These same four fellows, when they met us on the morning of the 17th, had with them the carcass of a black bear, which they offered for sale or barter; and on our buying one hindquarter, which was about all that we thought we could use before spoiling, they offered us the rest as a gift. We accepted the offer to the extent of taking the other hindquarter, for which we gave them a trifle, whereupon the rest of the carcass was left behind or thrown away on the beach, a circumstance which was explained to us by the fact that all four of these Indians were medicine-men, and as such were forbidden by some superstitious custom from eating bears' flesh. They told us that the animal was the same black bear we had seen on the northern hillsides of the river the day before.
The morning of the 17th and certain other periods of the day were characterized by a heavy fog-bank, which did not quite reach the river bottom, but cut the hillsides at an altitude of from three hundred to five hundred feet above the level of the stream. The fog gave a dismal and monotonous aspect to the landscape, but proved much better for our physical comfort than the previous day, with its alternating rain and blistering heat. We found these fogs to be very common on this part of the river, being almost inseparable from the southern winds that prevail at this time of the year. I suppose these fogs proceed from the moisture-laden air over the warm Pacific which is borne on the southern winds across the snow-clad and glacier-crowned mountains of the Alaskan coast range, becoming chilled and condensed in its progress, and reaching this part of the Yukon valley is precipitated as rain or fog. The reason that we had escaped the fogs on the lakes was that the wind came across tracts of land to the south, and the hygrometric conditions were different. A little further down the Yukon, but within the upper ramparts, we suffered from almost constant rains that beat with the southern winds upon our backs.
Shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon we floated by the mouth of the White River flowing from the south west, which has the local name of Yú-ko-kon Heena, or Yú-ko-kon River, a much prettier name than the old one of the Hudson Bay traders. The Chilkats call it the Sand River, from the innumerable bars and banks of sand along its course; and many years ago they ascended it by a trail, which when continued leads to their own country, but is now abandoned. Some forty to fifty miles up its valley the Indian trading trail which leads from the headwaters of the Tanana to old Fort Selkirk crosses its course at right angles; and since the destruction of Fort Selkirk in 1851, the Tanana Indians, who then made considerable use of the trail to reach the fort for trading purposes, employ it but little; and only then as far as the White River, whose valley they descend to reach the Yukon.
This stream resembles a river of liquid mud of an almost white hue, from which characteristic it is said to have derived its name from the old Hudson Bay traders—and no better illustration of its extreme muddiness can be given than the following: One of our party mistook a mass of timber that had lodged on the up-stream side of a low, flat mud-bar, for floating wood, and regarded it as evidence of a freshet, a theory which seemed corroborated by the muddy condition of the water, until the actual character of the object was established by closer observation as we drifted nearer. The mud-bar and adjacent waters were so entirely of the same color that the line of demarcation was not readily apparent, and had it not been for the drift rubbish around the former it might have escaped our scrutiny even at our short distance from it. The Indians say that the White River rises in glacier-bearing lands, and that it is very swift, and full of rapids along its whole course. So swift is it at its mouth, that as it pours its muddy waters into the rapid Yukon it carries them nearly across that clear blue stream; the waters of the two rivers mingling almost at once, and not running distinct for miles side by side, as is stated in one book on Alaska. From the mouth of the White or Yu'-ko-kon to Bering Sea, nearly 1,500 miles, the Yukon is so muddy as to be noticeable even when its water is taken up in the palm of the hand; and all fishing with hook and line ceases.
About four in the afternoon the mouth of the Stewart River was passed, and, being covered with islands, might not have been noticed except for its valley, which is very noticeable—a broad valley fenced in by high hills. A visit to the shore in our canoe showed its mouth to be deltoid in character, three mouths being observed, and others probably existing. Islands were very numerous in this portion of the Yukon, much more so than in any part of the river we had yet visited, and as the raft had drifted on while I went ashore in the canoe, I had a very hard task to find it again and came within a scratch of losing it, having passed beyond the camp, and being compelled to return. It was about nine o'clock in the evening and the low north-western sun shone squarely in our faces, as we descended the river, eagerly looking for the ascending smoke of the camp-fire, which had been agreed upon, before separation, as the signal to be kept going until we returned. The setting sun throwing its slanting rays upon each point of woods that ran from the hillsides down to the water's edge, illumined the top of them with a whitish light until each one exactly resembled a camp-fire on the river bank with the feathery smoke floating off along the tree tops. Even my Indian canoeman was deceived at first, until half a dozen appearing together in sight convinced him of his error. All these islands were densely covered with spruce and poplar, and the swift current cutting into their alluvial banks, though the latter were frozen six or eight feet thick, kept their edges bristling with freshly-fallen timber; and it was almost courting destruction to get under this abatis of trees with the raft, in the powerful current, to avoid which some of our hardest work was necessary. The preservative power of this constantly frozen ground must be very great, as in many places we saw protruding from the high banks great accumulations of driftwood and logs over which there was soil two and three feet thick, which had been formerly carried by the river, and from which sprung forests of spruce timber, as high as any in sight, at whose feet were rotting trunks that must have been saplings centuries ago. Yet wherever this ancient driftwood had been undermined and washed of its dirt and thrown upon the beach along with the tree but just fallen, the difference between the two was only that the latter still retained its green bark, and its broken limbs were not so abraded and worn; but there seemed to be no essential difference in the fiber of the timber.
The evening of the 17th, having scored forty geographical miles, we camped on a low gravel bar, and bivouacked in the open air so clear and still was the night, although by morning huge drops of rain were falling on our upturned faces.
On the 18th, shortly after noon, we passed a number of Tahk-ong Indians, stretched upon the green sward of the right bank leisurely enjoying themselves; their birch-bark canoes, sixteen in all, being pulled up on the gravel beach in front of them. It was probably a trading or hunting party, there being one person for each canoe, none of whom were women. Already we observed an increase in the size and a greater cumbrousness in the build of the birch-bark canoes, when compared with the fairy-like craft of the Ayans, a characteristic that slowly increased as we descended the river until the kiak, or sealskin canoe of the Eskimo is encountered along the lower waters of the great river. Of course this change of build reflects no discredit upon the skill of the makers, as a heavier craft is required to navigate the rougher water, as the broad stream is stirred up by the persistent southern winds of the Yukon basin.
MOOSE-SKIN MOUNTAIN, AND CAMP 32 AT THE MOUTH OF DEER RIVER.
About 8.30 P.M. we passed an Indian camp on the left bank, which, from the seeming good quality of their canvas tents as viewed from the river, we judged might prove to be a mining party of whites. From them we learned that there was a deserted white man's store but a few miles beyond, but that the trader himself, had quitted the place several months before, going down to salt-water, as they expressed it. This was evidently the same trader the Ayans expected to meet at a little semi-permanent station of the Alaska Commercial Company dubbed Fort Reliance; and they seemed quite discomfited at his departure, although he had left the preceding autumn, and as we afterward ascertained more from fear of the Indians in his neighborhood than any other reason.