Along Alaska's Great River / A Popular Account of the Travels of an Alaska Exploring Expedition along the Great Yukon River, from Its Source to Its Mouth, in the British North-West Territory, and in the Territory of Alaska

by Frederick Schwatka

"Cut offs" through channels that led straight across were often most deceptive affairs, the swifter currents nearly always swinging around the great bends of the river. Especially bad was a peculiarly seductive "cut-off" with a tempting by swift current as you entered it, caused by its flowing over a shallow bar, whereupon the current would rapidly and almost immediately deepen and would consequently slow down to a rate that was provoking beyond measure, especially as one saw one's self overtaken by piece after piece of drift-timber that by keeping to the main channel had "taken the longest way around as the shortest way home," and beaten us by long odds in the race. And worse than all it was not always possible to avoid getting in these side "sloughs of despond," even when we had learned their tempting little tricks of offering us a swifter current at the entrance, for this very swiftness produced a sort of suction on the surface water that drew in every thing that passed within a distance of the width of its entrance.

Of submerged obstructions, snags were of little account, for the great ponderous craft would go plowing through and casting aside some of the most formidable of them. I doubt very much if snags did us as much harm as benefit, for as they always indicated shoal water, and were easily visible, especially with glasses, they often served us as beacons. I saw very few of the huge snags which have received the appellation of "sawyers" on the Mississippi and Missouri, and are so much dreaded by the navigators of those waters.

Sand, mud and gravel bars were by far the worst obstruction we had to contend with, and I think I have given them in the order of their general perversity in raft navigation, sand being certainly the worst and gravel the slightest.

PRYING THE RAFT OFF A BAR.

Sand bars and spits were particularly aggravating, and when the great gridiron of logs ran up on one of them in a swift current there was "fun ahead," to use a western expression of negation. Sometimes the mere jumping overboard of all the crew would lighten the craft so that she would float forward a few yards, and in lucky instances might clear the obstruction; but this was not often the case, and those who made preparations for hard work were seldom disappointed. In a swift current the running water would sweep out the sand around the logs of the raft until its buoyancy would prevent its sinking any deeper, and out of this rut the great bulky thing would have to be lifted before it would budge an inch in a lateral direction, and when this was accomplished, and, completely fagged out, we would stop to take a breath or two, we would often be gratified by seeing our noble craft sink down again, necessitating a repetition of the process. The simplest way to get off a sand bar was to find (by sounding with a stick or simply wading around), the point nearest to a deep navigable channel and then to swing the raft, end for end, up stream, even against the swiftest current that might come boiling over the upper logs, until that channel was reached. There was no more happy moment in a day's history than when, after an hour or so had been spent in prying the vessel inch by inch against the current, we could finally see the current catch it on the same side upon which we were working and perform the last half of our task in a few seconds, where perhaps we had spent as many hours upon our portion of the work. At one bad place, on the upper end of an island, we had to swing our forty-two foot corvette around four times. Our longest detention by a sand bar was three hours and fifty minutes.

Mud bars were not nearly so bad, unless the material was of a clayey consistency, when a little adhesiveness would be added to the other impediments, and again, as we always endeavored to keep in the swift water we seldom encountered a mud bar. But when one occurred near to a camping place, it materially interfered with our wading ashore with our heavy camping effects on our backs, and would reduce our rubber boots to a deplorable looking condition. Elsewhere, it was possible to pry the raft right through a mud bank, by dint of muscle and patience, and then we could sit down on the outer logs of the deck and wash our boots in the water at leisure as we floated along. Our raft drew from twenty to twenty-two inches of water, and of course it could not ground in any thing deeper, so that good rubber boots coming up over the thighs kept our feet comparatively dry when overboard; but there were times when we were compelled to get in almost to our middle; and when the water was so swift that it boiled up over their tops and filled them they were about as useless an article as can be imagined, so that we went into all such places barefooted.

The best of all the bars were those of gravel, and the larger and coarser the pebbles the better. When the pebbles were well cemented into a firm bed by a binding of clay almost as solid and unyielding as rock, we could ask nothing better, and in such cases we always went to work with cheerful prospects of a speedy release. By simply lifting the raft with pries the swift current throws it forward, and since it does not settle as in sand, every exertion tells. By turning the raft broadside to the current and prying or "biting" at each end of the "boat" alternately, with our whole force of pries, leaving the swift water to throw her forward, we passed over gravel bars on which I do not think the water was over ten or eleven inches deep, although the raft drew twice as much. One of the gravel bars over which we passed in this manner was fully thirty or forty yards in length.

In aggravated cases of whatever nature the load would have to be taken off, carried on our backs through the water and placed on the shore, and when the raft was cleared or freed from the obstruction it would be brought alongside the bank at the very first favorable spot for reloading. Such cases occurred fully a score of times during our voyage. When the raft stranded on a bar with the water on each side so deep that we could not wade ashore, the canoe was used for "lightering the load," an extremely slow process which, fortunately, we were obliged to employ only once on the whole raft journey, although several times in wading the water came up to our waists before we could get to shore. In fact, with a heavy load on one's back or shoulders, it is evidently much easier to wade through water of that depth and proportional current than through very swift water over shallow bars.