MOSS ON YUKON RIVER.
At half-past five o'clock we sighted a steamer down the river which we thought might be the Alaska Commercial Company's "Yukon" coming up around a low island of sand, but it proved to be a beached boat called the St. Michael's, lying high and dry, about ten or twelve feet above the present water level, on a long, low island of sand and gravel.
Some years before, a rival corporation to the Alaska Company, called, I believe, The Northern Trading Company, tried to establish itself on the Yukon River, (and elsewhere in Alaska, but the Yukon district only concerns us here), and trading houses were built in many places along the stream, most of them within a short distance, perhaps a mile or two, of those established by the Alaska Commercial Company. Fierce competition ensued, and I was told that the Indians got goods at wholesale prices in San Francisco, i.e., at almost infinitesimal prices compared with those they were accustomed to pay. The Alaska Company was finally victorious, but found matters considerably changed when the struggle was over. When they attempted to restore the prices of the old régime, and to ask immediate payment—for both companies had given the Indians unlimited credit—such a hornet's nest was stirred up that ultimately the company was obliged to abandon nearly a half-dozen posts, all above Nuklakayet, for fear of the Indians, who required a Krupp steam-hammer to pound into their thick heads the reason why a man might sell them a pound of tobacco for ten cents to-day and to-morrow charge them ten dollars an ounce; especially when they have to pay for the latter from the products of the trap, and the former is put down in the account book in an accommodating way. The Northern Trading Company also put on the Yukon River this boat, the St. Michael's, a clumsily-built stern-wheeler that had wintered at Belle Isle, and on going down with the spring freshet had struck this bar, then under water, and as the river was falling she was soon left high in the air.
We camped for the night on the same bar, which I called St. Michael's Island, and about an hour afterward "Jo" and his scow came along and pulled up to camp on the opposite shore. He explained his delay—for I really thought he had passed us and was camping further down—by saying that he and his Indians had been hunting, and he produced two or three ducks, in the very prime of their toughness, as corroborative testimony, but I surmised that the true story was that "all hands and the cook" had gone to sleep, whereupon the scow had likewise rested on the soft bottom of some friendly sandspit. The remainder of the journey confirmed this suspicion.
Starting from Camp No. 38, on St. Michael's Island, the river, as the map shows, becomes one vast and wide network of islands, the whole country being as level as the great plains of the West, and we were fairly launched into the "Yukon flat-lands." As we entered this floor-like country our Chilkat Indians seemed seriously to think that we had arrived at the river's mouth and were now going out to sea; and I can readily imagine that even a white person, having no knowledge of the country, might well think so. There was an almost irresistible impression that beyond the low flat islands in front one must come in sight of the ocean.
As we started out into this broad, level tract, the mountains to the left, or west, still continued in a broken range that was thrown back at an angle from the river's general course, and projected into a sort of spur formed of a series of isolated peaks, rising squarely out of the flat land, and diminishing in size until they disappeared toward the north-west in a few sharp-pointed hillocks just visible over the high spruce trees of the islands. I called them the Ratzel range, or peaks, after Professor Frederick Ratzel, of Munich.
This flat character of the country continues for about three hundred miles further, and the river, unconfined by resisting banks, cuts numerous wide channels in the soft alluvial shores, dividing and subdividing and spreading, until its width is simply beyond reasonable estimation. At Fort Yukon, about a thousand miles from the mouth, its width has been closely estimated at seven miles, and at other points above and below it is believed to be twice or thrice that width. This breadth is measured from the right bank to the left across shallow channels and flat islands, whose ratio to each other is, on the whole, tolerably equal. Some of these islands are merely wide wastes, consisting of low stretches of sand and gravel, with desolate-looking ridges of whitened drift-timber, all of which must be under water in the spring floods, when the river in this region must resemble a great inland sea. In no place does this wide congeries of channels seem to abate its former swiftness a single jot, but the constant dividing and subdividing occasionally brought us to lanes so narrow and shallow that it seemed as though we could not get through with our raft, and more than once we feared we should have to abandon our old companion. For nearly three weeks we were drifting through these terribly monotonous flat-lands, never knowing at night whether or not we were camping on the main bank, and by far the most frequently camping on some island with nothing but islands in sight as far as the eye could see.
On the 25th we got under way quite early, and at 8:30 A. M. passed an Indian encampment of four very fine-looking tents, situated on an island, and here "Jo" Ladue told us he would stop and await the arrival of the Alaska Company's new steamer. I had suspicions that "Jo" did not like the pace we kept up, or rather that he did not relish being awakened whenever his scow sought the quiet of an island shore.
But a few minutes afterward there was a junction of several channels of the river, and we floated out into the lake-like expanse ahead with a vague feeling that so much water could hardly possess any current, but nevertheless we sped along at our old pace. This sheet of water was wider than the majority of the lakes at the head of the stream, and it was hard not to revert to them in thought, and imagine ourselves unable to move without a sail and a good wind abaft. Very soon an ominous line of drift timber appeared in our front, seeming to stretch from shore to shore as we approached it, and the great channel broke up into half a dozen smaller ones that went winding through sand-spits and log-locked débris, down one of which we shot and were just breathing more freely when the same occurrence was repeated, and we slipped down a shallow branch that was not over fifty yards in width, only to bring up on a bar in the swift current, with less than a foot of water ahead over the spit that ran from the bar to the shore. Near the other shore was a channel so deep that we might have floated with ease, but to reach it again we should have to pry our vessel up stream against water so swift as almost to take us off our feet. Through this deep channel every thing was carried on our backs to the shore, and then commenced a struggle that lasted from ten o'clock in the morning until well past two in the afternoon; our longest and most trying delay on the trip, and which limited our day's travel to thirty-six miles in fourteen hours' work. Half as much would have satisfied us, however, for I think it was the only time on the trip when we made serious calculations regarding the abandonment of the raft and the building of another. There were other occasions when such an event seemed probable, but in some way we had managed to escape this necessity.