The next stream which empties into the Yukon is Beaver Creek, and farther on the prospector bound for Circle City may make his way some two hundred miles up Birch Creek, along which much gold has already been discovered, to a portage of six miles, which will carry him within six miles of Circle City on the west.
Meanwhile the Yukon passes Porcupine River and Fort Yukon, the old trading-post founded in 1846-7, about a mile farther up the river than the present fort is situated. The situation was changed in 1864, owing to the undermining of the Yukon, which yearly washed away a portion of the steep bank until the foundation timbers of the old Redoubt over-hung the flood.
Many small islands encumber the river from Fort Yukon to Circle City, and the river flows along the rich lowland to the towns and mining centers of the new El Dorado, an account of which belongs to a future chapter.
This voyage can be made only between the middle of June and the middle of September, and requires about forty days, at best, from San Francisco to Circle City or Forty Mile.
Route via Juneau, the Passes and down the Upper Yukon River. The second and more usual, because shorter and quicker course, is that to the head of Lynn Canal (Taiya Inlet) and overland. This coast voyage may be said to begin at Victoria, B. C. (since all coast steamers gather and stop there), where a large number of persons prefer to buy their outfits, since by so doing, and obtaining a certificate of the fact, they avoid the custom duties exacted at the boundary line on all goods and equipments brought from the United States. Victoria is well supplied with stores, and is, besides, one of the most interesting towns on the Pacific coast. The loveliest place in the whole neighborhood is Beacon Hill Park, and is well worth a visit by those who find an hour or two on their hands before the departure of the steamer. It forms a half-natural, half-cultivated area of the shore of the Straits of Fuca, where coppices of the beautiful live oak, and many strange trees and shrubs mingled with the all-pervading evergreens.
Within three miles of the city, and reached by street cars, is the principal station in the North Pacific of the British navy, at Esquimault Bay. This is one of the most picturesque harbors in the world, and a beginning is made of fortifications upon a very large scale and of the most modern character. This station, in many respects, is the most interesting place on the Pacific coast of Canada.
Leaving Victoria, the steamer makes its way cautiously through the sinuous channels of the harbor into the waters of Fuca Strait, but this is soon left behind and the steamer turns this way, and that, at the entrance to the Gulf of Georgia, among those islands through which runs the international boundary line, and for the possession of which England and the United States nearly went to war in 1862. The water at first is pale and somewhat opaque, for it is the current of the great Fraser gliding far out upon the surface, and the steamer passes on beyond it into the darker, clearer, salter waters of the gulf. Then the prow is headed to Vancouver, where the mails, freight and new railway passengers are received.
From Vancouver the steamer crosses to Nanaimo, a large settlement on Vancouver Island, where coal mines of great importance exist. A railway now connects this point with Victoria, and a wagon road crosses the interior of the island to Alberni Canal and the seaport at its entrance on Barclay Sound. This is the farthest northern telegraph point. The mines at Nanaimo were exhausted some time ago, after which deep excavations were made on Newcastle Island, just opposite the town. But after a tremendous fire these also were abandoned, and all the workings are now on the shores of Departure Bay, where a colliery village named Wellington has been built up. A steam ferry connects Nanaimo with Wellington; and while the steamer takes in its coal, the passengers disperse in one or the other village, go trout fishing, shooting or botanizing in the neighboring woods, or trade and chaffer with the Indians. Nanaimo has anything but the appearance of a mining town. The houses do not stretch out in the squalid, soot-covered rows familiar to Pennsylvania, but are scattered picturesquely, and surrounded by gardens.
Just ahead lie the splendid hills of Texada Island, whose iron mines yield ore of extraordinary purity, which is largely shipped to the United States to be made into steel. The steamer keeps to the left, making its way through Bayne's Sound, passing Cape Lazaro on the left and the upper end of Texada on the right, across the broadening water along the Vancouver shore into Seymour Narrows. These narrows are only about 900 yards wide, and in them there is an incessant turmoil and bubbling of currents. This is caused by the collision of the streams which takes place here; the flood stream from the south, through the Strait of Fuca and up the Haro Archipelago being met by that from Queen Charlotte Sound and Johnstone straits. These straits are about 140 miles long, and by the time their full length is passed, and the maze of small islands on the right and Vancouver's bulwark on the left are escaped together, the open Pacific shows itself for an hour or two in the offing of Queen Charlotte's Sound, and the steamer rises and falls gently upon long, lazy rollers that have swept all the way from China and Polynesia. Otherwise the whole voyage is in sheltered waters, and seasickness is impossible. The steamer's course now hugs the shore, turning into Fitz Hugh Sound, among Calvert, Hunter's and Bardswell islands, where the ship's spars sometimes brush the overhanging trees. Here are the entrances to Burke Channel and Dean's Canal that penetrate far amid the tremendous cliffs of the mainland mountains. Beyond these the steamer dashes across the open bight of Milbank Sound only to enter the long passages behind Princess Royal, Pit and Packer islands, and coming out at last into Dixon Sound at the extremity of British Columbia's ragged coast line.