This continuous drifting against a head wind taught us one singular thing, however, viz.: that our boat would drift faster against this wind when turned broadside to it and exposing the greatest surface to its action, than when facing it bow or stern on and with a minimum of exposed surface; this fact being the very reverse of what we had supposed, indeed, we had endeavored to avoid this very position. Thereafter we kept the "barka" broadside to the head wind, a very difficult undertaking, which required hard and constant work at the steering oar; but the mile or mile and a-half an hour gained over the vessel's drift was well worth it. I spoke of this afterward to the river men and found they had long since anticipated me by a much easier contrivance, viz.: by tying an anchor or a large camp-kettle full of stones and suspending it from the end of the jib-boom so that it would trail in the water. This method, a number of them assured me, would have saved our work at the steering oar which we rigged at the stern.
The 18th and 19th we fought our way down the river, inch by inch, against the wind. The latter night the storm culminated in a perfect hurricane, felling trees in the forest, hurling brush through the air, and raising waves four and five feet high, from whose crests flew great white masses of foam, the wide river resembling a sheet of boiling milk in the darkness. Although we were in a well-sheltered cove, which had remained calm the evening before, even in the high wind, yet this gale sent in such huge waves that our "barka" was on the point of being wrecked, and was only saved by the severest labor of the crew. The little birch-bark canoe was swept from her deck and thrown high up on the beach, where it resembled a mass of brown wrapping paper which the storm had beaten down upon the stones. The gale slowly died down on the 20th, but ceased too late to give us a chance to start, and we remained over night, a heavy fog and rain terminating the day.
On the 21st we saw a couple of oomiens, (bidarra—Russian) or large skin-boats being hauled up stream by native dogs on the bank, somewhat after the fashion of canal-horses on a tow-path. We had baffling winds most of the day, some few of which we could take advantage of, but at 6 P.M. the wind had settled down to its regular "dead-ahead" gale.
We camped at half-past nine o'clock at Hall's Rapids, (named by Raymond), but found them at the time of our visit to consist only of some rough water along the rocky beach, while the high land mapped by him on the south-eastern bank was wanting. As I said before, the high land on the right bank with low country upon the left is a state of things which continues until the delta is reached, when the whole country becomes level.
About six or seven o'clock in the afternoon we were passing the upper ends or entrances, seven of them altogether, of the Shagelook slough, which here makes a great bend to the eastward and incloses an area larger than some of the New England states before it again meets the Yukon River far beyond. This Shagelook slough receives the Innoka River in its upper portion and when the Yukon is the higher of the two it carries part of its waters into the upper entrances of the slough receiving the waters of the Innoka, and both streams emptying themselves at the slough's lower end. When the Innoka is the higher its waters find an outlet into the Yukon by the upper mouths. We now began to feel anxious about the "Yukon," as she was very much overdue. From this point she could make St. Michael's in three or four days, and although we had received official assurances from Washington that the revenue cutter "Corwin" would not leave St. Michael's before the 15th of September, yet there was fear that the boat might pass us or the "Corwin" find some official emergency to call her elsewhere before this date.
The night of the 21st-22d, was a bitterly cold one, verging on freezing, and we slept soundly after our loss of sleep the night before. We started quite early, however, and a little meteorological surprise in the shape of a favorable wind came to our aid after 10 A. M., and at 1:30 P.M. we landed at the mouth of the Anvic or Anvik. The picturesquely-situated trading station is about a mile or a mile and a-quarter above this point, but the shoals were so numerous, the channel so winding, that this was the nearest point we could make, especially with a foul wind. Right alongside of us was a large Indian village, where we learned to our satisfaction that the "Yukon" had not yet passed; for one of the party at our last camp had interpreted some Indian information to mean that the boat had passed down two days before.
From this place I sent a courier to St. Michael's, who was to ascend the Anvik River to the head of canoe navigation, and thence to make a short portage to a stream emptying near the post, the entire distance being readily covered in three days, or in two if sufficient energy is displayed. He promised to be there without fail in three days, i.e., by the 25th, and I paid him a little extra for the extra exertion. He arrived about a week after I did and we were ten days in reaching St. Michael's from this point. My object was to let the "Corwin" know that my party was coming. The "Leo," an Alaskan trading schooner, was also expected to touch at St. Michael's to exchange some signal officers, and I sent word to her, requesting her to wait for us if the "Corwin" had gone. Mr. Fredericksen was the trader, and a very intelligent person for such a lonely and outlandish spot. He had been furnished with meteorological instruments by the Signal Service, to which he made regular reports. He informed me that he has seen ice of such depth by the 4th of September as to cut the thick covering of a bidarra or oomien; but this, of course, is very unusual. The year before our arrival—1882—the ice did not form until the 12th of October, and the first of that month may be regarded as the average date of its formation.
Mr. Fredericksen warmly welcomed my arrival at his station, having recently had some serious trouble with the Indians, who were not even yet quieted. A number of Shagelooks, as he termed them, had come down the river, a short time before, to meet the Greek priest from the mission at Ikogmute, who had come to Anvik in order to baptize them. While the Shagelooks were waiting for the priest, they arranged a plot to rob the trader. Some one or two of them were to provoke him in some exasperating way, and if he showed any resistance or even annoyance, the others were to side with their fellows, seize the trader and secure him until his store was plundered and the booty removed, when he was to be liberated, or murdered if aggressive. In some way the Anviks got an inkling of the plot, and prepared to side with Mr. Fredericksen, and when the preliminaries commenced with the cutting open of one of the trader's finest skin-boats—bidarra—the Shagelooks saw themselves confronted by such an array of well-armed Anvik Indians, that they were perfectly satisfied to let the business drop. The christening was carried out according to programme, but the baffled Shagelooks vowed vengeance on both the Anviks and the trader whenever an opportunity might occur, and they were not reticent in so informing him at their departure, hinting that their turn might come when the Anviks left to hunt reindeer for their winter supply of clothing. That season would soon be at hand, and the Anviks had the alternative of losing their autumn hunting or of leaving the station in a weakened condition at their departure. The arrival of a body of troops, small in number as we were, was a cause of congratulation, and Mr. Fredericksen intended to make the most out of it with discontented natives by way of strengthening his position.
We could do absolutely nothing for him. When the president withdrew the military forces from Alaska, the executive order had "clinched" the act by providing that the military should exercise no further control whatever in that vast territory, and my orders had emphatically repeated the clause. In fact, it was a debatable point whether my expedition was not strictly an illegal one, and in direct violation of the president's order, since it was simply impossible to send in a military party that might not exercise control over its own members, which is all that soldiers ever do without an order from the president, and as to an attack by Indians we had the universal right of self-preservation. I told Mr. Fredericksen, however, to make the most out of my visit, which I suppose he did.