DAYAY VALLEY, LOOKING UP THE NOURSE RIVER VALLEY.
A glimpse of Baird Glacier covered with fog is given. The mountains holding the glacier being twice as high as the one shown on the left, their crests, if they had been visible, would not have been shown in the photograph from which this illustration is made, being above the line where it is cut off. It is only at night that the fog-banks lift, when it is too late to take photographs.
Two miles and a half beyond the head of canoe navigation, the Kut-lah-cook-ah River of the Chilkats comes in from the west. This is really larger in volume and width than the Dayay, the two averaging respectively fifty and forty yards in width by estimation. I shortened its name, and called it after Professor Nourse of the United States Naval Observatory. Large glaciers feed its sources by numerous waterfalls, and its cañon-like bed is very picturesque. Like all such streams its waters were conspicuously white and milk-like, and the most diligent fisherman was unrewarded. At the head of the Nourse River the Indians say there is a very large lake. The mountains that bound its course on the west are capped by an immense glacier, which might be traced along their summits for probably ten or twelve miles, and was then lost in the lowering clouds of their icy crests. These light fogs are frequent on warm days, when the difference of temperature at the upper and lower levels is more marked, but they disappear at night as the temperatures approach each other. This glacier, a glimpse of which is given on page [73], was named after Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. The march of the 9th of June took us three miles and a half up the Dayay River, and while resting, about noon, I was astonished to hear the Indians declare this was their expected camp for the night, for we had really accomplished so little. I was much inclined to anticipate that the rest of the journey was not much worse, and would give a forcible example of the maxim that "dangers disappear as they are approached." The rough manner in which my illusions were dispelled will appear further on. Another inducement to stop at this particular point was found in a small grove of spruce saplings just across the river, which was so dense that each tree trunk tapered as regularly as if it had been turned from a lathe. These they desired for salmon-spears, cutting them on their way over the trail, and collecting them as they returned, so as to give the poles a few days to season, thus rendering them lighter for the dextrous work required. These peculiar kinds of fish-spears are so common over all the districts of Arctic and sub-Arctic America that I think them worthy of description. The pole is from eight to twelve feet in length, extending from P to P, as shown in the figure on this page. Two arms A A are made of elastic wood, and at their ends they carry incurved spikes of iron or steel, S S, which act as barbs on a fish-hook. Another sharpened spike projects from the tip of the pole P, and the three together make the prongs of the spear or gig. When the fish is speared the arms A A bend out as the spikes "ride" over its back, and these insert themselves in its sides, the pole spike penetrating its back. In the figure there is represented the cross-section of a fish (its dorsal-fin D) just before the spear strikes. Among the Eskimo of King William's Land I found the spear-handles made of driftwood thrown on the beach, the arms A A made of very elastic musk-ox horn, and the spikes of copper taken from the abandoned ships of Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition. Again at this camp (No. 4), the fishing-tackle of various kinds was employed vigilantly, but although the water seemed much clearer there were no results, the doctor advancing the theory that trout will not rise to a fly in streams where salmon are spawning, as they then live on the salmon roe to the exclusion of every thing else.
A VIEW IN THE DAYAY VALLEY. (FROM
CAMP 4.)
A finger of the Saussure Glacier is seen peeping round the mountain, the rest being covered with fog.