British Columbia leads all Canada in the value of its fisheries, of which Prince Rupert is the centre. More halibut is brought here each season than to any other port in the world.
The animals, birds, and fish surmounting the totem poles are the family crests indicating the different branches of an Indian tribe at Kitwanga, not far from Prince Rupert. The poles number a score or more, and some are a hundred feet high.
The chief salmon fisheries of the Pacific coast are farther north in Alaska, but nevertheless British Columbia’s catch is worth ten million dollars a year. At Vancouver I saw the fleets of salmon trawlers in the mouth of the Fraser. There are many salmon fisheries near the mouth of the Skeena, not far from Prince Rupert, and forty per cent. of all the salmon packed in the province is put up in this city. The fresh fish are shipped only during the summer months, but they are exported in a frozen state from the cold storage plants throughout the winter.
CHAPTER XXXI
BY MOTOR CAR THROUGH THE WILDERNESS
I have come into the Yukon Territory from Alaska. The trip from the land of Uncle Sam to that of John Bull was made over the route followed by thousands of gold seekers in the first great Klondike rush in the winter of 1897, when the prospectors made their way on foot over that frozen pass. It is now summer, and I have come from Skagway to White Horse, where I am now writing, on the White Pass Railway.
My first journey into the interior of the Yukon has been a motor trip of a hundred miles on the overland trail that runs from here to Dawson. The car was of American make, the chauffeur was “Caterpillar Ike,” and the time was yesterday from midday to midnight. We dashed through virgin forests, climbed mountains, flew around dizzying curves, and skidded along narrow cliffs until my heart was in my throat but my soul was full of thrills.
The overland trail begins at White Horse and runs through the wilderness for a distance of three hundred and fifty miles to Dawson at the mouth of the Klondike. It is more than one hundred miles shorter than the river trip to the gold mines, and it is used to carry mail, passengers, and freight during the cold winter months when everything in this region is locked tight by Jack Frost.
The road through the forest climbs over ranges of mountains, winds its way through the valleys, and crosses swamps, bogs, and sloughs of mud that sticks like cement. In many parts of its course it twists about like a corkscrew, as though the surveyors had laid their lines along the trail of a rabbit, and a drunken rabbit at that. Here it is bedded on rock, and there it half floats on a quicksand covered with corduroy logs. In the spring of the year the six-horse teams of the mail stage are often mired to their bellies, and have to be lifted from the waxy clay by a block and tackle attached to the trees.