Sea birds haunt these lakes, drift on to the Yukon, and follow the voyager until they meet their silvery fellows coming up from Behring Sea.
Between Lakes Lindeman and Bennett the river connecting link is only three quarters of a mile long, about thirty yards wide, and only two or three feet deep. It is filled with shoals, rapids, cascades, boulders, and bars; and navigation is rendered so difficult and so dangerous that in the old "raft" days outfits were usually portaged to Lake Bennett.
During the rush to the Klondike a saw-mill was established at the head of Lake Bennett, and lumber for boat building was sold for one hundred dollars a thousand feet.
The air in these lake valleys on a warm day is indescribably soft and balmy. It is scented with pine, balm, cottonwood, and flowers. The lower slopes are covered with fireweed, larkspur, dandelions, monk's-hood, purple asters, marguerites, wild roses, dwarf goldenrod, and many other varieties of wild flowers. The fireweed is of special beauty. Its blooms are larger and of a richer red than along the coast. Blooms covering acres of hillside seem to float like a rosy mist suspended in the atmosphere. The grasses are also very beautiful, some having the rich, changeable tints of a humming-bird.
The short stream a couple of hundred yards in width connecting Lake Bennett with the next lake—a very small, but pretty one which Schwatka named Nares—was called by the natives "the place where the caribou cross," and now bears the name of Caribou Crossing. At certain seasons the caribou were supposed to cross this part of the river in vast herds on their way to different feeding-grounds, the current being very shallow at this point.
There is a small settlement here now, and boats were waiting to carry passengers to the Atlin mining district. The caribou have now found less populous territories in which to range. In the winter of 1907-1908 they ranged in droves of many thousands—some reports said hundreds of thousands—through the hills and valleys of the Stewart, Klondike, and Sixty-Mile rivers, in the Upper Yukon country.
Miners killed them by the hundreds, dressed them, and stored them in the shafts and tunnels of their mines, down in the eternally frozen caverns of the earth—thus supplying themselves with the most delicious meat for a year. The trek of caribou from the Tanana River valley to the head of White River consumed more than ninety days in passing the head of the Forty-Mile valley—at least a thousand a day passing during that period. They covered from one to five miles in width, and trod the snow down as solidly as it is trodden in a city street. A great wolf-pack clung to the flank of the herd. The wolves easily cut out the weak or tired-out caribou and devoured them.
Caribou Crossing is a lonely and desolate cluster of tents and cabins huddling in the sand on the water's edge. Considerable business is transacted here, and many passengers transfer here in summer to Atlin. In winter they leave the train at Log-Cabin, which we passed during the forenoon, and make the journey overland in sleighs.
The voyage from Caribou Crossing to Atlin is by way of a chain of blue lakes, pearled by snow mountains. It is a popular round-trip tourist trip, which may be taken with but little extra expense from Skaguay.