"We of the Flannel Shirt and the Unblacked Boot."
Frontispiece.

Through
the
Yukon Gold Diggings
A Narrative of Personal Travel

BY
JOSIAH EDWARD SPURR
Geologist, United States Geological Survey

BOSTON
EASTERN PUBLISHING COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900
by
JOSIAH EDWARD SPURR

Preface.

As a geologist of the United States Geological Survey, I had the good fortune to be placed in charge of the first expedition sent by that department into the interior of Alaska. The gold diggings of the Yukon region were not then known to the world in general, yet to those interested in mining their renown had come in a vague way, and the special problem with which I was charged was their investigation. The results of my studies were embodied in a report entitled: "Geology of the Yukon Gold District," published by the Government.

It was during my travels through the mining regions that the Klondike discovery, which subsequently turned so many heads throughout all of the civilized nations, was made. General conditions of mining, travelling and prospecting are much the same to-day as they were at that time, except in the limited districts into which the flood of miners has poured. My travels in Alaska have been extensive since the journey of which this work is a record, and I have noted the same scenes that are herein described, in many other parts of the vast untravelled Territory. It will take two or three decades or more, to make alterations in this region and change the condition throughout.

In recording, therefore, the scenes and hardships encountered in this northern country, I describe the experiences of one who to-day knocks about the Yukon region, the Copper River region, the Cook Inlet region, the Koyukuk, or the Nome District. My aim has been throughout, to set down what I saw and encountered as fully and simply as possible, and I have endeavored to keep myself from sacrificing accuracy to picturesqueness. That my duties led me to see more than would the ordinary traveller, I trust the following pages will bear witness.

Let the reader, therefore, when he finds tedious or unpleasant passages, remember that they record tedious or unpleasant incidents that one who travels this vast region cannot escape, as will be found should any of those who peruse these pages go through the Yukon Gold Diggings.

Author.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The author wishes to express his indebtedness to Messrs. A. H. Brooks, F. C. Schrader, A. Beverly Smith, and the United States Geological Survey, for the use of photographs.

Through The Yukon Gold Diggings.

Before the Klondike Discovery.

CHAPTER I.
THE TRIP TO DYEA.

It was in 1896, before the Klondike boom. We were seated at the table of an excursion steamer, which plied from Seattle northward among the thousand wonderful mountain islands of the Inland Passage. It was a journey replete with brilliant spectacles, through many picturesque fjords from whose unfathomable depths the bare steep cliffs rise to dizzy heights, while over them tumble in disorderly loveliness cataracts pure as snow, leaping from cliff to cliff in very wildness, like embodiments of the untamed spirits of nature.

We had just passed Queen Charlotte Sound, where the swells from the open sea roll in during rough weather, and many passengers were appearing at the table with the pale face and defiant look which mark the unfortunate who has newly committed the crime of seasickness. It only enhanced the former stiffness, which we of the flannel shirt and the unblacked boot had striven in vain to break—for these were people who were gathered from the corners of the earth, and each individual, or each tiny group, seemed to have some invisible negative attraction for all the rest, like the little molecules which, scientists imagine, repel their neighbors to the very verge of explosion. They were all sight-seers of experience, come, some to do Alaska, some to rest from mysterious labors, some—but who shall fathom at a glance an apparently dull lot of apparent snobs? At any rate, one would have thought the everlasting hills would have shrunk back and the stolid glaciers blushed with vexation at the patronizing way with which they were treated in general. It was depressing—even European tourists' wordy enthusiasm over a mud puddle or a dunghill would have been preferable.

There are along this route all the benefits of a sea trip—the air, the rest—with none of its disadvantages. So steep are the shores that the steamer may often lie alongside of them when she stops and run her gang-plank out on the rocks. These stops show the traveller the little human life there is in this vast and desolate country. There are villages of the native tribes, with dwellings built in imitation of the common American fashion, in front of which rise great totem poles, carved and painted, representing grinning and grotesque animal-like, or human-like, or dragon-like figures, one piled on top of the other up to the very top of the column. A sort of ancestral tree, these are said to be,—only to be understood with a knowledge of the sign symbolism of these people—telling of their tribe and lineage, of their great-grandfather the bear, and their great-grandmother the wolf or such strange things.

An Alaskan Genealogical Tree.

The people themselves, with their heavy faces and their imitation of the European dress—for the tourist and the prospector have brought prosperity and the thin veneer of civilization to these southernmost tribes of Alaska—with their flaming neckerchief or head-kerchief of red and yellow silk that the silk-worm had no part in making, but only the cunning Yankee weaver, paddle out in boats dug from the great evergreen trees that cover the hills so thickly, and bring articles made of sealskin, or skilfully woven baskets made out of the fibres of spruce roots, to sell to the passengers. Or the steamer may stop at a little hamlet of white pioneers, where there is fishing for halibut, with perhaps some mining for gold on a small scale; then the practical men of the party, who have hitherto been bored, can inquire whether the industry pays, and contemplate in their suddenly awakened fancies the possibilities of a halibut syndicate, or another Treadwell gold mine. So the artist gets his colors and forms, the business man sees wonderful possibilities in this shockingly unrailroaded wilderness, the tired may rest body and mind in the perfect peace and freedom from the human element, old ladies may sleep and young ones may flirt meantimes.

All this would seem to prove that the passengers were neither professional nor business men, nor young nor old ladies—part of which appeared to me manifestly, and the rest probably untrue; or else that they were all enthusiastic and interested in the dumb British-American way, which sets down as vulgar any betrayal of one's self to one's neighbors.

Some one at the table wearily and warily inquired when we should get to the Muir glacier, on which point we of the flannel-shirted brotherhood were informed; and incidentally we remarked that we intended to leave the festivities before that time, in Juneau.

"Oh my!" said the sad-faced, middle-aged lady with circles about her eyes. "Stay in Juneau! How dreadful! Are you going as missionaries, or," here she wrestled for an idea, "or are you simply going."

"We are going to the Yukon," we answered, "from Juneau. You may have heard of the gold fields of the Yukon country." And strange and sweet to say, at this later day, no one had heard of the gold fields—that was before they had become the rage and the fashion.

But the whole table warmed with interest—they were as lively busybodies as other people and we were the first solution to the problems which they had been putting to themselves concerning each other since the beginning of the trip. There was a fire of small questions.

"How interesting!" said an elderly young lady, who sat opposite. "I suppose you will have all kinds of experiences, just roughing it; and will you take your food with you on—er—wagons—or will you depend on the farmhouses along the way? Only," she added hastily, detecting a certain gleam in the eye of her vis-a-vis, "I didn't think there were many farmhouses."

"They will ride horses, Jane," said the bluff old gentleman who was evidently her father, so authoritatively that I dared not dispute him—"everybody does in that country." Then, as some glanced out at the precipitous mountain-side and dense timber, he added, "Of course, not here. In the interior it is flat, like our plains, and one rides on little horses,—I think they call them kayaks—I have read it," he said, looking at me fiercely. Then, as we were silent, he continued, more condescendingly, "I have roughed it myself, when I was young. We used to go hunting every fall in Pennsylvania, when I was a boy, and once two of us went off together and were gone a week, just riding over the roughest country roads and into the mountains on horseback. If our coffee had not run out we would have stayed longer."

"But isn't it dreadfully cold up there?" said the sweet brown-eyed girl, with a look in her eyes that wakened in our hearts the first momentary rebellion against our exile. "And the wild animals! You will suffer so."

"I used to know an explorer," said the business man with the green necktie, who had been dragged to the shrine of Nature by his wife. He had brought along an entire copy of the New York Screamer, and buried himself all day long in its parti-colored mysteries. "He told me many things that might be useful to you, if I could remember them. About spearing whales—for food, you know—you will have to do a lot of that. I wish I could have you meet him sometime; he could tell you much more than I can. Somebody said there was gold up there. Was it you? Well don't get frozen up and drift across the Pole, like Nansen, just to get where the gold is. But I suppose the nuggets——"

"Let's go on deck, Jane," said the old gentleman;—then to us, politely but firmly, "I have been much interested in your account, and shall be glad to hear more later." We had not said anything yet.

We disembarked at Juneau. We had watched the shore for nearly the whole trip without perceiving a rift in the mountains through which it looked feasible to pass, and at Juneau the outlook or uplook was no better. Those who have been to Juneau (and they are now many) know how slight and almost insecure is its foothold; how it is situated on an irregular hilly area which looks like a great landslide from the mountains towering above, whose sides are so sheer that the wagon road which winds up the gulch into Silver Bow basin is for some distance in the nature of a bridge, resting on wooden supports and hugging close to the steep rock wall. The excursionists tarried a little here, buying furs at extortionate prices from the natives, fancy baskets, and little ornaments which are said to be made in Connecticut.

In the hotel the proprietor arrived at our business in the shortest possible time, by the method of direct questioning. He was from Colorado, I judged—all the men I have known that look like him come from Colorado. There was also a heavily bearded man dressed in ill-fitting store-clothes, and with a necktie which had the strangest air of being ill at ease, who was lounging near by, smoking and spitting on the floor contemplatively.

"Here, Pete," said the proprietor, "I want you to meet these gentlemen." He pronounced the last word with such a peculiar intonation that one felt sure he used it as synonymous with "tenderfeet" or "paperlegs" or other terms by which Alaskans designate greenhorns.

I had rather had him call me "this feller." "He says he's goin' over the Pass, an' maybe you can help each other." Pete smiled genially and crushed my hand, looking me full in the eye the while, doubtless to see how I stood the ordeal. "Pete's an old timer," continued the hotel-man, "one of the Yukon pioneers. Been over that Pass—how many times, Pete, three times, ain't it?"

"Dis makes dirt time," answered Pete, with a most unique dialect, which nevertheless was Scandinavian. "Virst time, me an' Frank Densmore, Whisky Bill an' de odder boys. Dat was summer som we washed on Stewart River, on'y us—fetched out britty peek sack dat year—eh?" He had a curious way of retaining the Scandinavian relative pronoun som in his English, instead of who or that.

"You bet, Pete," answered the other, "you painted the town; done your duty by us."

"Ja," said Pete, "blewed it in; mostly in 'Frisco. Was king dat winter till dust was all been spent. Saw tings dat was goot; saw udder tings was too bad, efen for Alaskan miner. One time enough. I tink dese cities kind of bad fer people. So I get out. Sez I,—'I jes' got time to get to Lake Bennett by time ice breaks,' so I light out." He smiled happily as he said this, as a man might talk of going home, then continued, "Den secon' dime I get a glaim Forty Mile, Miller Greek,—dat's really Sixty Mile, but feller gits dere f'm Forty Mile. Had a pardner, but he went down to Birch Greek, den I work my glaim alone."

He put his hand down in his trousers pocket and brought up a large flat angular piece of gold, two inches long; it had particles of quartz scattered through, and was in places rusty with iron, but was mostly smooth and showed the wearing it must have had in his pocket. He shoved the yellow lump into my hand. "Dat nugget was de biggest in my glaim dat I found; anoder feller he washed over tailin's f'm my glaim efter, an' he got bigger nuggets, he says, but I tinks he's dam liar. Anyhow, I get little sack an' I went down 'Frisco, an' I blewed it in again. Now I go back once more."

We talked awhile and finally agreed to make the trip to Forty Mile together, since we were all bound to this place, and Pete, unlike most miners and prospectors, had no "pardner." We were soon engaged in making the rounds of the shops, laying in our supplies—beans, bacon, dried fruit, flour, sugar, cheese, and, most precious of all, a bucket of strawberry jam. We made up our minds to revel in jam just as long as we were able, even if we ended up on plain flour three times a day. For a drink we took tea, which is almost universally used in Alaska, instead of coffee, since a certain weight of it will last as long as many times the same weight of coffee: moreover, there is some quality in this beverage which makes it particularly adapted to the vigorous climate and conditions of this northern country. Men who have never used tea acquire a fondness for it in Alaska, and will drink vast quantities, especially in the winter. The Russians, themselves the greatest tea-drinkers of all European nations, long ago introduced "Tschai" to the Alaskan natives; and throughout the country they will beg for it from every white man they meet, or will travel hundreds of miles and barter their furs to obtain it.

Bacon, Lord of Alaska.

Concerning the amount of supplies it is necessary to take on a trip like ours, it may be remarked that three pounds of solid food to each man per day, is liberal. As to the proportion, no constant estimate can be made, men's appetites varying with the nature of the articles in the rations and their temporary tastes. On this occasion Pete picked out the supplies, laying in what he judged to be enough of each article: but it appeared afterwards that a man may be an experienced pioneer, and yet never have solved the problem of reasonably accurate rations, for some articles were soon exhausted on our trip, while others lasted throughout the summer, after which we were obliged to bequeath the remainder to the natives. Camp kettles, and frying-pans, of course, were in the outfit, as well as axes, boat-building tools, whip-saw, draw-shave, chisels, hammers, nails, screws, oakum and pitch. It was our plan to build a boat on the lakes which are the source of the Yukon, felling the spruce trees, and then with a whip-saw slicing off boards, which when put together would carry us down the river to the gold diggings.

For our personal use we had a single small tent, A-shaped, but with half of one of the large slanting sides cut out, so that it could be elevated like a curtain, and, being secured at the corners by poles or tied by ropes to trees, made an additional shelter, while it opened up the interior of the tent to the fresh air or the warmth of the camp-fire outside. Blankets for sleeping, and rubber blankets to lay next to the ground to keep out the wet; the best mosquito-netting or "bobinet" of hexagonal mesh, and stout gauntleted cavalry gloves, as protection against the mosquitoes. For personal attire, anything. Dress on the frontier, above all in Alaska, is always varied, picturesque, and unconventional. Flannel or woollen shirts, of course, are universal; and for foot gear the heavy laced boot is the best.

As usual, we were led by the prospective terrors of cold water in the lakes and streams to invest in rubber boots reaching to the hip, which, however, did not prove of such use as anticipated. We had brought with us canvas bags designed for packing, or carrying loads on the back, of a model long used in the Lake Superior woods. They were provided with suitable straps for the shoulders, and a broad one for the top of the head, so that the toiler, bending over, might support a large part of the load by the aid of his rigid neck. These we utilized also as receptacles for our clothes and other personal articles.

Other men were in Juneau also, bound for the Yukon,—not like the hordes that the Klondike brought up later from the States, many of whom turned back before even crossing the passes, but small parties of determined men. We ran upon them here and there. In the hotel we sat down at the table with a self-contained man with a suggestion of recklessness or carelessness in his face, and soon found that he was bound over the same route as ourselves, on a newspaper mission. Danlon, as we may call him, had brought his manservant with him, like the Englishman he was. He was a great traveller, and full of interesting anecdotes of Afghanistan, or Borneo, or some other of the earth's corners. He had engaged to go with him a friend of Pete's, another pioneer, Cooper by name, short, blonde and powerfully built. Between us, we arranged for a tug to take us the hundred miles of water which still lay between us and Dyea, where the land journey begins; after which transaction, we sat down to eat our last dinner in civilization. How tearfully, almost, we remarked that this was the last plum-pudding we should have for many a moon!

We sailed, or rather steamed away, from Juneau in the evening. Our tug had been designed for freight, and had not been altered in the slightest degree for the accommodation of passengers. Her floor space, too, was limited, so that while ten or twelve men might have made themselves very comfortable, the fifty or sixty who finally appeared on board found hard work to dispose of themselves in any fashion. She had been originally engaged for our two parties, but new passengers continually applied, who, from the nature of things, could hardly be refused. So the motley crowd of strangers huddled together, the engines began clanking, and the lights of Juneau soon dropped out of sight, as we steamed up Lynn Canal under the shadow of the giant mountains.

Our fellow-passengers were mostly prospectors; nearly all newcomers, as we could see by the light of the lantern which hung up in the bare apartment where we were. They had their luggage and outfit with them, which they piled up and sat or slept on, to make sure they would not lose it. There were men with grey beards and strapping boys with down on their chins; white handed men and those whose huge horny palms showed a life of toil; all strange, uneasy, and quiet at first, but soon they began to talk confidentially, as men will whom chance throws together in strange places.

There was a Catholic priest bound to his mission among the Eskimos on the lower Yukon,—calm, patient, sweet-tempered, and cheerful of speech; and near him was a noted Alaskan pioneer and trader, bound on some wild trip or other alone. There was another Alaskan—one of those who settle down and take native women as mates and are therefore somewhat scornfully called "squaw-men"; he had been to Juneau as the countryman visits the metropolis, and had brought back with him abundant evidence of the worthlessness of the no-liquor laws of Alaska, in the shape of a lordly drunk, and the material for many more, in a large demijohn, which he guarded carefully. The conversation among this crowd was of the directest sort, as it is always on the frontier.

"Where are you goin', pardner? Prospectin', I reckon?"

Then inquiries as to what each could tell the other concerning the conditions of the land we were to explore, mostly unknown to all: and straightway Pete and Cooper were constituted authorities, by virtue of their previous experience, and were listened to with great deference by the rest. The night was not calm, and the little craft swashed monotonously into the waves. One by one the travellers lay down on the bare dusty floor and slept; and so limited was the room that the last found it difficult to find a place.

Glancing around to find a vacant nook I was struck with the picturesqueness of the scene. Under the lantern the last talkers—the Catholic priest in a red sweater, smoking a bent pipe, the professional traveller and book-maker, and another Englishman with smooth face and oily manners,—were discussing matters with as much reserve and decorum as they would in a drawing-room. Around them lay stretched out, over the floor, under the table, and even on it, motley-clad men, breathing heavily or staring with wide fixed eyes overhead. The pioneer had gone to sleep lying on his back and was snoring at intervals, but by a physical feat hard to understand, retained his quid of tobacco, which he chewed languidly through it all. The only space I could find was in a narrow passageway leading to the pilot-house. Here I coiled myself, hugging closely to the wall, but it was dark and throughout the night I was awakened by heavy boots accidentally placed on my body or head; yet I was too sleepy to hear the apologies and straightway slept again.

It was natural, under the circumstances, that all should be early risers, and we were ravenously hungry for the breakfast which was tardily prepared. The only table was covered with oilcloth, and was calculated for four, but about eight managed to crowd around it: yet with all possible haste the last had breakfast about noon. We sat down where a momentary opening was offered at the third or fourth sitting. A moment later a couple of prospectors appeared who apparently had counted on places, and the hungry stomach of one of them prompted some very audible mutterings to the effect that all men were born free and equal, and he was as good as any one. The priest immediately got up, and with sincere kindness offered his seat, which so overcame the man with shame that he politely refused and retired; but the rest of us insisted on crowding together and making room for him. And for the remainder of the trip a more punctiliously polite individual than this same prospector could not be found.

After each round of eaters, the tin plates and cups and the dingy black knives and forks were seized by a busy dishwasher, who performed a rapid hocus-pocus over them, in which a tiny dishpan filled with hot water that came finally to have the appearance and consistency of a hodge-podge, played an important part; then they were skillfully shyed on to the table again. I looked at my plate. Swimming in the shallow film of dish-water, were flakes of beans, shreds of corned-beef and streaks of apple-sauce, which took me back in fancy to all the different tables that had eaten before: the boat was swaying heavily and I gulped down my stomach before I passed the plate to the dishwasher and suggested wiping. He was a very young man, remarkably dashing, like the hero of a dime novel. He was especially proficient in profanity and kept up a running fire of insults on the cook. He took the plate and eyed me scornfully, witheringly.

"Seems to me some tenderfeet is mighty pertickler," said he, with a very evident personal application, then swabbed out the plate with a towel, the sight of which made me turn and stare at the spruce-clad mountain-sides, in a desperate effort to elevate my mind and my stomach above trifles.

"This is no place for a white man," said a prospector who had been staring out of the door all day. "Good enough for bears and—and—Siwash, maybe." Most, I think shared more or less openly his depression, for the shores of Lynn Canal are no more attractive to the adventurer than the rest of the bleak Alaskan mountain coast.

Lynn Canal.

It was a chilly, drizzling day. The clouds ordinarily hid the tops of the great steep mountains, so that these looked as if they might be walls that reached clear up to the heavens, or, when they broke away, exposed lofty snowy peaks, magnificent and gigantic in the mist. We caught glimpses of wrinkled glaciers, crawling down the valleys like huge jointed living things, in whose fronts the pure blue ice showed faintly and coldly. Here and there waterfalls appeared, leaping hundreds of feet from crag to crag, and all along was the rugged brown shore, with the surf lashing the cliffs, and no place where even a boat might land. All men, whether they clearly perceive it or not, find in the phenomena of Nature some figurative meanings, and are depressed or elevated by them.

We anchored in the lee of a bare rounded mountain that night, it being too rough to attempt landing, and the next morning were off Dyea, where we were to go ashore. The surf was still heavy, but the captain ventured out in a small boat to get the scow in which passengers and goods were generally conveyed to the shore; for the water was shallow, and the steamer had to keep a mile or so from the land. In the surf the boat capsized, and we could see the captain bobbing up and down in the breakers, now on top, now under his boat, in the icy water. The dishwasher, who evidently knew the course of action in all such emergencies from dime-novel precedents, yelled out "Man the lifeboat!" The captain had taken the only boat there was. The entire crew, it may be mentioned, consisted, besides the dishwasher and the captain, of the sailor, who was also the cook. The duty of manning the lifeboat—had there been one—would thus apparently have devolved on the sailor, but he grew pale and swore that he did not know how to row and that he had just come from driving a milk-wagon in San Francisco. A party of prospectors became engaged in a heated discussion as to whether, if there had been a boat on board, it would not have been foolish to venture out in it, even for the sake of trying to rescue the captain; some urging the claims of heroism, and others loudly proclaiming that they would not risk their lives in any such d——d foolish way as that.

However, all this was only the froth and excitement of the moment. The captain hauled his boat out of the breakers, skillfully launched it again, and came on board, shivering but calm, a strapping, reckless Cape Breton Scotch-Canadian. In due course of time afterwards the scow was also got out, and we transferred our outfits to it and sat on top of them, while we were slowly propelled ashore by long oars.

CHAPTER II.
OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS.

At this time there was only one building at Dyea—a log house used as a store for trading with the natives, and known by the name of Healy's Post. (Two years afterwards, on returning to the place, I found a mushroom, sawed-board town of several thousand people; but that was after the Klondike boom.) We pitched our tents near the shore that night, spreading our blankets on the ground.

In the morning all were bustling around, following out their separate plans for getting over the Pass as soon as possible. Of the different notches in the mountain wall by which one may cross the coast range and arrive at the head waters of the Yukon, the Chilkoot, which is reached from Dyea, was at that time the only one practicable. It was known that Jack Dalton, a pioneer trader of the country, was wont to go over the Chilkat Pass, a little further south, while Schwatka, Hayes, and Russell, in an expedition of which few people ever heard, had crossed by the way of the Taku River and the Taku Pass to the Hootalinqua or Teslin River, which is one of the important streams that unite to make up the upper Yukon. But the White Pass, which afterwards became the most popular, and which lies just east of the Chilkoot, was at that time entirely unused, being a rough long trail that required clearing to make it serviceable.

The Chilkoot, though the highest and steepest of the passes, was yet the shortest and the most free from obstructions; it had been, before the advent of the white adventurer in Alaska, the avenue of travel for the handful of half-starved interior natives who were wont to come down occasionally to the coast, for the purpose of trading. The coast Indians are, as they always have been, a more numerous, more prosperous, stronger and more quarrelsome class, for the sea yielded them, directly and indirectly, a varied and bountiful subsistence. The particular tribe who occupied the Dyea region,—the Chilkoots—were accustomed to stand guard over the Pass and to exact tribute from all the interior natives who came in; and when the first white men appeared, the natives tried in the same way to hinder them from crossing and so destroying their monopoly of petty traffic. For a short time this really prevented individuals and small parties from exploring, but in 1878 a party of nineteen prospectors, under the leadership of Edmund Bean, was organized, and to overcome the hostility of the Chilkoots, a sort of military "demonstration" was arranged by the officers in charge at Sitka. The little gunboat stationed there proceeded to Dyea, and, anchoring, fired a few blank shots from her heaviest (or loudest) guns; afterwards the officer in charge went on shore, and made a sort of unwritten treaty or agreement with the thoroughly frightened natives, by which the prospectors, and all others who came after, were allowed to proceed unmolested.

The fame of that "war-canoe" spread from Indian to Indian throughout the length and breadth of the vast territory of Alaska. One can hear it from the natives in many places a thousand miles from where the incident occurred, and each time the story is so changed and disguised, that it might be taken for a myth by an enthusiastic mythologist, and carefully preserved, with all its vagaries, and very likely proved to be an allegory of the seasons, or the travels of the sun, moon, and stars. In proportion as the story reached more and more remote regions, the statements of the proportions of the canoe became more and more exaggerated, and the thunder of the guns more terrible, and the number of warriors on board increased faster than Jacob's flock. The gunboat was the butt for many good-natured jokes from navy officers, on account of her small dimensions and frail construction. Yet the natives a little way into the interior will tell you of the wonderful snow-white war-canoe, half a mile long, armed with guns a hundred yards or so in length; and by the time one gets in the neighborhood of the Arctic Circle, he will hear of the "great ship" (the native will perhaps point to some mountain eight or ten miles away) "as long as from here to the mountain"; how she vomited out smoke, fire and ashes like a volcano, and at the same time exploded her guns and killed many people, and how she ran forwards and backwards, with the wind or against it, at a terrific speed,—a formidable monster, truly!

At the time of our trip (in 1896) the immigration into the Yukon gold country had gone on, in a small way, for some years; several mining districts were well developed, and the natives had settled down into the habit of helping the white man, for a substantial remuneration. These natives were all camped or housed close to the shore. They were odd and interesting at first sight. The men were of fair size, strong, stolid, and sullen-looking; clothed in cheap civilized garb in this summer season,—it was in the early part of June—in overalls and jumpers, with now and then a woollen Guernsey jacket, and with straw hats on their heads. The women were neither beautiful nor attractive. Many of them had covered their faces with a mixture of soot and grease, which stuck well. Other women had their chins tattooed in stripes with the indelible ink of the cuttlefish—sometimes one, sometimes three, sometimes five or six stripes. This custom I found afterwards among the women of many tribes and peoples in different parts of Alaska, and it seems, in some regions at least, to be a mark of aristocracy, indicating the wealth of the parents at the time the girl-child was born. All the natives were living in tents or rude wooden huts, in the most primitive fashion, cooking by a smouldering fire outside, and sleeping packed close together, wrapped in skins and dirty blankets.

Alaskan Women and Children.

It had been the custom of the miners to engage these natives to carry their outfits for them, from Dyea, and some of the men who had come with us, immediately hired packers for the whole trip to Lake Lindeman, paying them, I think, eleven cents a pound for everything carried. The storekeeper, however, had been constructing a foot trail for about half the distance and had bought a few pack-horses, and we engaged these to transport our outfit as far as possible, trusting to Indians for the rest. We had brought with us from Juneau, on a last sudden idea, a lot of lumber with which to build our boat when we should get to Lake Lindeman, and here the transportation of this lumber became a great problem. To pack it on the horses was an impossibility, and the Indians refused absolutely to take the boards unless they were cut in two, which would destroy much of their value, and even if this were done, demanded an enormous price for the carrying; therefore it was concluded to leave them behind, and trust to good luck in the future.

In one way or another, everybody was furnished with some kind of transportation, and the whole visible population of Dyea, permanent or transient, began moving up the valley. Some of the natives put their loads in wooden dugout canoes, which they paddled, or pushed with poles, six or seven miles up the small stream which goes by the name of the Dyea River; others took their packs on their backs, and led the way along the trail. Not stronger, perhaps, than white men, the Chilkoots showed themselves remarkably patient and enduring, carrying heavy loads rapidly long distances without resting. Not only the men, but the women and children, made pack-animals of themselves. I remember a slight boy of thirteen or so, who could not have weighed over eighty pounds, carrying a load of one hundred. The dog belonging to the same family, a medium-sized animal, waddled along with a load of about forty pounds; he seemed to be imbued with the same spirit as the rest, and although the load nearly dragged him to the ground, he was patient and persevering.

The trail was a tiresome one, being mostly through loose sand and gravel alongside the stream: several times we had to wade across. As we went up, the valley became narrower, and we had views of the glacier above us, which reached long slender fingers down the little valleys from the great ice-mass on the mountain. It was evident that the glacier had once filled the entire valley. As soon as we were up a little we were obliged to clamber over the piled-up boulders in the strips of moraine which the ice had left; in places the rows were so regular that they had the appearance of stone walls.

We were seized with fatigue and a terrible hunger. "You haven't a sandwich about your clothes, have you?" I asked of some prospectors whom I overtook resting in the lee of a cliff. Here the stream becomes so rough and rapid that the natives can work their canoes no further, and so the place has been somewhat pompously named on some maps the "Head of Navigation," by which most people infer that a gunboat may steam up this far.

"No, by ——, pardner," was the answer, "if we had, we'd a' eaten it ourselves before now."

Crossing the stream for the last time, on the trunk of a fallen tree, which swayed alarmingly, the trail led up steeply among the bare rocks of the hillside. All the pedestrian groups had separated into singles by this time, every one going his "ain gait" according to his own ideas and strength, and in no mood for conversation. I overtook a young Irishman, who had started out with a pack of about seventy-five pounds; he was resting, and quite downcast with fatigue and hunger.

Just where we stopped some one had left a load of canned corn and tomatoes. We eyed them hungrily, and gravely discussed our rights to helping ourselves. We did not know the owners and could not find them—certainly they were none of those that had come with us. We could not take them and leave money, for although the natives respected "caches" of provisions, we could not expect them to do the same with money. "Again," said the Irishman, "the feller what lift them here may be dipinding on every blissed can of swate corn for some little schayme of his, while we have plenty grub of our own, if we can on'y get our flippers on it."

At this period, all through Alaska, provisions and other property was regarded with utmost respect. Old miners and prospectors have told me that they have left provisions exposed in a "cache" for a year, and on returning after having been hundreds of miles away, have found them untouched, although nearly starving natives had passed them almost daily all winter. In the mining camps the same custom prevailed. Locks were unknown on the doors. When a white man arrived at the hut of an absent prospector, he helped himself, taking enough provisions from the "cache" to keep him out of want, till he could make the next stage of his journey, and wrote on paper or on the wooden door, "I have taken twenty pounds of flour, ten pounds of bacon, five pounds of beans, and a little tea," signed his name, and departed. It was not a bill, but an acknowledgment; and to have left without making the acknowledgment constituted a theft, in the eyes of the miner population. This condition of primitive honesty did not last, however. Later, with the Klondike boom, came the ordinary light-fingeredness of civilization, and a state of affairs unique and instructive passed away.

We arrived finally at the end of the horse-trail, a spot named Sheep Camp by an early party of prospectors who killed some mountain sheep here. Steep, rocky and snowy mountains overhang the valley, with a vast glacier not far up; and here, since our visit, have occurred a number of fatal disasters, from snowslides and landslides. Pete had arrived before us: he had set up a Yukon camp stove of sheet iron, had kindled fire therein and was engaged in the preparation of slapjacks and fried bacon, a sight that affected us so that we had to go and sit back to, and out of reach of the smell, till Pete yelled out in vile Chinook "Muk-a-muk altay! Bean on the table!" There were no beans and no table, of course, but that was Pete's facetious way of putting it.

Further than Sheep Camp the horse-trail was quite too rocky and steep for the animals; so we tried to engage Indians to take our freight for the remaining part of the distance across the Pass. Up to the time of our arrival, the regular price for packing from Dyea to Lake Lindeman had been eleven cents a pound. For the transportation by horses over the first half of the distance—thirteen miles—we had paid five cents a pound, and we had expected to pay the Indians six cents for the remainder of the trip. In the first place, however, it was difficult to gather the Indians together, for they were off in bands in different parts of the neighboring country, on expeditions of their own; and when they arrived in Sheep Camp, with a bluster and a racket, they were so set up by the number of men that were waiting for their help that they took it into their heads to be in no hurry about working. Finally they sent a spokesman who, with an insolence rather natural than assumed for the occasion, demanded nine cents per pound instead of six, for packing to Lake Lindeman. It was a genuine strike—the revolt of organized labor against helpless capital.

Being in a hurry to get ahead and fulfill our mission, we should doubtless have yielded; but there were many parties camped here besides ourselves—namely, all those who had been our fellow-sufferers on board the Scrambler—and a general consultation being held among the gold-hunters, it was decided that the proposed increase of pay for labor would prove ruinous to their business. A committee representing these gentlemen waited on us and begged us not to yield to the strikers, in the carelessness of our hearts and our plethoric pocket-books, but to consider that in doing so they—the prospectors—must follow suit, the precedent being once established; whereas they were poor men, and could not afford the extra price. To this view of the case we agreed, considering ourselves as a part of the Sheep Camp community, rather than as an individual party; and the English traveller (who was likewise suspected of being overburdened with funds, and therefore likely to be careless with them) was also waited upon and persuaded to resist the demands. So everybody camped and waited, and was obstinate, for several days: not only the white men, but the Siwash.

By way of digression it may be mentioned that the word Siwash is indiscriminately applied by the white men to all the Alaskan natives, to whatever race—and there are many—they belong. The word therefore has no definite meaning, but corresponds roughly to the popular name of "nigger" for all very dark-skinned races, or "Dago" for Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and a host of other black-haired, olive-skinned nations. The name has been said to be a corruption of the French word "sauvage,"—savage,—and this seems very likely.

Like the corresponding epithets cited, the word Siwash has a certain familiar, facetious, and contemptuous value, and this may have been the idea which prompted its use just now, when speaking of the natives as strikers and opponents. At any rate, they took the situation in a careless, matter-of-fact way; cooked, ate, slept, borrowed our kettles, begged our tea and stole our sugar with utmost cheerfulness, and were apparently contented and happy. We white men likewise tried to conceal our restlessness, and chatted in each others' tents, admired the scenery, or went rambling up the steep mountain-sides in search of experiences, exercise, and rocks. Some of us clambered over the huge boulders, each as big as a New England cottage, which had been brought here by glacial action, then up over the steep cliffs, wrenched and crumbling from the crushing of the same mighty force, supporting ourselves,—when the rocks gave way beneath our feet and went rattling down the cliff,—by the tough saplings that had taken root in the crevices, and grew out horizontally, or even inclined downwards, bent by continuous snowslides. So we reached the base of the glacier, where a sheer wall of clear blue ice rose to a height which we estimated at three or four hundred feet, back of which stretched a great uneven white ice field, as far as the eye could see, clear up till the view was lost in the mists of the upper mountains; an ice field seamed with great yawning crevasses, where the blue of the ice gleamed as streaks on the dead white.

One morning we heard a yell from the Siwash, and soon they came running over the little knoll which separated our camp from theirs, and began grabbing the articles that belonged to some of the miners. We were at a loss to know the meaning of what seemed at first to be a very unceremonious proceeding, but when we saw the miners, with many shamefaced glances at us, help the natives in the distribution of the material, we realized that these men had forsaken us and their resolutions; so greedy were they to reach the land of gold that they had gone to the natives and agreed to pay them the demanded rates on condition that they should have all the packers themselves, leaving none to us. We let these men and their natives go in peace, without even a reproach: less than a week afterwards we had the deep satisfaction of passing them on the trail, and even in lending them a hand in a series of little difficulties for which, in their haste, they had come unprepared. The veteran miner in Alaska is a splendid, open-hearted, generous fellow; the newcomer, or "chicharko," is a thing to be avoided.

After this we had to wait till the natives had got back from carrying the miners' supplies, and then we agreed, with what grace we could, to pay the price that the others had. The Indians were quite a horde, capable of carrying in one trip all the supplies belonging to our party and that of the English traveller. Since they were paid by the pound they vied in taking enormous loads; the largest carried was 161 pounds, but all the men's packs ranged from 125 to 150 pounds. Women and half-grown boys carried packs of 100 pounds. It was a "Stick" or interior Indian, named at the mission Tom, but originally possessed of a fearful and unpronounceable name, who carried the largest load. He was barely tolerated and was somewhat badgered by the Chilkoots, hence he fled much to the society of the whites, and would squat near for hours, always smiling horribly when looked at; he claimed to be a chief among his own wretched people, and spent all his spare time in blackening his face, reserving rings around the eyes which he smeared with red ochre—having done which, he grinned ghastly approval of himself!

Pete started over the Pass in advance of the party, to procure for us if possible a boat at Lake Lindeman.

"Dis is dirt time I gross Pass," said Pete. "Virst dime I dake leedle pack—den I vos blayed out; nex' dime I dake leedle roll of clo'es—den I vos blayed out too, py chimney: dis dime I dake notting—den I vill be blayed out too!"

The natives, after much shouting and confusion and wrangling, made up their packs about noon, and started out, we following; just before getting to snow-line they stopped in a place where a chaotic mass of boulders form a trifling shelter, grateful to wild beasts or wild men like these. Here they deposited their loads, and with exasperating indifference composed themselves to sleep. We tried to persuade them to go on, but to no avail, and we discovered afterwards, as often happened to us in our dealing with the natives, that they were right. It was June, and yet the snow lay deep on all the upper parts of the Pass; and in the long, warm days it became soft and mushy, making travel very difficult, especially with heavy packs. As soon as the sun went down behind the hills, however, the air became cool, and a hard crust formed, so that walking was much better.

We left the natives and followed a trail which led among the boulders and then higher up the mountain, where many moccasined feet had left a deep path through the icy snow. We tramped onward, sometimes on hard ice, sometimes through soft snow, strung out in Indian file, saying nothing, saving our breath for our lungs; at times the crust rang hollow to our tread, and beneath us we could hear torrents raging. It was about eight o'clock at night when we started, and the sun in the narrow valley had already gone down behind the high glaciers on the mountain-tops, even at this latitude and in the month of June; so the long northern twilight which is Alaska's substitute for night in the summer months soon began to settle down upon us. At the same time the moisture from the snow which all day long had been lying in the sun, began cooling into mists, changeful and of different thicknesses; and in the dim light gave to everything a weird and unnatural aspect.

Even our fellow-travellers were distorted and magnified, now lengthwise, now sidewise, so that those above us were powerful-limbed giants, striding up the hill, while those behind us were flattened and broadened, and seemed straddling along as grotesquely as spiders. When we drew near and looked at each other we were inclined to laugh, but there was something in the pale-blue, ghastly color of the faces that made us stop, half-frightened. At twelve o'clock it was so dark that we could hardly follow the trail; then we saw a fire gleaming like a will-o'-the-wisp somewhere above us, and clambering up the steep rock which stuck out of the snow and overhung the trail, we saw a couple of figures crouching over a tiny blaze of twigs and smoking roots. It was a native and his "klutchman" or squaw; he turned out to be deaf-and-dumb, but made signs to us,—as we squatted ourselves around the fire,—that the night was dark, the trail dangerous, and that it would be better to wait till it grew a little lighter. So we kept ourselves warm for a half-hour or more by our exertions in tearing up roots for a fire: the fire itself being nothing more than a smoky, flary pile of wet fagots, hardly enough to warm our numbed fingers by. Then a dim figure came toiling up to us. It was one of our packers, and he explained in broken, profane, and obscene English, of which he was very proud, (the foundation of his knowledge had been laid in the mission, and the trimmings, which were profuse and with the same idea many times repeated, like an art pattern, had been picked up from straggling whites) that the trail was good now. So we very gladly took up our march again.

Two of us soon got ahead of the guide and all the rest of our party, following the beaten track in the snow; after a while the ascent became very steep, as the last sheer declivity of the Pass was reached, and we began to suspect that we had strayed from the right path, for although here was a track, we could find no footprints on it, but only grooves as if from things which had slid down. Yet we decided not to go back, for we did not know how far we had strayed from the path, and the climbing was not so easy that we were anxious to do it twice. So we kept on upward, and the ascent soon became so steep that we were obliged to stop and kick footholds in the crust at every step.

It was twilight again, but still foggy, and we could see neither up nor down, only what appeared to be a vast chasm beneath us, wherein great indistinct shapes were slowly shifting—an impression infinitely more grand and appalling than the reality. At any rate, it made us very careful in every step, for we had no mind that a misplaced foot should send us sliding down the grooves we were following. At last we gained the top, found here again the trail we had lost, and waited for the rest. Around us, sticking out of the snow, were rocks, which appeared distorted and moving. It was the mists which moved past them, giving a deceptive effect. My companion suddenly exclaimed, "There's a bear!" On looking, my imagination gave the shape the same semblance, but on going towards it, it resolved itself very reluctantly into a rock, as if ashamed of its failure to "bluff." Most grown-up people, as well as children, I fancy, are more or less afraid of the dark—where the uncertain evidence of the eyes can be shaped by the imagination into unnatural things. Goethe must once have felt something like what Faust expressed when he stood at night in one of the rugged Hartz districts:

"Seh' die Baüme hinter Baüme,
Wie sie schnell vorüber rücken,
Und die Klippen, die sich bücken,
Und die langen Felsennasen,
Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen."

Presently the rest of the party came up from quite a different direction and with them a whole troop of packers. The main trail, from which we had strayed, was much longer, but not so steep; while the one we had followed was simply the mark of the articles which the packers were accustomed to send down from the summit to save carrying, while they themselves took the more circuitous route.

On the interior side of the summit is a small lake with steep sides, which the miners have named Crater Lake, fancying from the shape that it had been formed by volcanic action; it has no such origin however, but occupies what is known as a glacial cirque or amphitheatre—a deep hollow carved out of the dioritic mountain mass by the powerful wearing action of a valley glacier. This lake was still frozen and we crossed on the ice, then followed down the valley of the stream which flowed from it and led into another small lake. There are several of these small bodies of water and connecting streams before one reaches Lake Lindeman, which is several miles long, and is the uppermost water of the Yukon which is navigable for boats. Our path was devious, following the packers, but always along this valley. We crossed and recrossed the streams over frail and reverberant arches, half ice, half snow, which, already broken away in places, showed foaming torrents beneath. As we descended in elevation, the ice on the little lakes became more and more rotten and the snow changed to slush, through which we waded knee deep for miles, sometimes putting a foot through the ice into the water beneath.

We were all very tired by this time and were separated from one another by long distances, each silent, and travelling on his nerve. The Indian packers, too, in spite of their long experience, were tired and out of temper; but the most pitiful sight of all was to see the women, especially the old ones, bending under crushing loads, dragging themselves by sheer effort at every step, groaning and stopping occasionally, but again driven forward by the men to whom they belonged. One could not interfere; it was a family matter; and as among white people, the woman would have resented the interference as much as the man.

Finally we came to a lake where the water was almost entirely open and were obliged to skirt along its rocky shores to where we found a brawling and rocky stream entering it, cutting us off. After a moment of vain glancing up and down in search of a ford, we took to the water bravely, floundering among the boulders on the stream's bottom, and supporting ourselves somewhat with sticks. Afterwards we found a trail which led away from the lake high over the rocky hillside, where the rocks had been smoothed and laid bare by ancient glaciers, now vanished. Here we found the remnants of a camp, left by some one who had recently gone before us; we inspected the corned beef cans lying about rather hungrily, thinking that something might have been left over. Our only lunch since leaving Sheep Camp had been a small piece of chocolate and a biscuit. The biscuit possessed certain almost miraculous qualities, to which I ascribe our success in completing the trip and in arriving first among the travellers at Lake Lindeman. I myself was the concocter of this biscuit, but it was done in a moment of inspiration, and since I have forgotten certain mystic details, it probably could never be gotten together again. It was the first and last time that I have made biscuit in my life, and I did it simply for the purpose of instruction to the others, who were shockingly ignorant of such practical matters.

We had brought a reflector with us for baking,—a metal arrangement which is set up in front of a camp-fire, and, from polished metallic surfaces, reflects the heat up and down, on to a pan of biscuit or bread, which is slid into the middle. These utensils as used in the Lake Superior region, that home of good wood-craft, are made of sheet iron, tinned; but thinking to get a lighter article, I had one constructed out of aluminum. This first and last trial with our aluminum reflector at Sheep Camp showed us that one of the peculiar properties of this metal is that it reflects heat but very little, but transmits it, almost as readily as glass does light. So when I had arrived at the first stage of my demonstration and had the reflector braced up in front of the fire, I found that the dough remained obstinately dough, while the heat passed through the reflector and radiated itself around about Sheep Camp. Still I persisted, and after several hours of stewing in front of the fire, most of the water was evaporated from the dough, leaving a compact rubbery grey BISCUIT, as I termed it. I offered it for lunch and I ate one myself; no one else did, but I was rewarded by feeling a fullness all through the tramp, while the others were empty and famished. I also was sure that it gave me enormous strength and endurance; while some of the rest were unkind enough to suggest that the same high courage which led me up to the biscuit's mouth, figuratively speaking, kept me plugging away on the Lake Lindeman trail.

We reached Lake Lindeman at about nine o'clock in the morning, and found Pete and Cooper already there. It was raining drearily and they had made themselves a shelter of poles and boughs under which they were lying contentedly enough, waiting until the packers should bring the tents. In a very short time after we had arrived all the natives were at hand, and setting down their packs demanded money. They could not be induced to accept bills, because they could not tell the denomination of them, and would as soon take a soap advertisement as a hundred-dollar note; they dislike gold, because they get so small a quantity of it in comparison with silver.

Like the Indians of the United States, the Alaskans formerly used wampum largely as a medium of exchange—small, straight, horn-shaped, rather rare shells, which were strung on thongs—but when the trading companies began shipping porcelain wampum into the country the natives soon learned the trick and stopped the use of it. I have in my possession specimens of this porcelain wampum, which I got from the agent of one of the large trading companies on the Yukon. Silver is now the favorite currency, whether or not on the basis of sound political economy; and each particular section has often a preference for some special coin, such as a quarter, ("two bits," as it is called in the language of the west coast) a half-dollar or a dollar. Where the natives have had to deal only with quarters, you cannot buy anything for half-dollars, except for nearly double the price you would pay in quarters; while dimes, however large the quantity, would probably be refused entirely.

Alaskan Indians and House.

The Chilkoots, however, on account of their residence on the coast and consequent contact with the whites, had become more liberal in their views as regarded denomination of silver, but drew the line at bimetalism, and had no faith whatsoever in the United States as the fulfiller of promises to redeem greenbacks in silver coin. So there was some trouble in paying them satisfactorily; and after they were paid they came back, begging for a little flour, a little tea, etc., and keeping up the process with unwearied ardor till the supply was definitely shut off. The toughness of these people is well shown by the fact that when they had rested an hour and had cooked themselves a little food and drunk a little tea, they departed over the trail again for Sheep Camp, although they had made the same journey as the white men, who were all exhausted, and had, in addition, carried loads of as high as 160 pounds over the whole of the rough trail of thirteen miles. When affairs were settled we pitched our tents, rolled into our blankets, and for the next twenty hours slept.

CHAPTER III.
THE LAKES AND THE YUKON TO FORTY MILE.

Upon reaching Lake Lindeman, we found a number of other parties encamped,—men who had come over the trail before us, and had been delaying a short time, for different reasons. From one of these parties Pete had been lucky enough to buy a boat already built, so that we did not have to wait and build one ourselves—a job that would have consumed a couple of weeks. The boat was after the dory pattern, but sharp at both ends, made of spruce, lap-streaked and unpainted, with the seams calked and pitched; about eighteen feet long, and uncovered. During the trip later we decided that it ought to be christened, and so we mixed some soot and bacon-grease for paint, applied it hot to the raw, porous wood, and inscribed in shaky letters the words "Skookum Pete," as a compliment to our pilot. Skookum is a Chinook word signifying strength, courage, and other excellent qualities necessary for a native, a frontiersman, or any other dweller in the wilderness—qualities which were conspicuous in Pete. Pete was overcome with shame on reading the legend, however, and straightway erased his name, so that she was simply the Skookum. And skookum she proved herself, in the two thousand miles we afterwards travelled, even though she sprung a leak occasionally or became obstinate when being urged up over a rapid.

It may be observed that the Chinook, to which this word belongs, is not a language, but a jargon, composed of words from many native American and also from many European tongues. It sprung up as a sort of universal language, which was used by the traders of the Hudson Bay Company in their intercourse with the natives, and is consequently widely known, but is poor in vocabulary and expression.

There were several boats ready to start, craft of all models and grades of workmanship, variously illustrating the efforts of the cowboy, the clerk, or the lawyer, at ship-carpentry. Several of us got off together in the morning, our boat carrying four, and the English traveller's boat the same number, for he had taken into his party the priest whom we had met on the Scrambler.

This gentleman, with a number of miners and a newspaper reporter, had been unlucky enough to fall into the trap of a certain transportation company, which had a very prettily furnished office in Seattle. This office was the big end of the company. As one went north towards the region where the company was supposed to be doing its transportation, it shrunk till nothing was left but a swindle. They promised for a certain sum of money to transport supplies and outfits over the Pass, and to have the entire expedition in charge of an experienced man, who would relieve one of all worry and bother; and after transportation across the Pass, to put their passengers on the COMPANY'S steamers, which would carry them to the gold fields. Even at Juneau the "experienced man" who was to take the party through, and who was a high officer of the company, kept up the ridiculous pretences and succeeded in obtaining a number of passengers for the trip. When these men learned later, however, that the guide had never yet been further than Juneau; that he had no means of transporting freight over the Pass; that the steamers existed only in fancy; and finally, when opportunity to hire help offered, that the leader had no funds, so that they were obliged to do all the work themselves, in order to move along: when they learned all this they were naturally a disgusted set of men, but having now given away their money, most of them decided to stick together till the diggings were reached. The priest, however, who was in a hurry, became nervous when he saw different parties leaving the rapid and elegant transportation company in the rear, and effected a separation.

When we left Sheep Camp, the manager was trying to cajole his passengers into carrying their own packs to the summit, even going so far as to take little loads himself—"just for exercise," as he airily informed us. He was an Englishman, of aristocratic tendencies, with an awe-inspiring acquaintance with titles. "You know Lord Dudson Dudley, of course," he would begin, fixing one with his eye as if to hypnotize; "his sister, you remember, made such a row by her flirtation with Sir Jekson Jekby.—Never heard of them?—Humph!" And then with a look which seemed to say "What kind of a blarsted Philistine is this?" he would retreat to his own camp-fire.

We sailed down Lake Lindeman with a fair brisk wind, using our tent-fly braced against a pole, for a sail. The distance is only four or five miles, so that the lower end of the lake was reached in an hour. A mountain sheep was sighted on the hillside above us, soon after starting, and a long-range shot with the rifle was tried at it, but the animal bounded away.

At the lower end of this first of the Yukon navigable lakes there is a stream, full of little falls and rapids, which connects with Lake Bennett, a much larger body of water. According to Pete, the boat could not run these rapids, so we began the task of "lining" her down. With a long pole shod with iron, especially brought along for such work, Pete stood in the bow or stern, as the emergency called for, planting the pole on the rocks which stuck out of the water and so shoving and steering the boat through an open narrow channel, while we three held a long line and scrambled along the bank or waded in the shallow water. We had put on long rubber boots reaching to the hip and strapped to our belts, so at first our wading was not uncomfortable. On account of the roar of the water we could not hear Pete's orders, but could see his signals to "haul in," or "let her go ahead." On one difficult little place he manœuvered quite a while, getting stuck on a rock, signalling us to pull back, and then trying again. Finally he struck the right channel, and motioned energetically to us to go ahead. We spurted forward, waddling clumsily, and the foremost man stepped suddenly into a groove where the water was above his waist. Ugh! It was icy, but he floundered through, half swimming, half wading, dragging his great water-filled boots behind him like iron weights; and the rest followed. We felt quite triumphant and heroic when we emerged, deeming this something of a trial: we did not know that the time would come when it would be the ordinary thing all day long, and would become so monotonous that all feelings of novelty would be lost in a general neutral tint of bad temper and rheumatism.

On reaching shallow water the weight of the water-filled rubber boots was so great that we could no longer navigate among the slippery rocks, so we took turns going-ashore and emptying them. There was a smooth round rock with steep sides, glaring in the sun; on this we stretched ourselves head down, so that the water ran out of our boots and trickled in cold little streams down our backs; then we returned to our work.

Before undertaking to line the Skookum through the rapids we had taken out a large part of the load and put it on shore, in order to lighten the boat, and also to save our "grub" in case our boat was capsized. The next task was to carry this over the half-mile portage. Packing is about the hardest and most disliked work that a pioneer has to do, and yet every one that travels hard and well in Alaska and similar rough countries must do it ad nauseam. In such remote and unfinished parts of the world transportation comes back to the original and simple phase,—carrying on one's back. The railroad and the steamboat are for civilization, the wheeled vehicle for the inhabited land where there are roads, the camel for the desert, the horse for the plains and where trails have been cut, but for a large part of Alaska Nature's only highways are the rivers, and when the water will not carry the burdens the explorer must.

In a properly-constructed pack-sack, the weight is carried partly by the shoulders but mainly by the neck, the back being bent and the neck stretched forward till the load rests upon the back and is kept from slipping by the head strap, which is nearly in line with the rigid neck. An astonishing amount can be carried in this way with practice,—for half a mile or so, very nearly one's own weight. Getting up and down with such a load is a work of art, which spoils the temper and wrenches the muscles of the beginner. Having got into the strap he finds himself pinned to the ground in spite of his backbone-breaking efforts to rise, so he must learn to so sit down in the beginning that he can tilt the load forward on his back, get on his hands and knees and then elevate himself to the necessary standing-stooping posture; or he must lie down flat and roll over on his face, getting his load fairly between his shoulders, and then work himself up to his hands and knees as before. Sometimes, if the load is heavy, the help of another must be had to get an upright position, and then the packer goes trudging off, red and sweating and with bulging veins.

By the time we had carried our outfits over the portage, we were ready for supper, and after that for a sleep. We pitched no tent—we were too tired, and the blue sky and the still shining sun looked very friendly—so we rolled in our blankets and slumbered.

There were other craft than ours at Lake Bennett,—belonging to parties who had come over before us, and who had not yet started. The most astonishing thing was a small portable sawmill, which had been pulled across the Chilkoot Pass in the winter, over the snow and ice; and the limited means of communication in this country are well shown by the fact that no news of any such mill was to be had anywhere along the route. Men went over the Chilkoot Pass into the interior, but rarely any came back that way.

Among the gold hunters was a solitary Dutchman, a pathetic, desperate, mild-mannered sort of an adventurer, who had built himself a boat like a wood-box in model and construction, square, lop-sided, and leaky; but he started bravely down Lake Bennett, paddling, with a rag of a square-sail braced against a pole. We pitied, admired, and laughed at him, but many were the doubts expressed as to whether he could reach the diggings in his cockle-shell. Then there was a large scow, also frailly built; this contained several tons of outfit, and a party of seven or eight men and one woman. They were the parasites of the mining camp, all ready, with smuggled whisky and faro games—Wein, Weib, und Gesang—to relieve the miners of some of their gold-dust: and I am told that the manager of the expedition brought out $100,000 two years later.

We all got away, one after the other. There was a stiff fair wind blowing down the lake, which soon increased to a gale, and the waves became very rough. The lake is narrow and fjord-like, walled in by high mountains which often rise directly from the shores. Lakes like this all through Alaska are naturally subject to frequent and violent gales, since the deep mountain valleys form a kind of chimney, up and down which the currents of air rush to the frosty snowy mountains from the warmer lowlands, or in the opposite direction. The further we went the harder the wind blew, and the rougher became the water, so that when about half-way down we made a landing to escape a heavy squall. After dinner, it seemed from our snug little cove that the wind had abated, and we put out again. On getting well away from the sheltering shore we found it rougher than ever; but while we were at dinner we had seen the scow go past, its square bow nearly buried in foaming water, and had seen it apparently run ashore on the opposite side of the lake, some miles further down. Once out, therefore, we steered for the place where the scow had been beached, for the purpose of giving aid if any were necessary. On the run over we shipped water repeatedly over both bow and stern, and sometimes were in imminent danger of swamping, but by skillful managing we gained the shelter of a little nook about half a mile from the open beach where the scow was lying, and landed. We then walked along the shore to the scow, and found its passengers all right, they having beached voluntarily, on account of the roughness of the water.

However, we had had enough navigation for one day, so we did not venture out again. Presently another little boat came scudding down the lake through the white, frothy water, and shot in alongside the Skookum. It was a party of miners—the young Irishman whom I had overtaken on the trail to Sheep Camp, and his three "pardners."

It was not an ideal spot where we all camped, being simply a steep rocky slope at the foot of cliffs. When the time came to sleep we had difficulty in finding places smooth enough to lie down comfortably, but finally all were scattered around here and there in various places of concealment among the rocks. I had cleared a space close under a big boulder, of exactly my length and breadth (which does not imply any great labor), and with my head muffled in the blankets, was beginning to doze, when I heard stealthy footsteps creeping toward me. As I lay, these sounds were muffled and magnified in the marvellous quiet of the Alaskan night (although the sun was still shining), so that I could not judge of the size and the distance of the animal. Soon it got quite close to me, and I could hear it scratching at something; then it seemed to be investigating my matches, knife and compass. Finally, wide-awake, and somewhat startled, I sat up suddenly and threw my blanket from my face, and looked for the marauding animal. I found him—in the shape of a saucy little grey mouse, that stared at me in amazement for a moment, and then scampered into his hole under the boulder. As I had no desire to have the impudent little fellow lunching on me while I slept, I plugged the hole with stones before I lay down again. Some of the same animals came to visit Schrader in his bedchamber, and nibbled his ears so that they were sore for some time.[1]

As the gale continued all the next day without abatement, we profited by the enforced delay to climb the high mountain which rose precipitously above us. And apropos of this climb, it is remarkable what difference one finds in the appearance of a bit of country when simply surveyed from a single point and when actually travelled over. Especially is this true in mountains. Broad slopes which appear to be perfectly easy to traverse are in reality cut up by narrow and deep canyons, almost impossible to cross; what seems to be a trifling bench of rock, half a mile up the mountain, grows into a perpendicular cliff a hundred feet high before one reaches it; and pretty grey streaks become gulches filled with great angular rock fragments, so loosely laid one over the other that at each careful step one is in fear of starting a mighty avalanche, and of being buried under rock enough to build a city.

Owing to difficulties like these it was near supper-time when we gained the top of the main mountain range. As far as the eye could see in all directions, there rose a wilderness of barren peaks, covered with snow; while in one direction lay a desolate, lifeless table-land, shut in by high mountains. Below and near us lay gulches and canyons of magnificent depth, and the blue waters of one of the arms of Lake Bennett appeared, just lately free from ice. Above, rose a still higher peak, steep, difficult of access, and covered with snow; this the lateness of the hour prevented us from attempting to climb.

Next day and the next the wind was as high as ever; but the waiting finally became too tedious, and we started out, the four miners having preceded us by a half an hour. Once out of the shelter of the projecting point, we found the gale very strong and the chop disagreeable. We squared off and ran before the wind for the opposite side of the lake, driving ahead at a good rate under our little rag of a sail. Although the boat was balanced as evenly as possible, every minute or two we would take in water, sometimes over the bow, sometimes in the stern, sometimes amidships. I have in my mind a very vivid picture of that scene: Wiborg in the stern, steering intently and carefully; Goodrich and Schrader forward, sheets in hand, attending to the sail; and myself stretched flat on my face, in order not to make the boat top-heavy, and bailing out the water with a frying-pan. On nearing the lower shore we noticed that the boat containing the miners had run into the breakers, and presently one of the men came running along the beach, signaling to us. Fearing that they were in trouble, we made shift to land, although it was no easy matter on this exposed shore; and we then learned that they had kept too near the beach, had drifted into the breakers and had been swamped, but had all safely landed. Three of our party went to give assistance in hauling their boat out of the water, while I remained behind to fry the bacon for dinner.

After dinner we concluded to wait again before attempting the next stage; so we picked out soft places in the sand and slumbered. When we awoke we found the lake perfectly smooth and calm, and lost no time in getting under way. On this day we depended for our motive power solely on our oars, and we found the results so satisfactory that we kept up the practice hundreds of miles.

Below Lake Bennett came Tagish Lake, beautiful and calm. Its largest fjord-like arm is famous for its heavy gales, whence it has been given the name of "Windy Arm"; but as we passed it we could hardly distinguish the line of division between the mountains in the air and those reflected in the lake, so completely at rest was the water. At the lower part, where we camped, we found the first inhabitants since leaving the coast, natives belonging to the Tagish tribe. They are a handful of wretched, half-starved creatures, who scatter in the summer season for hunting and fishing, but always return to this place, where they have constructed rude wooden habitations for winter use. We bought here a large pike, which formed an agreeable change from bacons, beans, and slapjacks.

While camped at this place we met an old man and his two sons, who had brought horses into the country some months before, with some crazy idea of taking up land for farming purposes, or of getting gold. The old man had been taken sick, and all three were now on their way out, having abandoned their horses on the Hootalinqua. All three were thin and worn, and agreed if they ever got out of the country they would not come back. The old man begged for a little tea, which we supplied him, together with a few other things; he insisted on our taking pay for them, with the pathetic pride of a man broken in health and fortune, but we understood the pioneer custom well enough to know we should give no offence by refusing.

After passing out of this lake we entered another, appropriately called by the miners "Mud Lake"; it is very shallow, with muddy bottom and shores. Here we found camping disagreeable, for on account of the shallowness we could not bring our heavily laden boat quite to the shore, but were obliged to wade knee deep in soft mud for a rod or two before finding even moderately solid ground.

About this time we experienced the first sharp taste of the terrible Alaskan mosquito—or it might be more correct to reverse the statement, and say that the mosquitoes had their first taste of us. At the lower end of Tagish Lake they suddenly attacked us in swarms, and remained with us steadily until near the time of our departure from the Territory. We had heard several times of the various hardships to be encountered in Alaska, but, as is often the case, we found that these accounts had left a rather unduly magnified image of the difficulties in our imaginations, as compared with our actual experiences. In this generalization the mosquito must be excepted. I do not think that any description or adjective can exaggerate the discomfort and even torture produced by these pests, at their worst, for they stand peerless among their kind, so far as my experience goes, and that of others with whom I have spoken, for wickedness unalloyed.

We were driven nearly frantic when they attacked us and quickly donned veils of netting, fastened around the hat and buttoned into the shirt, and gauntleted cavalry gloves; but still the heat of rowing and the warmth of the sun made the stings smart till we could hardly bear it. From time to time I glanced at Pete, who sat in the stern, steering with a paddle, his face and hands unprotected, his hat pushed back, trolling his favorite song.

"And none was left to tell me, Tom,
And few was left to know
Who played upon the village green,
Just twenty year ago!"

I admired him beyond expression. "How long," thought I, "does one have to stay in Alaska before one gets so indifferent to mosquitoes as this? Or is it simply the phlegm of the Norwegian—magnificent in mosquito time?" Just then Pete broke in his song and began a refrain of curses in Norwegian and English and some other languages—all apropos of mosquitoes. He averred emphatically that never—no, never—had he seen mosquitoes quite so disagreeable. This lasted about five minutes; then he settled down to a calm again. I perceived that men's tempers may be something like geysers—some keep bubbling hot water continually, while others, like Pete's, keep quiet for a while and then explode violently.

It seems strange to many that a country like Alaska, sub-Arctic in climate, should be so burdened with a pest which we generally associate with hot weather and tropical swamps. But the long warm days of summer in these high latitudes seem to be extraordinarily favorable to all kinds of insect life—mosquitoes, gnats, and flies—which harbor in the moss and dense underbrush. Other countries similarly situated, such as the region between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Arctic Ocean—Northern Finland—which is north of the Arctic Circle, are also pestered with mosquitoes during the summer months.

In Alaska the mosquitoes are so numerous that they occupy a large part of men's attention, and form the subject for much conversation as long as they remain—and they are astonishing stayers, appearing before the snow is gone and not leaving until the nights grow comparatively long and frosty. They flourish as well in cool weather as in hot, thawing cheerfully out after a heavy frost and getting to work as if to make up for lost time. We were able to distinguish at least three species: a large one like those met at the seaside resorts, which buzzes and buzzes and buzzes; then a smaller one that buzzes a little but also bites ferociously; and, worst of all, little striped fellows who go about in great crowds. These last never stop to buzz, but come straight for the intruder on a bee-line, stinging him almost before they reach him—and their sting is particularly irritating. Many stories have been told of the mosquitoes in Alaska; one traveller tells how bears are sometimes killed by these pests, though this story is probably an exaggeration. But men who are travelling must have veils and gloves as protection against them. Even the natives wrap their heads in skins or cloth, and are overjoyed at any little piece of mosquito-netting they can get hold of. With the best protection, however, one cannot help being tormented and worn out.

We always slept with gloves and veils on, and with our heads wrapped as tightly as possible, yet the insects would crawl through the crevices of the blankets and sting through the clothes, or where the veil pressed against the face,—not one, but hundreds—so that one slept but fitfully and woke to find his face bloody and smarting, and would at once make for the cold river water, bathing hands and face to relieve the pain, and dreading to keep his veil up long enough to gobble his breakfast.

The climate of this interior country is dry, and the rains infrequent. We worked so long during the day that we seldom took the trouble to pitch a tent at night, but lay down with our backs against some convenient log, so that the mosquitoes had a good chance at us. Even in the day, when protected by veil and gloves, I have been so irritated by them as to run until breathless to relieve my excitement, and I can readily believe, as has been told, that a man lost in the underbrush without protection, would very soon lose his reason and his life. As soon as the country is cleared up or burned over, the scourge becomes much less, so that in the mining camps the annoyance is comparatively slight. Mosquitoes are popularly supposed to seek and feed upon men, while the reverse is true. They avoid men, swarming most in thick underbrush and swamps which are difficult of access, and disappearing almost entirely as soon as the axe and the plow and other implements in the hands of man invade their solitudes.

Out of Mud Lake we floated into the river again, and slipped easily down between the sandbanks. Ducks and geese were plentiful along here, and we practised incessantly on them with the rifle, without, however, doing any noticeable execution. On the second day we knew we must be near the famous canyon of the Lewes; and one of our party was put on watch, in order that we might know its whereabouts before the swift current should sweep us into it, all heavily laden as we were. The rest of us rowed and steered, and admired the beautiful tints of the hills, which now receded from the river, now came close to it. Presently we heard a gentle snore from the lookout who was comfortably settled among the flour sacks in the bow; this proved to us that our confidence had been misplaced, and all hands became immediately alert. Soon after, we noticed a bit of red flannel fluttering from a tree projecting over the bank, doubtless a part of some traveller's shirt sacrificed in the cause of humanity; and by the time we had pulled in to the shore we could see the waters of the river go swirling and roaring into a sudden narrow canyon with high, perpendicular walls.

We found the parties of miners already landed, and presently, as we waited on the bank and reconnoitered, Danlon's party came up, and not long after, the barge, so that we were about twenty in all. Wiborg, and Danlon's guide, Cooper, were the only ones that had had experience in this matter, so all depended on their judgment, and waited to see the results of their efforts before risking anything themselves.

In former years all travellers made a portage around this very difficult place, hauling their boats over the hill with a rude sort of a windlass; but a man having been accidentally sucked into the canyon came out of the other end all right, which emboldened others. In this case Wiborg and Cooper decided that the canyon could be run, although the water was very high and turbulent; and they thought best to run the boats through themselves. Our own boat was selected to be experimented with; most of the articles that were easily damageable by water were taken out, leaving perhaps about eight hundred pounds. I went as passenger sitting in the bow, while the two old frontiersmen managed paddles and oars. Rowing out from the shore we were immediately sucked into the gorge, and went dashing through at a rate which I thought could not be less than twenty miles an hour. So great is the body of water confined between these perpendicular walls, and so swift is the stream, that its surface becomes convex, being considerably higher in the centre of the channel than on the sides. Waves rushing in every direction are also generated, forming a puzzling chop. Two or three of these waves presently boarded us, so that I was thoroughly wet, and then came a broad glare of sunlight as we emerged from the first half of the canyon into a sort of cauldron which lies about in its centre.

Here we were twisted about by eddying currents for a few seconds, and then precipitated half sidewise into the canyon again. The latter half turned out to be the rougher part, and our bow dipped repeatedly into the waves, till I found myself sitting in water, and the bow, where most of the water remained, sagged alarmingly. It seemed as if another ducking would sink us. This fortunately we did not get, but steered safely through the final swirl to smooth water. During all this trip I had not looked up once, although as we shot by we heard faintly a cheer from the rocks above, where our companions were.

Next day, after a night made almost unbearable by mosquitoes, we rose to face the difficulties of White Horse Rapids, which lie below the canyon proper, and are still more formidable. Here the river contracts again, and is confined between perpendicular walls of basalt. The channel is full of projecting rocks, so that the whole surface is broken, and there are many strong conflicting currents and eddies. At the end of these rapids, which extend for a quarter of a mile or so, is a narrow gorge in the rocks, through which the whole volume of water is forced. This is said to be only twenty or thirty feet wide, although at the time of our passing the water was sufficiently high to flow over the top of the enclosing walls, thus concealing the actual width of the chute. Through this the water plunges at a tremendous velocity—probably thirty miles an hour—forming roaring, foaming, tossing, lashing waves which somehow make the name White Horse seem appropriate.

Above the beginning of the rapid we unloaded our boat, and carefully lowered it down by ropes, keeping it close to the shore, and out of the resistless main current. After having safely landed it, with considerable trouble, below the chute, we carried our outfit (about twelve hundred pounds) to the same point. Danlon's boat and that belonging to the miners were safely gotten through in the same way, all hands helping in turn.

When it came to the scow, it was the general opinion that it would be impossible to lower it safely, for its square shape gave the current such a grip that it seemed as if no available strength of rope or man could hold out against it. As carrying the boat was out of the question, the only alternative was to boldly run it through the rapids, in the middle of the channel; and this naturally hazardous undertaking was rendered more difficult by the frail construction of the scow, which had been built of thin lumber by unskilled hands. The scow's crew did not care to make the venture themselves, but finally prevailed upon Wiborg and Cooper to make the trial.

Shooting the White Horse Rapids.

Reflecting that at any time I might be placed in similar difficulties, in this unknown country, and thrown upon my own resources, I resolved to accompany them, for the sake of finding out how the thing was done; but I was ruled out of active service by Wiborg, who, however, consented finally to my going along as passenger. Two of the scow's own crew were drafted to act as oarsmen, and we pushed out, Cooper steering, and Wiborg in the bow, iron-shod pole in hand, fending off from threatening rocks; and in a second we were dancing down the boiling rapids and tossing hither and thither like a cork. I sat facing the bow, opposite the oarsmen, who tugged frantically away, white as death; behind me Cooper's paddle flashed and twisted rapidly, as we dodged by rocks projecting from the water, sometimes escaping only by a few inches, where a collision would have smashed us to chips. The rest of the party, waiting below the chute, said that sometimes they saw only the bottom of the scow, and sometimes looked down upon it as if from above. As we neared the end, Cooper's skillful paddle drove us straight for the centre, where the water formed an actual fall; this central part was the most turbulent, but the safest, for on either side, a few feet away, there was danger of grazing the shallow underlying rocks. As we trembled on the brink, I looked up and saw our friends standing close by, looking much concerned. A moment later there was a dizzying plunge, a blinding shower of water, a sudden dashing, too swift for observation, past rock walls, and then Wiborg let out an exultant yell—we were safe. At that instant one of the oarsmen snapped his oar, an accident which would have been serious a moment before. On the shore below the rapids we found flour-sacks, valises, boxes and splintered boards, mementoes of poor fellows less lucky than ourselves.

We camped at the mouth of the Tahkeena River that night, and arrived the next day at Lake Labarge, the last and longest of the series. When we reached it, at one o'clock, the water was calm and smooth; and although it was nearly forty miles across, we decided to keep on without stopping till we reached the other side, for fear of strong winds such as had delayed us on Lake Bennett. Danlon's party concluded to do the same, and so we rowed steadily all night, after having rowed all day.

About two o'clock in the morning a favorable wind sprung up suddenly, and increased to a gale. At this time we became separated from the other boats, which kept somewhat close to the shore, while we, with our tiny sail, stood straight across the lake for the outlet. As soon as we stopped rowing I could not help falling asleep, although much against my will, for our position was neither comfortable nor secure; and thus I dozed and woke half a dozen times before landing. On reaching the shore we found difficulty in sleeping on account of the swarms of hungry mosquitoes, so we soon loaded up again.

We had got caribou meat from some people whom we passed half-way down Lake Labarge; and the next day we saw a moose on an island, but the current swept us by before we could get a shot at him. Large game, on the whole, however, was very scarce along this route. The weather was warm and pleasant after leaving Lake Labarge, and there were no serious obstructions. The swift current bombarded the bottom of the boat with grains of sand, making a sound like a continual frying. "Look out!" Pete would say. "The devil is frying his fat for us!" We travelled easily sixty or eighty miles a day, floating with the current and rowing.

Danlon's party, which we had lost sight of on Lake Labarge, reached us a couple of days afterwards, having pulled night and day to catch up. They were grey and speckled with fatigue and told us of having decided to leave one boat (they came with only one of the two they had started in) at Lake Labarge, and also of leaving some of their provisions. They had unfortunately forgotten to keep any sugar—could we lend them some? We produced the sugar and smiled knowingly; a few days later we ran across the solitary Dutchman, who had engineered his wood-box thus far, and he told us the whole story: how when the boats got near the shore one was swamped in shallow water, losing most of its cargo, and how the occupants had to stand in cold water the rest of the night, finally getting to shore and to rights again. The priest had been naming the camps after the letters of the Greek alphabet, and the night on Labarge should have been Camp Rho; and this was appropriate as we rowed nearly all night.

From here the journey was comparatively easy. The skies were always clear and blue, and the stream had by this time increased to a lordly river, growing larger by continual accessions of new tributaries. It is dotted with many small islands, which are covered with a dense growth of evergreen trees. On the side of the valley are often long smooth terraces, perfectly carved and smoothly grassed, so as to present an almost artificial aspect. From this sort of a country are sudden changes to a more bold and picturesque type, so at one time the river flows swiftly through high gates of purple rock rising steeply for hundreds of feet, and in a few moments more emerges into a wide low valley. The cliffs are sometimes carved into buttresses or pinnacles, which overlook the walls, and appear to form part of a gigantic and impregnable castle, on the top of which the dead spruces stand out against the sky like spires and flag-staves. Usually on one side or the other of the river is low fertile land, where grows a profusion of shrubs and flowers.

In the mellow twilight, which lasts for two or three hours in the middle of the night, one can see nearly as far and as distinctly as by day, but everything takes on an unreal air. This is something like a beautiful sunset effect further south, but is evenly distributed over all the landscape. At about ten o'clock the coloring becomes exquisite, when the half-light brings out the violets, the purples, and various shades of yellow and brown in the rocks, in contrast to the green of the vegetation.

Talking it Over.

We had some difficulty in finding suitable camping-places in this country. One night I remember, we ran fifteen miles after our usual camping-hour, with cliffs on one side of the river and low thickets on the other. Three times we landed on small islands, in a tangle of vines and roses; and as many times we were driven off by the innumerable mosquitoes. At last we found a strip of shore about ten feet wide, between the water and the thickets, sloping at a considerable angle; and there we made shift to spend the night.

There are two places below the White Horse Rapids where the channel is so narrowed or shallowed that rapids are formed. At the first of these, called the "Five Finger Rapids," the river is partially blocked by high islets, which cut up the stream in several portions. Although the currents in each of these "fingers" is rapid, and the water rough, yet we found no difficulty in running through without removing any part of the load, although one of the boats shipped a little water. When we arrived at the second place, which is called the "Rink Rapids," and is not far below the Five Fingers, we were relieved to find that owing to the fullness of the river, the rough water, which in this case is caused by the shallowing of the stream, was smoothed down, and we went through, close to the shore, with no more trouble than if we had been floating down a lake.

During the whole trip the country through which we passed was singularly lonely and uninhabited. After leaving the few huts on Tagish Lake, which I have mentioned, we saw a few Indians in a summer camp on Lake Labarge; and this was all until we got to the junction of the Lewes and Pelly Rivers, over three hundred miles from Tagish Lake. At Pelly we found a log trading-post, with a single white man in charge, and a few Indians. There were also three miners, who had met with misfortune, and were disconsolate enough. They had started up Pelly River with a two years' outfit, intending to remain and prospect for that period, but at some rapid water their boat had been swamped and all their provisions lost. They had managed to burn off logs enough to build a raft, and in that way had floated down the river to the post, living in the meantime on some flour which they had been lucky enough to pick up after the wreck.

Although there are very few people in the country, one is continually surprised at first by perceiving solitary white tents standing on some prominent point or cliff which overlooks the river. At first this looks very cheerful, and we sent many a hearty hail across the river to such places; but our calls were never answered, for these are not the habitations of the living but of the dead. Inside of each of these tents, which are ordinarily made of white cloth, though sometimes of woven matting, is a dead Indian, and near him is laid his rifle, snowshoes, ornaments and other personal effects. I do not think the custom of leaving these articles at the grave implies any belief that they will be used by the dead man in another world, but simply signifies that he will have no more use for the things which were so dear to him in life—just as among ourselves, articles which have been used by dear friends are henceforth laid aside and no longer used. These dwellings of the dead are always put in prominent positions, commanding as broad and fair a view as can be obtained. At Pelly we saw several Indian graves that were surrounded by hewn palings, rudely and fantastically painted.

When we reached the White River we found it nearly as broad as the Yukon. The waters of the two rivers are separated by a distinct line at their confluence and for some distance further down, the Yukon water being dark and the other milky, whence the name—White River. All over this country is a thin deposit of white dust-like volcanic ash, covering the surface, but on White River this ash is very thick, and the river flowing through it carries away enough to give the waters continually a milky appearance. As we approached White River we beheld what seemed a most extraordinary cloud hanging over its valley. It was a solid compact mass of white, like some great ice-flower rising from the hills, reminding one as one explored it through field-glasses, in its snowy vastness and unevenness, of some great glacier. The clouds were in rounded bunches and each bunch was crenulated. Below was a mass of smoke with a ruddy reflection as if from some great fire, and smaller snowy compact clouds came up at intervals, as if gulped out from some crater. This we thought might be the fabled volcano of the White River, but on getting nearer it seemed to be probably a forest-fire. Although there are no railway trains to set fires with their sparks, nowhere do fires start more easily than in Alaska, for the ground is generally covered deep with a peat-like dry moss, which ignites when one lights a fire above and smoulders so persistently that it can hardly be extinguished, creeping along under the roots of the living moss and breaking out into flame on opportunity.

The Fourth of July was celebrated by shooting at a mark; and that night we had a true blessing, for we camped on a little bare sandspit on an island, where the wind was brisk and kept the mosquitoes away. These insects cannot stand against a breeze, but are whisked away by it like the imps of darkness at the first breath of God's morning light, as we have read in fairy stories. The freedom was delicious, so we just stretched ourselves in the sand, and slept ten hours. We were awakened by a violent plunge in the water and stuck our heads out of the blankets in a hurry, thinking it was a moose; but it turned out to be only one of our party celebrating the day after the Fourth by a bath.

At Sixty Mile we found an Indian trading-post, located on an island in the river, and kept by Jo La Du, a lonely trader who a year afterwards became rich and famous from his participation in the Klondike rush. He had no idea of this when we saw him, but shook hands with us shyly and silently, a man whom years had made more accustomed to the Indian than to the white man.

The name Sixty Mile is applied to a small river here, which is sixty miles from old Fort Reliance, an ancient trading post belonging to the Hudson Bay Company. The hardy and intrepid agents of the company were the first white men to explore the interior of Alaska. The lower Yukon in the vicinity of the delta was explored by the Russians in 1835 to 1838, and the river was called by the Eskimo name of Kwikpuk or Kwikpak,—the great river: in 1842-3 the Russian Lieutenant Zagoskin explored as far as the Nowikakat. But the upper Yukon was first explored by members of the Hudson Bay Company. In 1846 a trader named Bell crossed from the Mackenzie to the Porcupine, and so down to the Yukon, to which he first applied the name by which it is now known: it is an Indian, not Eskimo, word. Previous to this, in 1840, Robert Campbell, of the Hudson Bay Company, crossed from the Stikeen to the Pelly and so down to its junction with the Lewes or upper Yukon. At the point of the junction Campbell built Fort Selkirk, which was afterwards pillaged and burned by the Indians, and remained deserted till Harper built the present post, close to the site of the old one. Forty miles below old Fort Reliance is Forty Mile Creek, so that the mouths of Forty Mile and Sixty Mile are a hundred miles apart. The river by this time is a mile wide in places, and filled with low wooded islands: its water is muddy and the eddying currents give the appearance of boiling.

We found no one on the site of old Fort Reliance, and we used the fragments of the old buildings lying around in the grass for fire-wood. It was practically broad daylight all night, for although the sun went down behind the hills for an hour or two, yet it was never darker than a cloudy day.

The day of leaving Fort Reliance we came to the junction of the Klondike or Thronduc River with the Yukon, and found here a village of probably two hundred Indians, but no white men. The Indians were living in log cabins: on the shore numbers of narrow and shallow birch canoes were drawn up, very graceful and delicate in shape, and marvellously light, weighing only about thirty pounds, but very difficult for any one but an Indian to manœuvre. Yet the natives spear salmon from these boats. At the time we were there most of the male Indians were stationed along the river, eagerly watching for the first salmon to leap out of the water, for about this time of the year the immigration of these fish begins, and they swim up the rivers from the sea thousands of miles, to place their spawn in some quiet creek. On account of the large number of salmon who turn aside to enter the stream here, the Indians called it Thronduc or fish-water; this is now corrupted by the miners into Klondike, the Indian village is replaced by the frontier city of Dawson, and the fame of the Klondike is throughout the world.

Alaska Humpbacked Salmon, Male and Female.

The trip of forty miles from Fort Reliance to Forty Mile Post was made in the morning, and was enlivened by an exciting race between our boat and that belonging to Danlon. We had kept pretty closely together on all our trip, passing and repassing one another, but our boat was generally ahead; and when we both encamped at Fort Reliance, the other party resolved to outwit us. So they got up early in the morning and slipped away before we were well awake. When we discovered that they were gone, we got off after them as quickly as possible, but as the current flows about seven miles an hour, and they were rowing hard besides, they were long out of sight of us. However, we buckled down to hard rowing, each pulling a single oar only, and relieving one another at intervals, tugging away as desperately as if something important depended on it. When we were already in sight of Forty Mile Post we spied our opponents' boat about a mile ahead of us, and we soon overhauled them, for they had already spent themselves by hard rowing. Then Pete knew a little channel which led up to the very centre of the camp, while the others took the more roundabout way, so that we arrived and were quite settled—we assumed a very negligent air, as if we had been there all day—when the others arrived. We called this the great Anglo-American boat race and crowed not a little over the finish.

FOOTNOTE

[1] A portion of this description is similar to that used by the writer in an article published in "Outing."

CHAPTER IV.
THE FORTY MILE DIGGINGS.

Forty Mile Creek is the oldest mining camp in the Yukon country, and the first where coarse gold or "gulch diggings" was found. In the fall of 1886 a prospector by the name of Franklin discovered the precious metal near the mouth of what is now called Forty Mile Creek. This stream was put down on the old maps as the Shitando River, but miners are very independent in their nomenclature, and often adopt a new name if the old one does not suit them, preferring a simple term with an evident meaning to the more euphonious ones suggestive of Pullman cars. At the time of the discovery of gold there was a post of the Alaskan Commercial Company at the mouth of the stream, but the trader in charge, Jack McQuesten, was absent in San Francisco. As the supplies at the post were very low, and a rush of miners to the district was anticipated for the next summer, it was thought best to try to get word to the trader, and George Williams undertook to carry out a letter in midwinter.

Accompanied by an Indian, he succeeded in attaining the Chilkoot Pass, but was there frozen to death. The letter, however, was carried to the post at Dyea by the Indian, and the necessary supplies were sent, thus averting the threatened famine. From 1887 to 1893 the various gulches of Forty Mile Creek were the greatest gold producers of the Yukon country, but by 1893 the supplies of gold began to show exhaustion; and about this time a Russian half-breed, by the name of Pitka, discovered gold in the bars of Birch Creek, some two hundred miles further down the Yukon.

A large part of the population of the Forty Mile district rushed to the new diggings and built the mining camp to which they gave the name of Circle City, from its proximity to the Arctic Circle. The Forty Mile district is partly in British and partly in American territory, since the boundary line crosses the stream some distance above its mouth, while Birch Creek is entirely in American territory. The world-renowned Klondike, again, is within British boundaries. So the tide of mining population has ebbed back and forth in the Yukon country, each wave growing larger than the first, till it culminated in the third of the great world-rushes after gold, exciting, wild and romantic—the Klondike boom, a fit successor to the "forty-nine" days of California, and to the events which followed the discovery of gold in Australia.

At the time of our visit, in 1896, Forty Mile Post was distinctly on the decline. Yet it contained probably 500 or 600 inhabitants, not counting the Indians, of whom there were a considerable number. These Indians were called Charley Indians, from their chief Charley. There is a mission near here and the Indians have all been Christianized. It is told that the Tanana Indians, who had no mission, and who came here out of their wild fastnesses only once in a while to trade, did not embrace Christianity, which rather elated Charley's followers, as they considered that they now had decidedly the advantage; and they openly vaunted of it. In this country at certain times of the year, particularly in the fall, great herds of caribou pass, and then one can slaughter as many as he needs for the winter's supply of meat, without much hunting, for the animals select some trail and are not easily scared from it. One fall a herd marched up one of the busiest mining gulches of Birch Creek and the miners stood in their cabin doors and shot them.

So the Indians always watch as eagerly for the caribou, as they do for the salmon in the summer. But this particular fall it happened that the animals stayed away from the Charley Indians' hunting grounds, but passed through those of the Tananas in force. The heathen then came down to the trading post laden with meat, and the chief, who knew a little English, taunted Charley in it.

"Where moose, Charley?" he asked.

"No moose," said Charley.

"Woo!" said the Tanana chief, grinning in triumph. "What's the matter with your Jesus?"

The Indians at Forty Mile Post were mostly encamped in tents or were living in rude huts of timber plastered with mud; while the white men had built houses of logs, unsquared, with the chinks filled with mud and moss and the roof covered with similar material. Prices were high throughout: A lot of land in the middle of the town, say 100 by 150 feet, was worth $7,000 or $8,000; sugar was worth twenty-five cents a pound and ordinary labor ten dollars a day. All provisions were also very expensive, and the supply was often short. Many common articles, usually reckoned among what the foolish call the necessities of life, could not be obtained by us. I say foolish, because one can learn from pioneering and exploring, upon how little life can be supported and health and strength maintained, and how many of the supposed necessities are really luxuries.

The Alaskan Eskimo lives practically on fish alone throughout the year, without salt, without bread,—just fish—and grows fat and oily and of pungent odor. But white men can hardly become so simple in their diet without some danger of dying in the course of the experiment, like the famous cow that was trained to go without eating, but whose untimely death cut short her career in the first bloom of success.

The miners have always been dependent for supplies on steamers from San Francisco or Seattle, which have to make a trip of 4,000 miles or more; and, in the early days, if any accident occurred, there was no other source.

I have heard of a bishop of the Episcopal Church, a missionary in this country, who lived all winter upon moose meat, without salt; and an old miner told me of working all summer on flour alone. When the fall came he shot some caribou, and his description of his sensations on eating his first venison steak were touching. Hardly a winter has passed until very recently when the miners were not put on rations—so many pounds of bacon and so much flour to the man,—to bridge over the time until the steamer should arrive. The winter of 1889-90 is known to the old Yukon pioneer as the "starvation winter," for during the previous summer a succession of accidents prevented the river boat from reaching Forty Mile with provisions. The men were finally starved out and in October they all began attempting to make their way down the Yukon, towards St. Michaels, over a thousand miles away, where food was known to be stored, having been landed at this depot from ocean steamers. Nearly a hundred men left the post in small boats. Some travelled the whole distance to St. Michaels, others stopped and wintered by the way at the various miserable trading posts, or in the winter camps of the Indians themselves, wherever food could be found. It happened that this year the river did not freeze up so early as usual, which favored the flight, though the journey down the lower part of the river was made in running ice.

In connection with the shortness of provisions and supplies in these early years, a story is told of a worthless vagabond who used to hang around Forty Mile Post, and whose hoaxes, invented to make money, put the wooden nutmeg and the oak ham of Connecticut to shame. There was a dearth of candles one year at the post, and in midwinter, when, for a while, the sun hardly rises at all, that was no trifling privation. The weather was cold, as it always is at Forty Mile in the winter time. The trickster had some candle molds in his possession, but no grease; so he put the wicks into the molds, which he filled with water colored white with chalk or condensed milk. The water immediately froze solid, making a very close imitation of a candle. He manufactured a large number and then started around the post to peddle them. All bought eagerly—Indian squaws to sew by, miners, shop-keepers, everybody. One man bought a whole case and shoved them under his bed; when he came to pull them out again to use, he found nothing but the wicks in a pile, the ice having melted and the water having evaporated in the warm room. What punishment was meted out to this unique swindler I do not know, but I could not learn that he was ever severely dealt with.

The evening of our arrival in Forty Mile Post we were attracted by observing a row of miners, who were lined up in front of the saloon engaged in watching the door of a large log cabin opposite, rather dilapidated, with the windows broken in. On being questioned, they said there was going to be a dance, but when or how they did not seem to know: all seemed to take only a languid looker-on interest, speaking of the affair lightly and flippantly. Presently more men, however, joined the group and eyed the cabin expectantly. In spite of their disclaimers they evidently expected to take part, but where were the fair partners for the mazy waltz?

The evening wore on until ten o'clock, when in the dusk a stolid Indian woman, with a baby in the blanket on her back, came cautiously around the corner, and with the peculiar long slouchy step of her kind, made for the cabin door, looking neither to the right nor to the left. She had no fan, nor yet an opera cloak; she was not even décolleté; she wore large moccasins on her feet—number twelve, I think, according to the white man's system of measurement—and she had a bright colored handkerchief on her head. She was followed by a dozen others, one far behind the other, each silent and unconcerned, and each with a baby upon her back. They sidled into the log cabin and sat down on the benches, where they also deposited their babies in a row: the little red people lay there very still, with wide eyes shut or staring, but never crying—Indian babies know that is all foolishness and doesn't do any good. The mothers sat awhile looking at the ground in some one spot and then slowly lifted their heads to look at the miners who had slouched into the cabin after them—men fresh from the diggings, spoiling for excitement of any kind. Then a man with a dilapidated fiddle struck up a swinging, sawing melody, and in the intoxication of the moment some of the most reckless of the miners grabbed an Indian woman and began furiously swinging her around in a sort of waltz, while the others crowded around and looked on.

Little by little the dusk grew deeper, but candles were scarce and could not be afforded. The figures of the dancing couples grew more and more indistinct and their faces became lost to view, while the sawing of the fiddle grew more and more rapid, and the dancing more excited. There was no noise, however; scarcely a sound save the fiddle and the shuffling of the feet over the floor of rough hewn logs; for the Indian women were stolid as ever, and the miners could not speak the language of their partners. Even the lookers-on said nothing, so that these silent dancing figures in the dusk made an almost weird effect.

One by one, however, the women dropped out, tired, picked up their babies and slouched off home, and the men slipped over to the saloon to have a drink before going to their cabins. Surely this squaw-dance, as they call it, was one of the most peculiar balls ever seen. No sound of revelry by night, no lights, no flowers, no introductions, no conversations. Of all the Muses, Terpsichore the nimble-footed, alone was represented, for surely the nymph who presides over music would have disowned the fiddle.

All the diggings in the Forty Mile district were remote from the Post, and to reach them one had to ascend Forty Mile Creek, a rapid stream, for some distance. Pete left us here, and we three concluded to go it alone. Inasmuch as we were young and tender, we were overwhelmed with advice of such various and contradictory kinds that we were almost disheartened. Every one agreed that it would be impossible to take our boats up the river, that we should take an "up river" boat, (that is, a boat built long and narrow, with a wide overhang, so as to make as little friction with the water as possible, and to make upsetting difficult); but when we came to inquire we found there was no such boat to be had. We were advised to take half-a-dozen experienced polers, but such polers could not be found. Evidently we must either wait the larger part of the summer for our preparations à la mode, or go anyhow; and this latter we decided to do. We announced our intention at the table of the man whose hospitality we were enjoying. He stared.

"You'll find Forty Mile Creek a hard river to go up," he said, slowly. "Have you had much experience in ascending rivers?"

"Very little," we replied.

"Are you good polers?" asked another.

"Like the young lady who was asked whether she could play the piano," I answered, "we don't know—we never tried." Everybody roared; they had been wanting to laugh for some time, and here was their opportunity. Later a guide was offered to us, but we had got on our dignity and refused him; then he asked to be allowed to accompany us as a passenger, taking his own food, and helping with the boat, and we consented to this. He had a claim on the headwaters of Sixty Mile, to which he wished to go back, but could not make the journey up the river alone. A year afterwards this penniless fellow was one of the lucky men in the Klondike rush and came back to civilization with a reputed fortune of $100,000.

We could row only a short distance up the creek from the post, for after this the current became so swift that we could make no headway. We then tied a long line to the bow of the boat, and two of us, walking on the shore, pulled the line, while another stood in the bow and by constant shoving out into the stream, succeeded in overcoming the tendency for the pull of the line to make the boat run into the shore or into such shallow water that it would ground. We soon reached the canyon, supposed to be the most difficult place in the creek to pass; here the stream is very rapid and tumbles foaming over huge boulders which have partially choked it. We towed our boat up through this, however, without much difficulty, and on the second night camped at the boundary line.

Here a gaunt old character, Sam Patch by name, had his cabin. He was famous for his patriotism and his vegetables. His garden was on the steep side of a south-facing hill and was sheltered from the continual frosts which fall in the summer nights, so that it succeeded well. Foreign vegetables, as well as native plants, thrive luxuriantly in Alaska so long as they can be kept from being frost-bitten: for in the long sunshiny summer days they grow twice as fast and big as they do in more temperate climates. "Sam Patch's potato patch" was famous throughout the diggings, and the surest way to win Sam's heart was to go and inspect and admire it. Sam was always an enthusiastic American, and when the Canadian surveyors surveyed the meridian line which constituted the International boundary, they ran it right through his potato patch; but he stood by his American flag and refused to haul it down—quite unnecessarily, because no one asked him to do so.

The next day we reached the mouth of the little tributary called Moose Creek. From here a trail thirty miles in length leads over the low mountains to the headwaters of Sixty Mile Creek, where several of the richest gulches of the Forty Mile district were located. We beached our boat, therefore, put packs on our backs and started. At this time the days were hot and the mosquitoes vicious, and nearly every night was frosty; so we sweat and smarted all day, and shivered by night, for our blankets were hardly thick enough. We used to remark on rising in the morning that Alaska was a delightful country, with temperature to suit every taste; no matter if one liked hot weather or moderate or cold, if he would wait he would get it inside of twenty-four hours.

We were tired when we started over the trail, and the journey was not an easy one, for we carried blankets, food, cameras, and other small necessaries. We camped in a small swamp the first night, where the ground was so wet that we were obliged to curl up on the roots of trees, close to the trunks, to keep out of the water. The second day a forest fire blocked our journey, but we made our way through it, treading swiftly over the burning ground and through the thick smoke: then we emerged onto a bare rocky ridge, from which we could look down, on the right, over the network of little valleys which feed Forty Mile Creek, and on the other side over the tributaries of Sixty Mile Creek, clearly defined as if on a map. The ridge on which we travelled was cut up like the teeth of a saw, so that a large part of our time was spent in climbing up and down.

On the latter part of the second day we found no wood, and at night we could hardly prepare food enough to keep our stomachs from sickening. My feet had become raw at the start from hard boots, and every step was a torture; yet the boots could not be taken off, for the trail was covered with small sharp stones, and the packs on our backs pressed heavily downward. The third day we separated, each descending from the mountain ridge into one of the little gulches, in which we could see the white tents or the brown cabins of the miners, with smoke rising here and there. My way led me down a rocky ridge and then abruptly into the valley of Miller Creek. As I sat down and rested, surveying the little valley well dotted with shanties, two men came climbing up the trail and sat down to chat. They were going to the spot on Forty Mile Creek which we had just left—there was a keg of whisky "cached" there and they had been selected a committee of two by the miners to escort the aforesaid booze into camp. They were alternately doleful at the prospect of the sixty mile tramp and jubilant over the promised whisky, for, as they informed us, the camp had been "dry for some time."

Descending into the camp where the men were busily working, I stopped to watch them. Gaunt, muscular, sweating, they stood in their long boots in the wet gravel and shovelled it above their heads into "sluice boxes,"—a series of long wooden troughs in which a continuous current of water was running. The small material was carried out of the lower end of the sluices by the water. Here and there the big stones choked the current and a man with a long shovel was continuously occupied with cleaning the boxes of such accumulations. Everybody was working intensely. The season is short in Alaska and the claim-owner is generally a hustler; and men who are paid ten dollars a day for shovelling must jump to earn their money.

Strangers were rare on Miller Creek in those days, and everybody stopped a minute to look and answer my greetings politely, but there was no staring, and everybody went on with his work without asking any questions. Men are courteous in rough countries, where each one must travel on his merits and fight his own battles, and where social standing or previous condition of servitude count for nothing. I wandered slowly down from claim to claim. They were all working, one below the other, for this was the best part of one of the oldest and richest gulches of the Forty Mile district. One man asked me where I was going to sleep, and on my telling him that I had not thought of it, replied that there were some empty log cabins a little distance below. Further down a tall, dark, mournful man addressed me in broken English, with a Canadian French accent, and put the same question.

"I work on ze night shift to-night," he continued, "so I do not sleep in my bed. You like, you no fin' better, you is very welcome, sair, to sleep in my cabine, in my bed."

I accepted gratefully, for I was very tired; so the Frenchman conducted me to a cabin about six feet square and insisted upon cooking a little supper for me. He was working for day's wages, he answered to my rather blunt questions, but hoped that he would earn enough this summer and the next winter to buy an outfit and enough "grub" to go prospecting for himself, on the Tanana, which had not been explored and where he believed there must be gold; prospectors get very firmly convinced of such things with no real reason.

After supper he darkened the windows for me and went to work. I sought the comfort of a wooden bunk, covering myself with a dirty bed-quilt. It was very ancient and perhaps did not smell sweet, but what did I care? It was Heaven. The darkness was delicious. I had not known real darkness for so long throughout the summer—always sleeping out of doors in the light of the Alaskan night—that I had felt continually strained and uncomfortable for the lack of it, and this darkened cabin came to me like the sweetest of opiates.

When I awoke the Frenchman was preparing breakfast. I had slept some ten hours without moving. There was only one tin plate, one cup, and one knife and fork, and he insisted upon my eating with them, while he stood by and gravely superintended, urging more slapjacks upon me. I suddenly felt ashamed that I had told him neither my name nor business, for although I had questioned him freely, he had not manifested the slightest curiosity. So without being asked I volunteered some information about myself. He listened attentively and politely, but without any great interest. It was quite apparent that the most important thing to him was that I was a stranger. Soon after breakfast I thanked him warmly and went away—I knew enough of miners not to insult him by offering him money for his hospitality.

The night shift of shovellers had given way to the day shift, and work was going on as fiercely as ever. The bottoms of all these gulches are covered with roughly stratified shingle, most of which slides down from the steep hillsides of the creek. Among the rocks on the hillsides are many quartz veins, which carry "iron pyrite" or "fool's gold"; these often contain small specks of real gold. So when all the rubble gets together and is broken up in the bottom of the stream, where the water flows through it, the different materials in the rocks begin to separate one from another, more or less, according to the difference in their weights and the fineness of the fragments into which they are broken. Now gold is the heaviest of metals, and the result is, that through all this jostling and crowding it gradually works itself down to the bottom of the heap, and generally quite to the solid rock below. This has been found to be the case nearly everywhere. In process of time the gravel accumulations become quite thick; in Miller Creek, for example, they varied from three or four feet at the head of the valley, where I was, to fifty or sixty at the mouth. But all the upper gravels are barren and valueless. Where the gravels are not deep, they are simply shovelled off and out of the way, till the lower part, where the gold lies, is laid bare; this work generally takes a year, during which time there is no return for the labor.

Once the pay gravel—as it is called—is reached, a long wooden trough called a "sluice," is constructed, the current turned through it, and the gravel shovelled in. This work can only be carried on in the summer-time, when the water is not frozen, so that the warm months are the time for hustling, day and night shifts being employed, with as many men on each as can work conveniently together. In case the barren overlying gravel is very deep, the miners wait until it is frozen and then sink shafts to the pay dirt, which they take out by running tunnels and excavating chambers or "stopes" along the bed rock. In this work they do not use blasting, but build a small fire wherever they wish to penetrate, and as soon as the gravel thaws they shovel it up and convey it out, meanwhile pushing the fire ahead so that more may thaw out. In this way they accumulate the pay dirt in a heap on the surface, and as soon as warm weather comes they shovel it into the sluices as before.

At the time of my visit, the construction of the sluices was a work of considerable labor, for as there was no sawmill in the country, the boards from which they were made had to be sawed by hand out of felled trees.

In the last few of the trough-sections or sluice-boxes, slats are placed, sometimes transverse, sometimes lengthwise, sometimes oblique, sometimes crossed, forming a grating—all patterns have nearly the same effect, namely, to catch the gold and the other heavy minerals by means of vortexes which are created. Thus behind these slats or "riffles" the gold lodges, while the lighter and barren gravel is swept by the current of water out of the trough, and the heavy stones are thrust out by the shovel of the miner. Nearly the same process as that which in nature concentrates gold at the bottom of the gravels and on top of the bed-rock is adopted by man to cleanse the gold perfectly from the attendant valueless minerals.

Washing the Gravel in Sluice-Boxes.

Everybody was hospitable along the gulch. I had five different invitations to dinner,—hearty ones, too—and some were loath to be put off with the plea of previous engagement. They were all eager for news from the outside world, from which they had not heard since the fall before; keenly interested in political developments, at home and abroad. They were intelligent and better informed than the ordinary man, for in the long winter months there is little to do but to sleep and read. They develop also a surprising taste for solid literature; nearly everywhere Shakespeare seemed to be the favorite author, all nationalities and degrees of education uniting in the general liking. A gulch that had a full set of Shakespeare considered itself in for a rather cozy winter; and there were regular Shakespeare clubs, where each miner took a certain character to read. Books of science, and especially philosophy, were also widely sought. It has been my theory that in conditions like this, where there are not the thousand and one stimuli to fritter away the intellectual energy, the mental qualities become stronger and keener and the little that is done is done with surprising vigor and clearness.

Down the creek I found a Swede, working over the gravels on a claim that had already been washed once. He had turned off the water from the sluice-boxes and was scraping up the residue from among the riffles. Mostly black heavy magnetic iron particles with many sparkling yellow grains of gold, green hornblendes and ruby-colored garnets. He put all this into a gold pan, (a large shallow steel pan such as used in the first stages of prospecting), and proceeded to "pan out" the gold yet a little more. He immersed the vessel just below the surface of a pool of water, and by skillful twirlings caused the contents to be agitated, and while the heavier particles sank quickly to the bottom, he continuously worked off the lighter ones, allowing them to flow out over the edge of the pan. Yet he was very careful that no bit of gold should escape, and when he had carried this process as far as he could, he invited me into his cabin to see him continue the separation.

Here he spread the "dust" on the table and began blowing it with a small hand-bellows. The garnets, the hornblendes and the fragments of quartz, being lighter than the rest, soon rolled out to one side, leaving only the gold and the magnetic iron. Then with a hand magnet he drew the iron out from the gold, leaving the noble yellow metal nearly pure, in flakes and irregular grains. As the material he had separated still contained some gold, he put this aside to be treated with quicksilver. The quicksilver is poured into the dust, where it forms an amalgam with the gold: it is then strained off, and the amalgam is distilled—the quicksilver is vaporized, leaving the gold behind.

This man had his wife with him, a tired, lonely looking woman. I asked her if there were no more women on the creek. She said no; there was another woman over on Glacier Creek, and she wanted so much to see her sometimes, but she was not a good woman, so she could not go. She was lonely, she said; she had been here three years and had not seen a woman.

From some of the miners I obtained a pair of Indian moccasins, which I padded well with hay and cloth to make them easy for my chafing feet; then I slung my own heavy boots on top of my pack and the next morning bade the gulch good-bye, feeling strengthened from my rest. As I climbed out of the gulch I met the miners who had gone as a committee to escort the whisky, arriving with it, white and speckled with fatigue, speaking huskily, (but not from drinking), yet triumphant. The day was cool and when one is alone one is apt to travel hard; but the unwonted lightness of my feet and the freedom from pain encouraged me, so I set my Indian moccasins into a regular Indian trot, and by noon had covered the entire fifteen miles that constituted the first half of the journey. This brought me to a locality dignified by the name of the "Half-Way House," from a tent-fly of striped drilling left by some one, in which the miners were accustomed to pass the night in their journeys over the trail. Here I found Schrader, who had arrived late the night before and was preparing to make a start. We lighted a fire and made some tea, which with corned beef and crackers, made up our lunch. While we were eating, our old companion Pete, with two more miners, came in from the opposite direction to that from which we had come; he was on his way to visit his old claim on Miller Creek. Afterwards we got away, and kept up a steady Indian trot till we reached our camp on Forty Mile Creek at about six o'clock.

We found Goodrich already arrived and wrestling with the cooking, with which he was having tremendously hard luck. This travelling thirty miles in one day, carrying an average of thirty-five pounds, I considered something of an achievement; but the tiredness which came the next day showed that the energy meant for a long time had been drawn upon.

"Tracking" a Boat Upstream.

For four days after that we worked our way up Forty Mile Creek, making on an average seven or eight miles a day. Mosquitoes were abundant, and the weather showery. We used the same method of pulling and poling as before,—a laborious process and one calculated to ruin the most angelic disposition. The river was very low and consequently full of rapids and "riffles," as the miners call the shallow places over which the water splashes. On many of these riffles our boat stuck fast, and we dragged it over the rocks by sheer force, wading out and grasping it by the gunwale. Again, where there were many large boulders piled together in deep water, the boat would stick upon one, and we would be obliged to wade out again and pilot it through by hand, now standing dry upon a high boulder, and now floundering waist deep in the cold water at some awkward step—maybe losing temper and scolding our innocent companions for having shoved the boat too violently.

We generally worked till late, and began cooking our supper in the dusk—which was now beginning to come—over a camp-fire whose glare dazzled us so that when we tossed our flapjack into the air, preparatory to browning its raw upper side, we often lost sight of it in the gloom, and it sprawled upon the fire, or fell ignominiously over the edge of the frying-pan. Those were awful moments; no one dared to laugh at the cook then. We took turns at cooking, and patience was the watchword. The cook needed it and much more so, those on whom he practiced. One of our number produced a series of slapjacks once which rivalled my famous Chilkoot biscuit. They were leaden, flabby, wretched. We ate one apiece, and ate nothing else for a week, for, as the woodsmen say, it "stuck to our ribs" wonderfully.

"How much baking powder did you put in with the flour?" we asked the cook.

"How should I know?" he answered, indignantly. "What was right, of course."

"Did you measure it?" We persisted, for the slapjack was irritating us inside.

"Anybody," replied the cook, with crushing dignity, "who knows anything, knows how much baking powder to put in with flour without measuring it. I just used common sense." So we concluded that he had put in too much common sense and not enough baking powder.

Just above where the river divides into two nearly equal forks, the water grew so shallow that we could not drag our boat further, so we hauled it up and filled it with green boughs to prevent it from drying and cracking in the sun; then we built a "cache."

It may be best to explain the word "cache," so freely used in Alaska. The term came from the French Canadian voyageurs or trappers; it is pronounced "cash" and comes from the French cacher, to hide. So a cache is something hidden, and was applied by these woodsmen to hidden supplies and other articles of value, which could not be carried about, being secreted until the owners should come that way again. In Alaska, when anything was thus left, a high platform of poles was built, supported by the trunks of slender trees, and the goods were left on this platform, covered in some way against the ravages of wild animals. To this structure the name "cache" came to be applied; and later was extended to the storehouses wherein the natives kept their winter supplies of fish and smoked meat, for these houses have a somewhat similar structure, being built on top of upright poles like the old Swiss lake-dwellings.

A "Cache."

The next morning we shouldered our pack-sacks, containing our blankets, a little food, and other necessities, and were again on the tramp, this time having no trail, however, but being obliged to keep on the side of the stream. Here, as below, the river flowed in one nearly continuous canyon, but on one side or the other flats had been built out on the side where the current was slackest, while on the opposite side was deep water quite up to the bold cliffs; and since the current sweeps from side to side, one encounters levels and gravel flats, and high rocks, on the same side. Many of the cliffs we scaled, crawling gingerly along the almost perpendicular side of the rock. The constant temptation in such climbing is to go higher, where it always looks easier, but when one gets up it seems impossible to return. However, we had no accidents, which, considering how awkward our packs made us, was lucky. At other times we waded the stream to avoid the cliffs.

At night we reached the mouth of Franklin Gulch, where active mining had been going on for some time. The miners were almost out of food, the boat which ordinarily brought provisions from Forty Mile Post having been unable to get up, on account of the low water. Yet they gave us freely what they could. We took possession of an empty log cabin, lighted a fire and toasted some trout which they gave us, and this with crackers and bacon made our meal; then we discovered some bunks with straw in them, which we agreed were gilt-edged, and proceeded to make use of them without delay. Only a few of the total number of miners were here, the rest having gone over the mountain to Chicken Creek, where the latest find of gold was reported. The men had not heard from "the outside" for some time. Even Forty Mile Post was a metropolis for them and they were glad to hear from it. They had few books and only a couple of newspapers three years old.

"Doesn't it get very dull here?" we asked of an old stager; "what do you do for amusement?"

"Do!" he echoed with grave humor, "Do! why, God bless you, we 'ave very genteel amusements. As for readin' an' litrachure an' all that, wy, dammit, wen the fust grub comes in the spring, we 'ave a meetin' an' we call all the boys together an' we app'int a chairman an' then some one reads from the directions on the bakin'-powder boxes."

I set out alone for Chicken Creek the next morning, following a line of blazed trees up over the mountain from Franklin Creek. I had been told that once up on the divide one could look right down into Chicken Creek, and I have no doubt that this is true, for on attaining the top of the hill a stretch of country twenty miles across was spread out before me as on a map, while directly below was a considerable branch of Forty Mile Creek, divided into many closely adjacent gulches. One of these must be Chicken Creek, but which? There were no tents and no smoke visible, much as the eye might strain through the field-glasses. Just here the trail gave out, the blazer having evidently grown tired of blazing. Thinking to obtain a better view into the valley, I set out along the hill which curved around it, tramping patiently along until nearly night over the sharp ridges, but without ever seeing any signs of life in the great desolate country below me. When the dark shadows were striking the valleys, I caught sight of what appeared to be a faint smoke in the heart of a black timbered gulch, and I made straightway down the mountain-side for it, hurrying for fear the fire should be extinguished before I could get close enough to it to find the place. I had no doubt that this came from the log cabin of some prospector, who would be only too glad to welcome a weary stranger with a warm supper and a blanket on the floor.

On getting down, away from the bare rocks on the mountain ridge, I found deep moss, tiresome to my wearied limbs, and further down great areas of "niggerheads"—the terror of travellers in the northern swamps. These niggerheads are tufts of vegetation which grow upwards by successive accumulations till they are knee high or even more. They are scattered thickly about, but each tuft is separated completely from all the rest, leaving hardly space to step between; if one attempts to walk on top of them he will slip off, so there is nothing to do but to walk on the ground, lifting the legs over the obstacles with great exertion. The tops of the tufts are covered with long grass, which droops down on all sides, whence the name niggerheads,—têtes de femme or women's heads is the name given them by the French Canadian voyageurs.

Still lower the brush and vines became so thick that it was almost impossible to force the way through in places. At last I emerged upon a grey lifeless area which seemed to have been burned over. There were no trees or plants, but the bare blackened sticks of what had once been a young growth of spruce still stood upright, though some trunks had fallen and lay piled, obstacles to travelling. The whole looked peculiarly forlorn. A little further I came to the spot where I had seen the smoke. There was nothing but a stagnant pool covered so deep with green scum that one caught only an occasional glimpse of the black water beneath, and from this, unsavory mists were rising in the chill of the evening air. I had mistaken these vapors for smoke from my post miles up the mountain. My dream of a log cabin and a blanket went up likewise in smoke.

It was now eleven o'clock at night, and twilight; I had walked at least twenty miles through a rough country and could go no further. So I broke off the smaller dried trees and sticks and lighted a fire, then I ate some crackers and bacon that I had with me, but I did not dare to drink the water of the stagnant pool, which was all there was to be had. The night grew frosty, and I had no blankets; but I lay down close to the fire and caught fifteen-minute naps. Once I woke with the smell of burning cloth in my nostrils: in my sleep I had edged too close to the grateful warmth, and my coat and the notebook in my pocket, containing all my season's notes, had caught fire. I rolled over on them and crushed out the fire with my fingers, and after that I shivered away a little further from the fire. At about three o'clock it grew light enough to see the surrounding country, and I started out again for the first point I had reached on the ridge the morning before, thinking to get back to Franklin Gulch, for I was thoroughly exhausted. On reaching the ridge, however, I met a miner coming over the trail; he agreed to pilot me to the new prospects, so I turned back again.

There were fifteen or twenty men in the gulch which we finally reached, all living in tents in a very primitive way, and all very short of provisions, yet, hospitable to the last morsel, they freely offered the best they had. They were poor, too; everybody does not get rich in the gold diggings, even in Alaska. In fact, previous to the Klondike discovery, the largest net sum of money taken out by any one man was about $30,000, while hundreds could not pay for their provisions or get enough to buy a ticket out of the country. The Klondike, too, has been badly lied about. Not one man in twenty who goes there makes more than a bare living, and many have to "hustle" for that harder than they would at home. So the hospitality of the miners, such as I found it nearly everywhere on the Yukon, is not a mere act of courtesy which costs nothing, but the genuine unselfishness which cheerfully divides the last crust with a passing stranger.

Having been strengthened by two square meals, simple but sufficient, I started back for Franklin Gulch the same night. It began to rain in torrents on the way, and this, as usual, drove out the mosquitoes and made them unusually savage. They attacked me in such numbers that in spite of my gloves and veil I was nearly frantic. The best relief was to stride along at a good round pace, for this kept most of the pests at my back, and gave me a vent for my wrought-up nerves; and at the same time I had the satisfaction of knowing I was "getting there." The thong of my moccasin became undone, but I did not dare to stop to tie it, but kept plunging along, shuffling it with me. I reached our cabin at the mouth of Franklin Gulch, and the sight of the bunk with straw in it, and the familiar grey blanket, was sweet to me.

Next day we bade the miners at the creek's mouth good-bye, with promises to hurry up the provision-boat if possible, and made our way to where we had left our boat and cache. The next morning we launched the Skookum again, and began our journey back. Going down was quicker work than coming up, not so laborious, and far more exciting. Owing to the lowness of the water, the stream was one succession of small rapids, which were full of boulders; and to steer the boat, careering like a race horse, among these, was a pretty piece of work. One pulled the oars to give headway, another steered, and the third stood in the bow, pole in hand, to fend us off from such rocks as we were in danger of striking. We soon found that the safest part of such a rapid is where the waves are roughest, for here the water, rebounding from the shallow shore on either side, meets in a narrow channel, where it tosses and foams, yet here is the only place where there is no danger of striking.

The second day out we ran twenty-five or thirty of these rapids. In running through one we pulled aside to avoid a large boulder sticking up in midstream, and then saw in front of us another boulder just at the surface, which we had not before noticed. It was too late, however, and the boat stuck fast in a second, and began to turn over from the force of the water behind. With one accord we all leaped out of the boat, expecting to find foothold somewhere among the boulders, and hold the boat or shove her off so that she should not capsize; but none of us touched bottom, though we sank to our necks, still grasping the gunwale of the boat. Our being out, however, made the boat so much lighter that she immediately slipped over the rock and went gloriously down the rapid, broadside, we hanging on. As soon as we could we clambered in, each grasped a paddle or oars or pole, and by great good luck we had no further accident.

Some distance further down we again sighted white water ahead, where the stream ran hard against a perpendicular cliff. Some miners were "rocking" gravel for gold in the bars just above; and we yelled to them to know if we could run the rapids.

"Yes," came the answer, "if you're a d——d good man!"

"All right—thanks!" we cried, and sailed serenely through. This was known by the cheerful name of Dead Man's Riffle. Owing to the strong wind blowing, the mosquitoes were not very annoying these few days; the sun was warm and bright, and the hillsides were covered thickly with a carmine flower which gave them a general brilliant appearance. These things, with the exhilaration of running rapids, made a sort of vacation—an outing, a picnic, as it were—in contrast to our previous hard work. When we got to the Miller Creek trail we took on a couple of miners who wanted to get out of the country, but had no boat in which to go down to Forty Mile Post. They had worked for some time and had barely succeeded in making enough to buy food, and now, a little homesick and discouraged, they had made up their minds to try to get out and back to "God's country" as they called it—Colorado. With their help we let our boat down through the "Cañon" safely, and the next day,—the 29th of July,—arrived at Forty Mile Post.

At the Post we found that plenty was reigning, for the first steamboat had arrived, bringing a lot of sorely-needed provisions. The trader in charge gave us a fine lunch of eggs, moosemeat, canned asparagus, and other delicacies, and then we took possession of a deserted log cabin. On ransacking around we found a Yukon lamp, consisting of a twisted bit of cotton stuck into a pint bottle of seal oil, and when it began to grow dusk we lighted it and sat down at the table and wrote home to our friends; for the steamer had gone further up the river and would return in a few days, so that letters sent down by her would probably be ahead of us in getting home—eight thousand miles! We had laid in a new stock of provisions. Flour, I remember was $8.00 for 100 pounds, and we managed to get a few of the last eggs which the steamer had brought, at $1.00 a dozen.

The Skookum had suffered considerably in our Forty Mile trip, and we spent a large part of the next day in patching her, plugging her seams with oakum and sealing them with hot pitch. One of our number, who was cooking for the boat-menders, suddenly appeared on the scene, chasing a pack of yelping dogs with our long camp-axe. He had gone to the woodpile for a moment, leaving the door ajar. At this moment a grey dog whose tail had been cut off somehow, was looking around the log house opposite—he had been on guard and watching our door for the last twenty-four hours. He uttered a low yelp which brought a dozen others together from all quarters, all lean, strong and sneaking; and they slipped into our door. When the cook turned from the woodpile a minute later he was just in time to aim a billet at the last one as he emerged from the cabin with our cheese in his mouth. They fled swiftly and were not to be caught: and an examination showed that they had, in their silent and well organized raid, cleaned our larder thoroughly, having eaten the delicacies on the spot and carried off nearly all the rest.

Native Dogs.

The Indian dog is a study, for he is much unlike his civilized brother. He rarely barks, never at strangers, and takes no notice of a white man who arrives in the village,—even though the village may never have seen such a thing, and the children scream, the women flee, and the men are troubled and silent—but he howls nights. A dog wakes up in the middle of the night, yawns, looks at the stars, and listens. There is not a sound. "How dull and stupid it is here in Ouklavigamute," he thinks; "not nearly as lively as it was in Mumtreghloghmembramute. There we had fights nearly every night, sometimes twice. If I only knew a dog I was sure I could lick—anyhow, here goes for a good long howl. I'll show them that there is a dog in town with spirit enough to make a noise, anyhow." With that he tunes up—do, re, mi, tra-la-la, dulce, crescendo, grand Wagnerian smash. The other dogs wake up and one nudges the other and says, "Oh, my, what a lark! Isn't it fun! Let's yell too—whoop, roo, riaow!" And just as men get excited at a football game, or an election, or when the fire-alarm rings, these dogs yell and grow red in the face. Then the inhabitants wake up and get out after the dogs, who run and yelp; and after a while each cur crawls into a hiding-place and goes to sleep. In the morning they wake up and wriggle their tails. "What enthusiasm there was last night—but—er—I didn't quite catch on to the idea—of course I yelled to help the other fellows—it's such fun being enthusiastic, you know."

This happens every night. The Indian dog makes it a point to stand around like a bump on a log and look stupid; when he has fooled you to that extent he will surprise you some day by a daring theft, for he is clever as a man and quick as an express train.

CHAPTER V.
THE AMERICAN CREEK DIGGINGS.

From Forty Mile we floated down the Yukon again, and in a day's journey camped at the mouth of Mission Creek, not then down on the map. It had received its name from miners who had come there prospecting. Several of them were encamped in tents, and they came over and silently watched our cooking, evidently sizing us up.

"When did you leave the Outside?" asked a blue-eyed, blonde, shaggy man. (The Outside means anywhere but Alaska—a man who has been long in the country falls into the idea of considering himself in a kind of a prison, and refers to the rest of the world as lying beyond the door of this.)

"In June," we replied.

"How did the Harvard-Yale football game come out last fall?" he inquired eagerly—it was now August, and nearly time for the next!

"Harvard was whipped, of course," we answered.