From Lake Kluk-tas-si almost to old Fort Selkirk we observed along the steep banks of the river a most conspicuous white stripe some two or three inches in width. After our attention had been attracted to this phenomenon for two or three days, we proceeded to investigate it. It averaged about two or three feet below the surface, and seemed to separate the recent alluvial deposits from the older beds of clay and drift below, although occasionally it appeared to cut into both, especially the alluvium. Occasionally, although at very rare intervals, there were two stripes parallel to each other and separated by a few inches of black earth, while oftentimes the stripe was plain on one side of the river and wholly wanting on the other. A close inspection showed it to be volcanic ash, sufficiently consolidated to have the consistency of stiff earth, but nevertheless so friable that it could be reduced to powder by the thumb and fingers. It possibly represents the result of some exceptionally violent eruption in ancient times from one or more of the many volcanic cones, now probably extinct, with which the whole southern coast of Alaska is studded. The ashes were carried far and wide by the winds, and if the latter then, as now, blew almost persistently from the southward during the summer (and I understand the reverse is the case in the winter), we could reasonably fix the eruption at that time of the year.
INDIAN VILLAGE OF KITL-AH-GON IN THE VON WILCZEK VALLEY.
The Yukon River as it widens also becomes very tortuous in many places, and oftentimes a score of miles is traversed along the axis of the stream while the dividers on the map hardly show half a dozen between the same points. In the region about the mouth of the Nordenskiöld River a conspicuous bald butte could be seen directly in front of our raft no less than seven times, on as many different stretches of the river. I called it Tantalus Butte, and was glad enough to see it disappear from sight.
The day we shot the Rink Rapids, and only a few hours afterward, we also saw our first moose plowing through the willow brush on the eastern bank of the stream like a hurricane in his frantic endeavors to escape, an undertaking in which he was completely successful. When first seen by one of the party on the raft, his great broad palmated horns rolling through the top of the willow brake, with an occasional glimpse of his brownish black sides showing, he was mistaken for an Indian running down a path in the brake and swaying his arms in the air to attract our attention. My Winchester express rifle was near me, and as the ungainly animal came into full sight at a place where a little creek put into the stream, up the valley of which it started, I had a fair shot at about a hundred yards; took good aim, pulled the trigger—and the cap snapped,—and I saved my reputation as a marksman by the gun's missing fire. This moose and another about four hundred miles further down the river were the only two we saw in the Yukon Valley, although in the winter they are quite numerous in some districts, when the mosquitoes have ceased their onslaughts.
That same evening—the 12th, we encamped near the first Indian village we had met on the river, and even this was deserted. It is called by them Kitl-ah-gon (meaning the place between high hills), and consists of one log house about eighteen by thirty feet, and a score of the brush houses usual in this country; that is, three main poles, one much longer than the rest, and serving as a ridge pole on which to pile evergreen brush to complete the house. This brush is sometimes replaced by the most thoroughly ventilated reindeer or moose skin, and in rare cases by an old piece of canvas. Such are the almost constant habitations of these abject creatures. When I first saw these rude brush houses, thrown together without regard to order or method, I thought they were scaffoldings or trellis work on which the Indians, who lived in the log house, used to dry the salmon caught by them during the summer, but my guide, Indianne, soon explained that theory away. In the spring Kitl-ah-gon is deserted by its Indian inmates, who then ascend the river with loads so light that they may be carried on the back. By the time winter approaches they have worked so far away, accumulating the scanty stores of salmon, moose, black bear, and caribou, on which they are to subsist, that they build a light raft from the driftwood strewn along banks of the river, and float toward home, where they live in squalor throughout the winter. These rafts are almost their sole means of navigation from the Grand Cañon to old Fort Selkirk, and the triangular brush houses almost their only abodes; and all this in a country teeming with wood fit for log-houses, and affording plenty of birch bark from which can be made the finest of canoes. Kitl-ah-gon is in a beautiful large valley, as its Indian name would imply (I named it Von Wilczek Valley, after Graf von Wilczek of Vienna), and I was surprised to see it drained by so small a stream as the one, but ten or twenty feet wide, which empties itself at the valley's mouth. Its proximity to the Pelly, twenty miles further on, forbids its draining a great area, yet its valley is much the more conspicuous of the two. Photographs of this and adjacent scenes on the river were secured by Mr. Homan before departing, and a rough "prospect" in the high bank near the river showed "color" enough to encourage the hope of some enthusiastic miner in regard to finding something more attractive. Looking back up the Yukon a most prominent landmark is found in a bold bluff that will always be a conspicuous point on the river, and which is shown on page [193]. I named this bluff after General Charles G. Loring, of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
UPPER END OF THE INGERSOL ISLANDS.