the question of geographical distribution is important, and for all these objects researches by means of a raft are at considerable disadvantage.

Also in rafting there is a slight tendency to over-estimate the length of the stream, although the map may be perfectly accurate. In the figure on page 152, the axis AA' is undoubtedly the accepted line on which to estimate and measure the length of the stream between those two points, and it is equally evident to one familiar with the currents of a river that some such line as RR' would represent the course of a floating raft, and the excess of RR' over AA', both being developed, would be the error mentioned. In this figure the relative curves are exaggerated to show the principle more clearly. Again, every island and shoal would materially affect this somewhat mathematical plan, but I think even these would tend to produce an over-estimate.

Drifting close along the shores of an island, and nearing its lower termination, we occasionally were delayed in a singular manner, unless prompt to avoid it. A long, narrow island, with tapering ends, and lying directly in the course of the current, gave us no trouble; but oftentimes these lower ends were very blunt, and the currents at the two sides came at all angles with respect to the island and each other, and this was especially true of large groupings of islands situated in abrupt bends of the river. To take about the worst case of this nature that we met, imagine a blunted island with the current at either side coming in at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the shore line, or at right angles to each other, as I have tried to show in figure on this page, the arrows showing the current. At some point below the island the recurving and ex-curving waters neutralize each other in a huge whirlpool (W). Between W and the island the waters, if swift, would pour back in strong, dancing waves like tide-rips, and in some places with such force as to cut a channel (C) into the island. It is evident that with the raft at R, it is necessary to row to starboard as far as R' before W is reached, as otherwise it would be carried back against the island. We got caught in one violent whirlpool that turned the huge raft around so rapidly that I believe the tender stomachs of those prone to sea-sickness would soon have weakened if we had not escaped by vigorous efforts. At great angles of the swift water and broad-based islands I have seen the whirlpool when nearly half a mile from the island, and they were usually visible for three or four hundred yards if worth noticing. So many conditions were required for the creation of these obstacles that they were not common.

CHAPTER VII.
THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE YUKON.

As we slowly floated out of Lake Marsh it was known to us by Indian reports that somewhere not far ahead on the course of the river would be found the longest and most formidable rapid on the entire length of the great stream. At these rapids the Indians confidently expected that our raft would go to pieces, and we were therefore extremely anxious to inspect them. By some form of improper interpretation, or in some other way, we got the idea into our heads that these rapids, "rushing," as the natives described them, "through a dark cañon," would be reached very soon, that is, within two or three miles, or four or five at the furthest. Accordingly I had the raft beached at the river's entrance, and undertook, with the doctor, the task of walking on ahead along the river bank to inspect them before making any further forward movement, after which one or both of us might return. After a short distance I continued the journey alone, the doctor returning to start the raft. I hoped to be at the upper end of the rapids by the time she came in sight so as to signal her in ample time for her to reach the bank from the swiftest current in the center, as the river was now five or six hundred yards wide in places. It turned out afterward that the great rapids were more than fifty miles further on.

I now observed that this new stretch of river much more closely resembled some of the streams in temperate climes than any we had yet encountered. Its flanking hillsides of rolling ground were covered with spruce and pine, here and there breaking into pleasant-looking grassy prairies, while its own picturesque valley was densely wooded with poplar and willows of several varieties. These latter, in fact, encroached so closely upon the water's edge, and in such impenetrable confusion, that camping places were hard to find, unless a friendly spur from the hills, covered with evergreens, under which a little elbow room might be had, wedged its way down to the river, so as to break the continuity of these willowy barriers to a night's good camping place. The raft's corduroy deck of pine poles often served for a rough night's lodging to some of the party.

Muskrats were plentiful in this part of the river, and I could hear them "plumping" into the water from the banks, every minute or two, as I walked along them; and afterward, in the quiet evenings, these animals might at once be traced by the wedge-shaped ripples they made on the surface of the water as they swam around us.

I had not walked more than two or three miles, fighting great swarms of mosquitoes all the way, when I came to a peculiar kind of creek distinctive of this portion of the river, and worth describing. It was not very wide, but altogether too wide to jump, with slopes of slippery clay, and so deep that I could not see bottom nor touch it with any pole that I could find. These singular streams have a current seemingly as slow as that of a glacier, and the one that stopped me—and I suppose all the rest—had the same unvarying canal-like width for over half a mile from its mouth. Beyond this distance I dared not prolong my rambles to find a crossing place for fear the raft might pass me on the river, so I returned to its mouth and waited, fighting mosquitoes, for the raft to come along, when the canoe would pick me up. In my walks along the creek I found many moose and caribou tracks, some of them looking large enough to belong to prize cattle, but all of them were old. Probably they had been made before the mosquitoes became so numerous.

The first traveler along the river was one of our old Tahk-heesh friends, who came down the stream paddling his "cottonwood" canoe with his family, a squaw and three children, wedged in the bottom. He partially comprehended my situation, and I tried hard to make him understand by signs that I wanted simply to cross the canal-like creek in his canoe, while he, evidently remembering a number of trifles he had received from members of the party at a few camps back, thought it incumbent upon him to take me a short way down the river, by way of a quid pro quo, to which I did not object, especially after seeing several more of those wide slack-water tributaries, and as I still supposed that the rapids were but a short distance ahead, and that my Indian guide expected to camp near them. The rain was falling in a persistent drizzle, which, coupled with my cramped position in the rickety canoe, made me feel any thing but comfortable. My Indian patron, a good natured looking old fellow of about fifty, was evidently feeling worried and harassed at not meeting other Indians of his tribe—for he had previously promised me that he would have a number of them at the rapids to portage my effects around it if my raft went to pieces in shooting them, as they were all confident it would, or if I determined to build another forthwith at a point below the dangerous portion of the rapids—and he ceased the not unmusical strokes of his paddle every minute or two in order to scan with a keen eye the river banks or the hillsides beyond, or to listen for signals in reply to the prolonged shouts he occasionally emitted from his vigorous lungs. After a voyage of three or four miles, he became discouraged, and diving down into a mass of dirty rags and strong-scented Indian bric-a brac of all sorts in the bottom of the canoe, he fished out an old brass-mounted Hudson Bay Company flintlock horse-pistol, an object occasionally found in the possession of a well-to-do Yukon River savage. He took out the bullet, which he did not desire to lose, and held it in his teeth, and pointing the unstable weapon most uncomfortably close to my head, pulled the trigger, although from all I have seen of these weapons of destruction (to powder) I imagine the butt end of the pistol was the most dangerous. The report resounded through the hills and valleys with a thundering vibration, as if the weapon had been a small cannon, but awakened no reply of any kind, and as it was getting well along into the evening my "Stick" friend pointed his canoe for an old camping place on the east bank of the river (although the boat was so warped and its nose so broken that one might almost have testified to its pointing in any other direction), and with a few strokes of his paddle he was soon on shore. Thereupon I went into the simplest camp I had ever occupied, for all that was done was to pull an old piece of riddled canvas over a leaning pole and crawl under it and imagine that it kept out the rain, which it did about as effectually as if it had been a huge crochet tidy. My companions, however, did not seem to mind the rain very much, their only apparent objection to it being that it prevented their kindling a fire with their usual apparatus of steel and damp tinder; and when I gave them a couple of matches they were so profuse in their thanks and their gratitude seemed so genuine, that I gave them all I had with me, probably a couple of dozen, when they overwhelmed me with their grateful appreciation, until I was glad to change the subject to a passing muskrat and a few ducks that were swimming by. I could not help contrasting their behavior with that of the more arrogant Chilkats. They seemed much more like Eskimo in their rude hospitality and docility of nature, although I doubt if they equal them in personal bravery.

There is certainly one good thing about a rain-storm in Alaska, however, and that is the repulsion that exists between a moving drop of rain and a comparatively stationary mosquito when the two come in contact, and which beats down the latter with a most comforting degree of pertinacity. Mosquitoes evidently know how to protect themselves from the pelting rain under the broad deciduous leaves, or under the lee of trees and branches, for the instant it ceases they are all out, apparently more voracious than ever. All along this bank near the Indians' camp, the dense willow brake crawled up and leaned over the water, and I feared there was no camping place to be found for my approaching party, until after walking back about half a mile I espied a place where a little spur of spruce-clad hillocks infringed on the shore. Here I halted the raft and we made an uncomfortable camp. Fish of some kind kept jumping in the river, but the most seductive "flies" were unrewarded with a single bite, although the weather was not of the kind to tempt one either to hunt or fish.

The next day, the 30th of June, was but little better as far as the weather was concerned, and we got away late from our camp, having overslept ourselves. Our Tahk-heesh friend, with his family, now preceded us in his canoe for the purpose of indicating the rapids in good season; but of course he disappeared ahead of us around every bend and island, so as to keep us feeling more anxious about it. At one time, about eight o'clock in the evening—our Tahk-heesh guide out of sight for the last half hour—we plainly heard a dull roaring ahead of us as we swung around a high broken clay bluff, and were clearly conscious of the fact that we were shooting forward at a more rapid pace. Thinking that discretion was the better part of valor, the raft was rapidly swung inshore with a bump that almost upset the whole crew, and a prospecting party were sent down stream to walk along the bank until they found out the cause of the sound, a plan which very soon revealed that there were noisy, shallow rapids extending a short distance out into the bend of the river, but they were not serious enough to have stopped us; at least they would have been of no consequence if we had not landed in the first place, but, as matters stood, they were directly in front of our position on the shore, and so swift was the current that we could not get out fast enough into the stream with our two oars to avoid sticking on the rough bar of gravel and bowlders. Shortly after the crew had jumped off, and just as they were preparing to pry the raft around into the deeper water of the stream, the most violent splashing and floundering was heard on the outer side of the craft, and it was soon found that a goodly-sized and beautifully-spotted grayling had hooked himself to a fish-line that some one had allowed to trail over the outer logs in the excitement of attending to the more important duties connected with the supposed rapids. He was rapidly taken from the hook, and when the line was again thrown over into the ripples another immediately repeated the operation, and it soon became evident that we were getting into the very best of fishing waters, the first we had discovered of that character on the river. After the raft was swung clear of the outer bowlders of the reef and had started once more on its way down stream, several lines, poles and flies were gotten out, and it was quite entertaining to see the long casts that were attempted as we rushed by distant ripples near the curve of the banks. More than one of these casts, however, proved successful in landing a fine grayling. A jump and a splash and a miss, and there was no more chance at that ripple for the same fish, for by the time a recover and a cast could be made the raft was nearly alongside of another tempting place, so swift was the river and so numerous the clean gravel bars jutting into it at every bend. Many a pretty grayling would come sailing through the air like a flying squirrel and unhooking himself en route, with a quick splash would disappear through the logs of the raft, with no other injury than a good bump of his nose against the rough bark, and no doubt ready to thank his stars that his captors were not on land. Passing over shallow bottoms covered with white pebbles, especially those shoaling down stream from the little bars of which I have spoken, a quick eye could often detect great numbers of fish, evidently grayling, with their heads up stream and propelling their tails just enough to remain over the same spot on the bottom, in the swift current. That evening we camped very late—about 10 P.M.—having hopes to the last that we might reach the upper end of the Grand Cañon. Our Stick guide had told us that when we saw the mouth of a small stream coming in from the west and spreading out in a mass of foam over the rocks at the point of confluence, we could be sure of finding the great cañon within half a mile. An accurate census of small creeks answering exactly to that description having been taken, gave a total of about two dozen, with another still in view ahead of us as we camped. Knowing the penchant of our fishy friends for half-submerged gravel bars, our camp was picked with reference to them, and near it there were two of such bars running out into the stream. Some fifty or sixty grayling were harvested by the three lines that were kept going until about eleven o'clock, by which time it was too dark to fish with any comfort, for the heavy banked clouds in the sky brought on darkness much earlier than usual. Red and white mixed flies were eagerly snapped by the voracious and active creatures, and as the evening shadows deepened, a resort to more white in the mixture kept up the exhilarating sport until it was too dark for the fisherman to see his fly on the water. The grayling caught that evening seemed to be of two very distinct sizes, without any great number of intermediate sizes, the larger averaging about a pound in weight, the smaller about one-fourth as much. So numerous and voracious were they that two or three flies were kept on one line, and two at a cast were several times caught, and triplets once.

On the morning of July 1st, we approached the great rapids of the Grand Cañon of the Yukon. Just as I had expected, our Tahk-heesh guide in his cottonwood canoe was non est, until we were within sight of the upper end of the cañon and its boiling waters, and tearing along at six or seven miles an hour, when we caught sight of him frantically gesticulating to us that the rapids were in sight, which was plainly evident, even to us. He probably thought that our ponderous raft was as manageable in the seething current as his own light craft, or he never would have allowed us to get so near. In the twinkling of an eye we got ashore the first line that came to hand, and there was barely time to make both ends fast, one on the raft and the other to a convenient tree on the bank, before the spinning raft came suddenly to the end of her tether with a snappish twang that made the little rope sing like a musical string. Why that little quarter-inch manilla did not part seems a mystery, even yet,—it was a mere government flagstaff lanyard that we had brought along for packing purposes, etc.—but it held on as if it knew the importance of its task, and with the swift water pouring in a sheet of foam over the stern of the shackled raft, she slowly swung into an eddy under the lee of a gravel bar where she was soon securely fastened, whereupon we prepared to make an inspection of our chief impediment. A laborious survey of three or four hours' duration, exposed to heat and mosquitoes, revealed that the rapids were about five miles long and in appearance formidable enough to repel any one who might contemplate making the passage even in a good boat, while such an attempt seemed out of the question with an unmanageable raft like ours.