The country was now noticeably more open, and it was evident that we had already passed the most mountainous portion of the chain, the intersection of which by the river forms the upper ramparts.
The next day we made thirty-six miles, and as the whole day had been a most disagreeable one when at six o'clock we got drawn into an eddy, near which was a fair place to camp, I ordered the raft made fast and the tents pitched.
That day—the 22d—while under way, we saw a large dead king-salmon, floating belly upwards with the current, and we kept near it for some time. This spectacle became more familiar as we descended, while everywhere we met with the rough coarse dog-salmon strewn upon the beach, frequently in such numbers, and tainting the air so strongly with the odor of their decay, that an otherwise good camp would be spoiled by their presence.
MOUNT TA-TOT'-LEE, OR BOUNDARY BUTTE.
(Also showing Middle Yukon River Indians' methods of killing swimming moose.)
The river rose ten inches that night—a fact easily accounted for by the protracted and often heavy rains. The forenoon of the 23d was very gloomy, but shortly after noon the weather surprised us by clearing up.
At 3:30 that day we came upon another Indian town called Charley's Village; but the current was so swift that we could not get the raft up to the bank so as to camp alongside, but we were successful in making a sand-bar about half a mile below. Charley's Village was an exact counterpart of Johnny's, even as to the number of houses—six—and the side of the river—the western; and considering this and the trouble to reach it, I did not attempt to photograph it. When attempting to reach it with the raft, so anxious were the Indians for our success, that as many as could do so put the bows of their canoes on the outer log of the raft, and paddled forward with as much vehemence as if their very lives depended upon the result. In three or four minutes they had worked themselves into a streaming perspiration, and had probably shoved the huge raft as many inches toward the bank. We found a Canadian voyageur among them of the name of Jo. Ladue, who, as a partner of one of the traders on the lower river, had drifted here in prospecting the stream for precious mineral. "Jo," as he is familiarly known, speaks of the natives of both these villages as Tadoosh, and says they are the best-natured Indians from here till the Eskimo are met with. Ladue had a fairly-made scow over twenty feet long, about half a dozen wide, and three deep, which he wanted to hire us, but as it would not hold all the party and effects we had to decline the tender, despite his emphatic assurances that we could not safely go much further with our raft. It was with Ladue that I first noticed particularly the pronunciation of the name of the great river, on whose waters we were drifting, a pronunciation which is universal among the few whites along its borders, and that sounded strangely at first; that is with the accent on the first syllable, and not on the second, as I had so usually heard it pronounced in the United States. That night, the 23d, the mosquitoes were perfectly unbearable in their assaults, and if the weather had not turned bitterly cold toward morning I doubt if we could have obtained any sleep at all, for the mosquito-bars seemed to be no protection whatever.
I think I established one mosquito theory of a practical bearing, on a pretty firm basis, while upon this trip "in the land of the mosquito's paradise;" and that was, if the insects are so thick that they constantly touch each other on the mosquito-bar when crawling over it, it will be no protection whatever, if the meshes are of the usual size, and they will come in so fast that comfort is out of the question, but otherwise there is some chance which increases as their numbers diminish. Even if there are two or three to the square inch of your bar of many square yards, it surprises you how few get through, but the minute they begin crawling over each other they seem to become furious, and make efforts to squeeze through the meshes which are often rewarded with success, until a sharp slap on the face sounds their death knell. The doctor, in a fit of exasperation, said he believed that two of them would hold the legs and wings of another flat against its body, while a third shoved it through; but I doubt the existence of co-operation among them. I think they are too mean to help one another.