A foresail was borrowed from him, with which I could make my way from the mouth of the river to St. Michael's, should any accident have happened to the "Yukon." It was too large and would have to be cut to fit, an expedient to which I did not intend to resort until we reached the mouth of the river.
ANVIK.
(Looking down both the Yukon and Anvik Rivers.)
Mr. Fredericksen's station is on the banks of both the Yukon and the Anvik, as the streams approach within about fifty or seventy-five yards of each other at this point, although their confluence occurs, as I have said, about a mile below. The illustration above is from the station looking toward the point of confluence. When the present trader first came to the station a few years previously, the two rivers were far apart at this point, but the Anvik has encroached so largely upon its left bank that Mr. Fredericksen expected another year to unite the streams at his place, if the Anvik did not actually sweep him away or force him to change his residence.
Anvik is the last station in the Indian country, and at Makágamute, thirty or forty miles below, the Eskimo begin to appear, and continue from that point to the mouth of the river.
We started again on the 23d, with a fine breeze behind us, passing Makágamute or moot (pronounced like boot, shoot), at 1:30 P.M. It was composed of eight or ten houses of a most substantial build, flanked and backed by fifteen to twenty caches, and had altogether a most prosperous appearance, impressing a stranger with the superiority of the Eskimo over their neighbors. The doors were singular little circular or rounded holes, very like exaggerated specimens of the cottage bird-houses, which some people erect for their feathered friends. Villages were much more numerous on the 23d, than upon any previous day of our voyage. Everywhere might be seen their traps and nets for catching salmon, of which fish they must capture enormous quantities, for they live upon salmon the year round.
Myriads of geese might be observed in all directions during this fine weather, preparing and mobilizing for their autumnal emigration to the south; and the air was vocal with their cries.
On the night of the 23d we had a severe frost, the heavy sedge grass near camp being literally white with it, and the cook was heard grumbling about the condition of his dishcloth, which was about as flexible as a battered milk-pan, until thawed out by means of hot water. The few mosquitoes we saw next morning were pitiable looking creatures, although I doubt very much whether any sentiment was wasted on them. However much the cold spell threatened to hasten the arrival of winter, and to send the ships at St. Michael's flying south, yet the discomfiture of the mosquitoes afforded us a good deal of consolation, and thereafter our annoyances from this source were but trifling.
Starting at 8 A.M. with a head breeze, by ten o'clock the wind had become a gale and we were scarcely making half a mile an hour, when at 2:20 P.M. we saw the steamer "Yukon," with the St. Michael's in tow, coming round a high precipitous point about three miles abaft of us, and there went up a shout of welcome from our boat that drowned even the voice of the gale, and almost simultaneously the flash of a dozen guns went up from both the "Yukon's" decks and our own. The point around which the steamer had been sighted, a conspicuous landmark, I named Petersen Point, after Captain Petersen of the "Yukon," that being the only name I gave on the river below old Fort Yukon. In about half-an-hour the steamer was alongside and we were taken in tow, and once more began cleaving the water, in defiance of the gale.