OUTLET OF LAKE KLUKTASSI.
Terminal Butte of the Hancock Hills (on the right).
Instead of dying down as we spread sail early in the morning of the 9th, the wind actually freshened, upsetting all our prognostications, and sending us along at a rate that allowed us to enter the river early in the forenoon, and I doubt if the besiegers of a fortress ever saw its flag go down with more satisfaction than we saw the rude wall-tent sail come down forever, and left behind us the most tedious and uncertain method of navigation an explorer was ever called upon to attempt—a clumsy raft on a motionless lake, at the sport of variable winds. Our joy was somewhat dampened at sticking several times on the bars, one of which delayed us over half an hour.
In all these rivers just after emerging from the lakes the current was quite swift, and so shallow in many places as almost to deserve the name of rapids. This was particularly the case where the swift stream cut into the high banks that loomed some forty to sixty feet above us as we rushed by, a top stratum that rested upon the stiff yellow clay being full of rounded bowlders, which, when undermined, were letdown into the river's bed, choking it partially with most dangerous-looking obstacles.
During the whole day we were passing through burned districts of heavy timber that looked dismal enough, backed, as they were, by dense clouds of black smoke rising ahead of us, showing plainly that the devastation was still going on. Many of these sweepings of fire were quite old; so old, in fact, that the dark rotting trunks had become mere banks of brown stretched along the ground, the blackened bark of the stumps being the only testimony as to the manner of its destruction. Others, again, were so recent that the last rain had not yet beaten the white ashes from their blackened limbs, while late that evening we dashed through the region of smoke and flame we had discerned earlier in the day. It is wonderful what great wide strips of river these flames will cross, probably carried by the high winds, when light bunches of dry, resinous matter are in a blaze. We saw one instance which, however, must be a rare one, of a blazing tree that fell into the water, where it immediately found a hydrostatic equilibrium, so that its upper branches continued on fire, blazing and smoking away like a small steam launch. It might readily have crossed the river as it floated down, and becoming entangled in the dry driftwood of the opposite bank, have been the nucleus of a new conflagration, the limits of which would have been determined by the wind and the nature of the material in its path. Of course, in such an intricate wilderness of black and brown trunks and stumps, any kind of game that approaches to black in color, such as a moose or black or brown bear; in fact, any thing darker than a snow-white mountain-goat, can easily avoid the most eagle-eyed hunter, by simply keeping still, since it could scarcely be distinguished at any distance above a hundred yards.
The western banks at one stretch of the river consisted of high precipitous banks of clay, fringed with timber at the summit. In one of the many little gullies that cleft the top of the bank into a series of rolling crescents, a member of the party perceived and drew our attention to a brown stump which seemed to have an unusual resemblance to a "grizzly bear," to use his expression. The resemblance was marked by all to such an extent that the stump was closely watched, and when, as we were from four to six hundred yards away, the stump picked up its roots and began to walk down the slope, there was a general scrambling around for guns, giving the stump an intimation that all was not right, and with one good look from a couple of knots on its side, it disappeared among the rest of the timber before a shot at a reasonable distance could be fired. Thereafter our guns were kept in a more convenient position for such drift timber.
After we had made a good forty miles that day, we felt perfectly justified in going into camp and about seven o'clock we commenced looking for one. The river was uniformly wide, without a break that would give slack water where we could decrease our rapid pace, and that day commenced an experience such as I have treated of in the chapter on rafting. Not knowing the efficacy of this method at the time, we did not find a camp until 8:15, but back of us lay over forty-five miles of distance traversed, which amply compensated us for the slight annoyance. Ahead of us there still hung dense clouds of smoke which seemed as if the whole world was on fire in that direction. An hour or so after camping (No. 24) a couple of miners came into camp, ragged and hungry, the most woe-begone objects I ever saw. They belonged to a party that numbered nearly a dozen and who had started about a month ahead of us. These two had left a third at camp about a mile up the river (from which point they had seen us float by), and were returning to civilization in order to allow the rest of the party food sufficient to enable them to continue prospecting. The party, at starting, had intended to eke out their civilized provisions with large game from time to time, in order to carry them through the summer. They were well armed and had several practical hunters with them, who had often carried out this plan while prospecting in what seemed to be less favored localities for game. Their experience confirmed the Indian reports that the caribou and moose follow the snow-line as it retreats up the mountains in the short summer of this country, in order to avoid the mosquitoes, with the exception only of a few stragglers here and there, on which no reliance can be placed. It was certainly a most formidable undertaking for these ragged, almost barefooted men to walk back through such a country as I have already described, with but a mere pittance of food in their haversacks. Possessing no reliable maps, they were obliged to follow the tortuous river, for fear of losing it, since it was their only guide out of the country. Large tributaries coming in from the west, which was the side they had chosen, often forced them to go many weary miles into the interior before they could be crossed. They hoped to find an Indian canoe by the time the lakes were reached, but from the scarcity of these craft I doubt if their hopes were ever realized. I heard afterward that they had suffered considerably on this return trip, especially in crossing through the Perrier Pass, and had to be rescued in the Dayay Valley by Indians from the Haines Mission.
The country was constantly getting more open as we proceeded, and now looked like the rolling hill-land of old England. By the word open, however, I do not mean to imply the absence of timber, for the growth of spruce and pine on the hills and of the deciduous trees in the valleys continued as dense as ever, and so remained nearly to the mouth of the river, varying, however, in regard to size and species.
Upon the 10th, the current did not abate a jot of its swiftness, and although we started tolerably late, yet when Camp 25 was pitched, at 8:15 P.M., in a thick grove of little poplars (there being no prospect of a better camp in sight), we had scored 59 miles along the axis of the stream, the best record for one day made on the river. About 10 o'clock, that morning, we again passed through forest fires that were raging on both sides of the river, which averages at this point from 300 to 400 yards in width. A commendable scarcity of mosquitoes was noticed on this part of the river.