Near the spot where we camped, just below the cascades that terminated the long rapids, was found a small grove of sapling spruce through which the fire had swept a year or two before, and the trees were thoroughly seasoned and sound, the black burned bark peeling as freely from them as the hull of a chestnut, leaving excellent light and tough poles with which we renewed our two decks, our constant walking over the old ones having converted them into somewhat unsatisfactory places for promenades unless one carefully watched his footsteps. Evidences of conflagration in the dense coniferous forests were everywhere frequent, the fires arising from the carelessness of the Indian campers, and from the making of signal smokes, and even it is said, from design, with the idea of clearing the district of mosquitoes. While waiting at the cascades of the rapids to repair our raft, our fishing tackle was kept busy to such an extent that we landed between four and five hundred fine grayling, a fishing ground that excelled any we afterward found on the Yukon River.
THE CASCADES AT THE END OF THE GREAT RAPIDS.
Head of Navigation on the Yukon, 1866 miles from Aphoon mouth.
Our favorite fishing place was just below the cascades, where a number of the disintegrating columns of basalt had fallen in, forming a talus along which we could walk between the water and the wall. A little beyond the wall itself sloped down and ran close beside the little ripples where we were always sure of a "rise" when the grayling would bite. This was nearly always in the cool of the mornings or evenings, or in the middle of the day when even a few light fleecy clouds floated over the sun. Yet there were times when they would cease biting as suddenly as if they were disciplined and under orders, and that without any apparent reason, returning to the bait just as suddenly and as mysteriously. Light northern winds brought fine sunny weather, and with it a perfect deluge of light brown millers or moths migrating southward, thousands of which tumbled in the waters of the river and filled every eddy with their floating bodies. These kept the grayling busy snapping at them, and indicated to a certain degree when to go fishing, but still it was remarkable that our efforts should be so well rewarded when there were so many living, struggling bait to tempt them away from our flies. Strangest of all we were most successful when casting with brown flies. The millers caught by the water and drifted into eddies would not be touched, and it was only when a solitary moth came floating along beating its wings and fluttering on the surface around the swiftest corners that a spring for it was at all certain, and even then a brown hackle dancing around in the same place would monopolize every rise within the radius of a fish's eyesight. Our Tahk-heesh friends, who had been made useful by us in several ways, such as carrying effects over the portage, helping with poles and logs, and so on, were as much surprised at this novel mode of fishing as the grayling themselves, and expressed their astonishment, in guttural grunts. They regarded themselves as admitted to high favor when we gave them a few of the flies as presents. They ate all the spare grayling we chose to give them, which was often nearly a dozen apiece, and, in fact, during the three or four days we were together their subsistence was almost altogether derived from this source, as we had no provisions to spare them. The largest grayling we caught weighed two pounds and a quarter, but we had the same invariable two sizes already mentioned, with here and there a slight deviation in grade. These grayling were the most persistent biters I ever saw rise to a fly, and more uncertain than these uncertain fish usually are in grasping for a bait, for there were times when I really believe we got fifty or sixty rises from a single fish before he was hooked or the contest abandoned.
The portage made by the Indians around the cañon and rapids was over quite a high ridge just the length of the cañon, and then descended abruptly with a dizzy incline into a valley which, after continuing nearly down to the cascades, again ascended a sandy hill that was very difficult to climb. The hilly part around the cañon was pretty thoroughly covered with small pines and spruce, and all along the portage trail some miners who had been over it had cut these down near the path and felled them across it, and had then barked them on their upper sides, forming stationary skids along which they could drag their whip-sawed boats. Two large logs placed together on the steep declivity, and well trimmed of their limbs and bark, made good inclines on which the boat or boats could be lowered into the valley below. Here they had floated their boats by towlines down to the cascades, around which point they had again dragged them. It may readily be imagined that such a chaparral of felled brush and poles across our path did not improve the walking in the least. It was a continued case of hurdle walking the whole distance. The day we walked over the trail on the eastern side of the cañon and rapids was one of the hottest and most insufferable I ever experienced, and every time we sat down it was only to have "a regular down-east fog" of mosquitoes come buzzing around, and the steady swaying of arms and the constant slapping of the face was an exercise fully as vigorous as that of traveling. Our only safe plan was to walk along brandishing a great handful of evergreens from shoulder to shoulder. As we advanced the mosquitoes invariably kept the same distance ahead, as if they had not the remotest idea we were coming toward them. An occasional vicious reach forward through the mass with the evergreens would have about as much effect in removing them as it would in dispersing the same amount of fog, for it seemed as if they could dodge a streak of lightning. Nothing was better than a good strong wind in one's face, and as one emerged from the brush or timber it was simply delicious to feel the cool breeze on one's peppered face and to see the rascals disappear. Our backs, however, were even then spotted with them, still crawling along and testing every thread in one's coat to see if they could not find a thin hole where they might bore through. Once in the breeze, it was comical to turn around slowly and see their efforts to keep under the lee of one's hunting shirt, as one by one they lose their hold and are wafted away in the wind. If these pests had been almost unbearable before, they now became simply fiendish while we were repairing our raft; nothing could be done unless a wind was blowing or unless we stood in a smoke from the resinous pine or spruce so thick that the eyes remained in an acute state of inflammation. Mosquito netting over the hat was not an infallible remedy and was greatly in the way when at work.
A fair wind one day made me think it possible to take a hunt inland, but, to my disgust, it died down after I had proceeded two or three miles, and my fight back to camp with the mosquitoes I shall always remember as one of the salient points of my life. It seemed as if there was an upward rain of insects from the grass that became a deluge over marshy tracts, and more than half the ground was marshy. Of course not a sign of any game was seen except a few old tracks; and the tracks of an animal are about the only part of it that could exist here in the mosquito season, which lasts from the time the snow is half off the ground until the first severe frost, a period of some three or four months. During that time every living creature that can leave the valleys ascends the mountains, closely following the snow-line, and even there peace is not completely attained, the exposure to the winds being of far more benefit than the coolness due to the altitude, while the mosquitoes are left undisputed masters of the valleys, except for a few straggling animals on their way from one range of mountains to the other. Had there been any game, and had I obtained a fair shot, I honestly doubt if I could have secured it owing to these pests, not altogether on account of their ravenous attacks upon my face, and especially the eyes, but for the reason that they were absolutely so dense that it was impossible to see clearly through the mass in taking aim. When I got back to camp I was thoroughly exhausted with my incessant fight and completely out of breath, which I had to regain as best I could in a stifling smoke from dry resinous pine knots. A traveler who had spent a summer on the Lower Yukon, where I did not find the pests so bad on my journey as on the upper river, was of opinion that a nervous person without a mask would soon be killed by nervous prostration, unless he were to take refuge in mid-stream. I know that the native dogs are killed by the mosquitoes under certain circumstances, and I heard reports, which I believe to be well founded, both from Indians and trustworthy white persons, that the great brown bear—erroneously but commonly called the grizzly—of these regions is at times compelled to succumb to these insects. The statement seems almost preposterous, but the explanation is comparatively simple. Bruin having exhausted all the roots and berries on one mountain, or finding them scarce, thinks he will cross the valley to another range, or perhaps it is the odor of salmon washed up along the river's banks that attracts him. Covered with a heavy fur on his body, his eyes, nose and ears are the vulnerable points for mosquitoes, and here of course they congregate in the greatest numbers. At last when he reaches a swampy stretch they rise in myriads until his forepaws are kept so busy as he strives to keep his eyes clear of them that he can not walk, whereupon he becomes enraged, and bear-like, rises on his haunches to fight. It is now a mere question of time until the bear's eyes become so swollen from innumerable bites as to render him perfectly blind, when he wanders helplessly about until he gets mired in the marsh, and so starves to death.
ALASKA BROWN BEAR FIGHTING MOSQUITOES.