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.