FROM JUNEAU TO THE GOLD FIELDS.
The few persons who formerly wished to go to the head of Lynn Canal did so mainly by canoeing, or chartered launches, but now many opportunities are offered by large steamboats. Most of the steamers that bring miners and prospectors from below do not now discharge their freight at Juneau, however, but go straight to the new port Dyea at the head of the canal. Lynn Canal is the grandest fiord on the coast, which it penetrates for seventy-five miles. It is then divided by a long peninsula called Seduction Point, into two prongs, the western of which is called Chilkat Inlet, and the eastern Chilkoot. "It has but few indentations, and the abrupt palisades of the mainland shores present an unrivalled panorama of mountains, glaciers and forests, with wonderful cloud effects. Depths of 430 fathoms have been sounded in the canal, and the continental range on the east and the White Mountains on the west rise to average heights of 6,000 feet, with glaciers in every ravine and alcove." No Cameron boundary line, which Canada would like to establish, would cut this fiord in two, and make it useless to both countries in case of quarrel. The magnificent fan-shaped Davidson glacier, here, is only one among hundreds of grand ice rivers shedding their bergs into its waters. At various points salmon canneries have long been in operation; and the Seward City mines are only the best among several mineral locations of promise. A glance at the map will show that this "canal" forms a straight continuation of Chatham Strait, making a north and south passage nearly four hundred miles in length, which is undoubtedly the trough of a departed glacier.
Dyea, the new steamer landing and sub-port of entry, is at the head of navigation on the Chilkoot or eastern branch of this Lynn Canal, and takes its name, in bad modern spelling, from the long-known Taiya Inlet, which is a prolongation inland for twenty miles of the head of the Chilkoot Inlet. It should continue to be spelled Tiaya. This inlet is far the better of the two for shipping, Chilkat Inlet being exposed to the prevalent and often dangerous south wind, so that it is regarded by navigators as one of the most dangerous points on the Alaskan coast. A Presbyterian mission and government school were formerly sustained at Haines, on Seduction Point, but were abandoned some years ago on account of Indian hostility.
The Passes.—Three passes over the mountains are reached from these two inlets,—Chilkat, Chilkoot and White.
Chilkat Pass is that longest known and formerly most in vogue. The Chilkat Indians had several fixed villages near the head of the inlet, and were accustomed to go back and forth over the mountains to trade with the interior Indians, whom they would not allow to come to the coast. They thus enjoyed not only the monopoly of the business of carrying supplies over to the Yukon trading posts and bringing out the furs, and more recently of assisting the miners, but made huge profits as middle-men between the Indians of the interior and the trading posts on the coast. They are a sturdy race of mountaineers, and the most arrogant, treacherous and turbulent of all the northwestern tribes, but their day is nearly passed. The early explorers—Krause, Everette and others—took this pass, and it was here that E. J. Glave first tried (in 1891) to take pack horses across the mountains, and succeeded so well as to show the feasibility of that method of carriage, which put a check upon the extortion and faithlessness of the Indian carriers. His account of his adventures in making this experiment, over bogs, wild rocky heights, snow fields, swift rivers and forest barriers, has been detailed in The Century Magazine for 1892, and should be read by all interested. "No matter how important your mission," Mr. Glave wrote, "your Indian carriers, though they have duly contracted to accompany you, will delay your departure till it suits their convenience, and any exhibition of impatience on your part will only remind them of your utter dependency on them; and then intrigue for increase of pay will at once begin. While en route they will prolong the journey by camping on the trail for two or three weeks, tempted by good hunting or fishing. In a land where the open season is so short, and the ways are so long, such delay is a tremendous drawback. Often the Indians will carry their loads some part of the way agreed on, then demand an extravagant increase of pay or a goodly share of the white man's stores, and, failing to get either, will fling down their packs and return to their village, leaving their white employer helplessly stranded."
The usual charge for Indian carriers is $2 a day and board, and they demand the best fare and a great deal of it, so that the white man finds his precious stores largely wasted before reaching his destination. These facts are mentioned, not because it is now necessary to endure this extortion and expense, but to show how little dependence can be placed upon the hope of securing the aid of Indian packers in carrying the goods of prospectors or explorers elsewhere in the interior, and the great expense involved. This pass descends to a series of connected lakes leading down to Lake Labarge and thence by another stream to the Lewes; and it requires twelve days of pack-carrying—far more than is necessary on the other passes. As a consequence, this pass is now rarely used except by Indians going to the Aksekh river and the coast ranges northward.
Chilkoot, Taiya or Parrier Pass.—This is the pass that has been used since 1885 by the miners and others on the upper Yukon, and is still a route of travel. It starts from the head of canoe navigation on Taiya inlet, and follows up a stream valley, gradually leading to the divide, which is only 3,500 feet above the sea. The first day's march is to the foot of the ascent, and over a terrible trail, through heavy woods and along a steep, rocky and often boggy hillside, broken by several deep gullies. The ascent is then very abrupt and over huge masses of fallen rock or steep slippery surfaces of rock in place. At the actual summit, which for seven or eight miles is bare of trees or bushes, the trail leads through a narrow rocky gap, and the whole scene is one of the most complete desolation. Naked granite rocks, rising steeply to partly snow-clad mountains on either side. Descending the inland or north slope is equally bad traveling, largely over wide areas of shattered rocks where the trail may easily be lost. The further valley contains several little lakes and leads roughly down to Lake Lindeman. The distance from Taiya is twenty-three and a half miles, and it is usually made in two days. Miners sometimes cross this pass in April, choosing fine weather, and then continue down the lakes on the ice to some point where they can conveniently camp and wait for the opening of navigation on the Yukon; ordinarily it is unsafe to attempt a return in the autumn later than the first of October.
Lake Lindeman is a long narrow piece of water navigable for boats to its foot, where a very bad river passage leads into the larger Lake Bennett, where the navigation of the Yukon really begins.
"The Chilkoot Pass," writes one of its latest travelers, "is difficult, even dangerous, to those not possessed of steady nerves. Toward the summit there is a sheer ascent of 1,000 feet, where a slip would certainly be fatal. At this point a dense mist overtook us, but we reached Lake Lindeman—the first of a series of five lakes—in safety, after a fatiguing tramp of fourteen consecutive hours through half-melted snow. Here we had to build our own boat, first felling the timber for the purpose. The journey down the lakes occupied ten days, four of which were passed in camp on Lake Bennett, during a violent storm, which raised a heavy sea. The rapids followed. One of these latter, the "Grand Canyon," is a mile long, and dashes through walls of rock from 50 to 100 feet high; six miles below are the "White Horse Rapids," a name which many fatal accidents have converted into the "Miner's Grave." But snags and rocks are everywhere a fruitful source of danger on this river, and from this rapid downward scarcely a day passed that one did not see some cairn or wooden cross marking the last resting place of some drowned pilgrim to the land of gold. The above is a brief sketch of the troubles that beset the Alaskan gold prospector—troubles that, although unknown in the eastern states and Canada, have for many years past associated the name of Yukon with an ugly sound in western America."
It is probable that few if any persons need go over this pass next year, and its hardships will become a tradition instead of a terrible prospect.
White Pass.—This pass lies south of the Chilkoot, and leaves the coast at the mouth of the Shagway river, five miles south of Dyea and 100 from Juneau. It was first explored in 1887 and was found to run parallel to the Chilkoot. The distance from the coast to the summit is seventeen miles, of which the first five are in level bottom land, thickly timbered. The next nine miles are in a cañon-like valley, beyond which three miles, comparatively easy, take one to the summit, the altitude of which is roughly estimated at 2,600 feet. Beyond the summit a wide valley is entered and leads gradually to the Tahko arm of Tahgish lake. This pass, though requiring a longer carriage, is lower and easier than the others, and already a pack-trail has been built through it which will soon be followed by a wagon road, and surveys for a narrow gauge railway are in progress. At the mouth of the Shkagway River ocean steamers can run up at all times to a wharf which has been constructed in a sheltered position, and there is an excellent town site with protection from storms.
An English company, the British Columbia Development Association, Limited, has already established a landing wharf and is erecting a wharf and sawmills at Skagway, whence it is proposed (as soon as feasible) to lay down a line of rail some thirty-five miles long, striking the Yukon River at a branch of the Marsh Lake, about 100 miles below Lake Lindeman. By this means the tedious and difficult navigation between these two points will be avoided, and the only dangerous parts of the river below will be circumvented by a road or rail portage. Light-draught steamers will be put on from Teslin Lake to the cañon and from the foot of the latter to all the towns and camps on the river.
Dyea is a village of cabins and tents, and little if anything in the way of supplies can be got there; it is a mere forwarding point.
Pending the completion of the facilities mentioned above, miners may transport their goods over the pack trail on their own or hired burros, and at Tahgish Lake take a boat down the Tahco arm (11 miles) to the main lake, and down that lake and its outlet into Lake Marsh. This chain of lakes, filling the troughs of old glacial fiords to a level of 2,150 feet above the sea, "constitutes a singularly picturesque region, abounding in striking points of view and in landscapes pleasing in their variety or grand and impressive in this combination of rugged mountain forms." All afford still-water navigation, and as soon as the road through White Pass permits the transportation of machinery, they will doubtless be well supplied with steamboats. Marsh Lake is 20 miles long, Bennett 26, and Tagish 16½ miles, with Windy Arm 11 miles long, Tahko Arm 20 miles, and other long, narrow extensions among the terraced, evergreen-wooded hills that border its tranquil surface. The depression in which this group of lakes lies is between the coast range and the main range of the Rockies; and as it is sheltered from the wet sea-winds by the former heights, its climate is nearly as dry of that of the interior. The banks are fairly well timbered, though large open spaces exist, and abound in herbage, grass and edible berries. Lake Marsh, named by Schwatka after Prof. O. C. Marsh of Yale, but called Mud Lake by the miners, without good reason, is twenty miles long and about two wide. It is rather shallow and the left bank should be followed. The surrounding region is rather low, rising by terraces to high ranges on each side, where Michie mountain, 5,540 feet in height, eastward, and Mounts Lorue and Landsdowne, westward, 6,400 and 6,140 feet high respectively, are the most prominent peaks. "The diversified form of the mountains in view from this lake render it particularly picturesque," remarks Dr. Dawson, "and at the time of our visit, on the 10th and 11th of September, the autumn tints of the aspens and other deciduous trees and shrubs, mingled with the sombre greens of the spruces and pines, added to its beauty."
Near the foot of this lake enters the McClintock river, of which little is known. The outlet is a clear, narrow, quiet stream, called Fifty-mile River, which flows somewhat westerly down the great valley. Large numbers of dead and dying salmon are always seen here in summer, and as these fish never reach Lake Marsh, it is evident that the few who are able, after their long journey, to struggle up the rapids, have not strength left to survive.
The descent of the Lewes (or Yukon) may be said to begin at this point, and 23 miles below Lake Marsh the first and most serious obstacle is encountered in the White Horse Rapids, and Miles Cañon. Their length together is 2¾ miles, and they seem to have been caused by a small local effusion of lava, which was most unfortunately ejected right in the path of the river. The cañon is often not more than 100 feet in width, and although parts of it may be run at favorable times, all of it is dangerous, and the White Horse should never be attempted. The portage path in the upper part of the cañon is on the east bank, and is about five-eighths of a mile long. There a stretch of navigation is possible, with caution, ending at the head of White Horse Rapids, where one must land on the west bank, which consists of steep rocks, very awkward for managing a boat from or carrying a burden over. Usually the empty boat can be dropped down with a line, but when the water is high boat as well as cargo must be carried for 100 yards or more, and again, lower down, for a less distance. The miners have put down rollways along a roughly constructed road here to make the portage of the boats easier, and some windlasses for hauling the boats along the water or out and into it. It would be possible to build a good road or tramway along the east bank of these rapids without great difficulty; and plans are already formulated for a railway to be built around the whole three miles of obstruction, in the summer of 1898, to connect with the steamboats above and below that will no doubt be running next year.
The river below the rapids is fast (about four miles an hour) for a few miles, and many gravel banks appear. It gradually subsides, however, into a quiet stream flowing northwest along the same wide valley. No rock is seen here, the banks being bluffs of white silt, which turns the clear blue of the current above into a cloudy and opaque yellow. Thirteen miles (measuring, as usual, along the river) brings the voyager to the mouth of the Tah-Keena, a turbid stream about 75 yards wide and 10 feet deep, which comes in from the west. Its sources are at the foot of the Chilkat Pass, where it flows out of West Kussoa lake (afterwards named Lake Arkell), and was formerly much employed by the Chilkat Indians as a means of reaching the interior, but was never in favor with the miners, and is now rarely followed by the Indians themselves, although its navigation from the lake down is reported to be easy.
Eleven and a half miles of quiet boating takes one to the head of Lake Labarge. This lake is 31 miles long, lies nearly north and south, and is irregularly elongated, reaching a width of six miles near the lower end. It is 2,100 feet above sea level and is bordered everywhere by mountains, those on the south having remarkably abrupt and castellated forms and carrying summits of white limestone. This lake is a very stormy one, and travelers often have to wait in camp for several days on its shores until calmer weather permits them to go on. This whole river valley is a great trough sucking inland the prevailing southerly summer winds, and navigation on all the lakes is likely to be rough for small boats.
The river below Lake Labarge is crooked, and at first rapid—six miles or more an hour, and interrupted by boulders; but it is believed that a stern wheel steamer of proper power could ascend at all times. The banks are earthen, but little worn, as floods do not seem to occur. Twenty-seven miles takes one to the mouth of a large tributary from the southeast,—the Teslintoo, which Schwatka called Newberry River, and which the miners mistakenly call Hotalinqu. It comes from the great Lake Teslin, which lies across the British Columbia boundary (Lat. 62 deg.), and is said to be 100 miles long; and it is further said that an Indian trail connects it with the head of canoe navigation on the Taku river, by only two long days of portaging. Some miners are said to have gone over it in 1876 or '77, Schwatka and Hayes came this way; and it may form one of the routes of the future,—perhaps even a railway route. This river flows through a wide and somewhat arid valley, and was roughly prospected about 1887 by men who reported finding fine gold all along its course, and also in tributaries of the lake. As the mountains about the head of the lake belong to the Cassiar range, upon whose southern slopes the Cassiar mines are situated, there is every reason to suppose that gold will ultimately be found there in paying quantities.
This part of the Lewes is called Thirty-mile River, under the impression that it is really a tributary of the Teslintoo, which is, in fact, wider than the Lewes at the junction (Teslintoo, width 575 feet; Lewes, 420 feet), but it carries far less water. From this confluence the course is north, in a deep, swift, somewhat turbid current, through the crooked defiles of the Seminow hills. Several auriferous bars have been worked here, and some shore-placers, including the rich Cassiar bar. Thirty-one miles below the Teslintoo the Big Salmon, or D'Abbadie River, enters from the southeast—an important river, 350 feet wide, having clear blue water flowing deep and quiet in a stream navigable by steamboats for many miles. Its head is about 150 miles away, not far from Teslin Lake, in some small lakes reached by the salmon, and surrounded by granite mountains. Prospectors have traced all its course and found fine gold in many places.
Thirty-four miles below the Big Salmon, west-north-west, along a comparatively straight course, carries the boatman to the Little Salmon, or Daly River, where the valley is so broad that no mountains are anywhere in sight, only lines of low hills at a distance from the banks. Five miles below this river the river makes an abrupt turn to the southwest around Eagle's Nest rock, and 18½ miles beyond that reaches the Nordenskiold, a small, swift, clear-watered tributary from the southwest. The rocks of all this part of the river show thin seams of coal, and gold has been found on several bars. The current now flows nearly due north and a dozen miles below the Nordenskiold carries one to the second and last serious obstruction to navigation in the Rink rapids, as Schwatka called them, or Five-finger, as they are popularly known, referring to five large masses of rock that stand like towers in mid channel. These other islands back up the water and render its currents strong and turbulent, but will offer little opposition to a good steamboat. Boatmen descending the river are advised to hug the right bank, and a landing should be made twenty yards above the rapids in any eddy, where a heavily loaded boats should be lightened. The run should be made close along the shore, and all bad water ends when the Little Rink Rapids have been passed, six miles below. Just below the rapids the small Tatshun River comes in from the right. Then the valley broadens out, the current quiets down and a pleasing landscape greets the eye as bend after bend is turned. A long washed bank on the northeast side is called Hoo-che-koo Bluff, and soon after passing it one finds himself in the midst of the pretty Ingersoll archipelago, where the river widens out and wanders among hundreds of islets. Fifty-five miles by the river below Rink Rapids, the confluence of the Lewes and Pelly is reached, and the first sign of civilization in the ruins of old Fort Selkirk, with such recent and probably temporary occupation as circumstances may cause. Before long, undoubtedly, a flourishing permanent settlement will grow up in this favorable situation.
The confluence here of the Lewes and Pelly rivers forms the Yukon, which thenceforth pursues an uninterrupted course of 1,650 miles to Behring Sea. The country about the confluence is low, with extensive terrace flats running back to the bases of rounded hills and ridges. The Yukon below the junction averages about one-quarter of a mile in width, and has an average depth of about 10 feet, with a surface velocity of 4¾ miles an hour. A good many gravel bars occur, but no shifting sand. The general course nearly to White River, 96 miles, is a little north of west, and many islands are seen; then the river turns to a nearly due north course, maintained at Fort Reliance. The White River is a powerful stream, plunging down loaded with silt, over ever shifting sand bars. Its upper source is problematical, but is probably in the Alaskan Mountains near the head of the Tenana and Forty-mile Creek.
For the next ten miles the river spreads out to more than a mile wide and becomes a maze of islands and bars, the main channel being along the western shore, where there is plenty of water. This brings one to Stewart river, which is the most important right-hand tributary between the Pelly and the Porcupine. It enters from the east in the middle of a wide valley, and half a mile above its mouth is 200 yards in width; the current is slow and the water dark colored. It has been followed to its headquarters in the main range of the Rockies, and several large branches, on some of which there are remarkable falls, have been traced to their sources through the forested and snowy hills where they rise. These sources are perhaps 200 miles from the mouth, but as none of the wanderers were equipped with either geographical knowledge or instruments nothing definite is known. Reports of traces of precious metals have been brought back from many points in the Stewart valley, but this information is as vague as the other thus far. All reports agree that a light draught steamboat could go to the head of the Stewart and bar up its feeders. There is a trading post at its mouth.
The succeeding 125 miles holds what is at present the most interesting and populous part of the Yukon valley. The river varies from half to three-quarters of a mile wide and is full of islands. About 23 miles below Stewart River a large stream enters from the west called Sixty-mile Creek by the miners, who have had a small winter camp and trading store there for some years, and have explored its course for gold to its rise in the mountains west of the international boundary. Every little tributary has been named, among them (going up), Charley's Fork, Edwards Creek and Hawley Creek, in Canada, and then, on the American side of the line, Gold Creek, Miller Creek and Bed Rock Creek. The sand and gravel of all these have yielded fine gold and some of them, as Miller Creek, have become noted for their richness. Forty-four miles below Sixty-mile takes one to Dawson City, at the mouth of Klondike River,—the center of the highest productiveness and greatest excitement during 1897, when the gold fields of the interior of Alaska first attracted the attention of the world. Leaving to another special chapter an account of them, the itinerary may be completed by saying that 6½ miles below the mouth of the Klondike is Fort Reliance, an old private trading post of no present importance. Twelve and a half miles farther the Chan-din-du River enters from the east, and 33½ below that in the mouth of Forty-mile Creek, or Cone Hill River, which until the past year was the most important mining region of the interior. It took its name from the supposition that it was 40 miles from Fort Reliance, but the true distance is 46 miles. On the south side of the outlet of this stream is the old trading post and modern town of Forty-Mile, and on the north side the more recent settlement Cudahy. Both towns are, of course, on the western bank of the Yukon, which is here about half a mile wide. Five miles below Cudahy, Coal Creek comes in from the east, and nearly marks the Alaskan boundary, where a narrowed part of the river admits one to United States territory. Prominent landmarks here are two great rocks, named by old timers Old Man rock, on the west bank, and Old Woman, on the east bank, in reference to Indian legends attached to them. Some twenty miles west of the boundary—the river now having turned nearly due west in its general course—Seventy-mile, or Klevande Creek, comes in from the south, and somewhat below it the Tat-on-duc from the north. It was ascended in 1887 by Mr. Ogilvie, who describes its lower valley as broad and well timbered, but its upper part flows through a series of magnificent cañons, one of which half a mile long, is not more than 50 feet wide with vertical walls fully 700 feet in height. There are said to be warm sulphur springs along its course, and the Indians regard it as one of the best hunting fields, sheep being especially numerous on the mountains in which it heads, close by the international boundary, where it is separated by only a narrow divide from Ogilvie River, one of the head streams of the Peel river, and also from the head of the Porcupine, to which there is an Indian trail. Hence the miners call this Sheep River. The rocks along this stream are all sandstones, limestone and conglomerates, with many thin calcite veins. Large and dense timber prevails, and game is abundant.
Below the mouth of the Tat-on-duc several small streams enter, of which the Kandik on the north and the Kolto or Charley's River—at the mouth of which there used to be the home of an old Indian notability named Charley—are most important. About 160 miles from the boundary the Yukon flats are reached, and the center of another important mining district—that of Birch Creek and the Upper Tenana—at Circle City, the usual terminus of the trip up the Lower Yukon from St. Michael.