Through the Yukon Gold Diggings: A Narrative of Personal Travel

by Josiah Edward Spurr

During the whole trip the country through which we passed was singularly lonely and uninhabited. After leaving the few huts on Tagish Lake, which I have mentioned, we saw a few Indians in a summer camp on Lake Labarge; and this was all until we got to the junction of the Lewes and Pelly Rivers, over three hundred miles from Tagish Lake. At Pelly we found a log trading-post, with a single white man in charge, and a few Indians. There were also three miners, who had met with misfortune, and were disconsolate enough. They had started up Pelly River with a two years' outfit, intending to remain and prospect for that period, but at some rapid water their boat had been swamped and all their provisions lost. They had managed to burn off logs enough to build a raft, and in that way had floated down the river to the post, living in the meantime on some flour which they had been lucky enough to pick up after the wreck.

Although there are very few people in the country, one is continually surprised at first by perceiving solitary white tents standing on some prominent point or cliff which overlooks the river. At first this looks very cheerful, and we sent many a hearty hail across the river to such places; but our calls were never answered, for these are not the habitations of the living but of the dead. Inside of each of these tents, which are ordinarily made of white cloth, though sometimes of woven matting, is a dead Indian, and near him is laid his rifle, snowshoes, ornaments and other personal effects. I do not think the custom of leaving these articles at the grave implies any belief that they will be used by the dead man in another world, but simply signifies that he will have no more use for the things which were so dear to him in life—just as among ourselves, articles which have been used by dear friends are henceforth laid aside and no longer used. These dwellings of the dead are always put in prominent positions, commanding as broad and fair a view as can be obtained. At Pelly we saw several Indian graves that were surrounded by hewn palings, rudely and fantastically painted.

When we reached the White River we found it nearly as broad as the Yukon. The waters of the two rivers are separated by a distinct line at their confluence and for some distance further down, the Yukon water being dark and the other milky, whence the name—White River. All over this country is a thin deposit of white dust-like volcanic ash, covering the surface, but on White River this ash is very thick, and the river flowing through it carries away enough to give the waters continually a milky appearance. As we approached White River we beheld what seemed a most extraordinary cloud hanging over its valley. It was a solid compact mass of white, like some great ice-flower rising from the hills, reminding one as one explored it through field-glasses, in its snowy vastness and unevenness, of some great glacier. The clouds were in rounded bunches and each bunch was crenulated. Below was a mass of smoke with a ruddy reflection as if from some great fire, and smaller snowy compact clouds came up at intervals, as if gulped out from some crater. This we thought might be the fabled volcano of the White River, but on getting nearer it seemed to be probably a forest-fire. Although there are no railway trains to set fires with their sparks, nowhere do fires start more easily than in Alaska, for the ground is generally covered deep with a peat-like dry moss, which ignites when one lights a fire above and smoulders so persistently that it can hardly be extinguished, creeping along under the roots of the living moss and breaking out into flame on opportunity.

The Fourth of July was celebrated by shooting at a mark; and that night we had a true blessing, for we camped on a little bare sandspit on an island, where the wind was brisk and kept the mosquitoes away. These insects cannot stand against a breeze, but are whisked away by it like the imps of darkness at the first breath of God's morning light, as we have read in fairy stories. The freedom was delicious, so we just stretched ourselves in the sand, and slept ten hours. We were awakened by a violent plunge in the water and stuck our heads out of the blankets in a hurry, thinking it was a moose; but it turned out to be only one of our party celebrating the day after the Fourth by a bath.

At Sixty Mile we found an Indian trading-post, located on an island in the river, and kept by Jo La Du, a lonely trader who a year afterwards became rich and famous from his participation in the Klondike rush. He had no idea of this when we saw him, but shook hands with us shyly and silently, a man whom years had made more accustomed to the Indian than to the white man.

The name Sixty Mile is applied to a small river here, which is sixty miles from old Fort Reliance, an ancient trading post belonging to the Hudson Bay Company. The hardy and intrepid agents of the company were the first white men to explore the interior of Alaska. The lower Yukon in the vicinity of the delta was explored by the Russians in 1835 to 1838, and the river was called by the Eskimo name of Kwikpuk or Kwikpak,—the great river: in 1842-3 the Russian Lieutenant Zagoskin explored as far as the Nowikakat. But the upper Yukon was first explored by members of the Hudson Bay Company. In 1846 a trader named Bell crossed from the Mackenzie to the Porcupine, and so down to the Yukon, to which he first applied the name by which it is now known: it is an Indian, not Eskimo, word. Previous to this, in 1840, Robert Campbell, of the Hudson Bay Company, crossed from the Stikeen to the Pelly and so down to its junction with the Lewes or upper Yukon. At the point of the junction Campbell built Fort Selkirk, which was afterwards pillaged and burned by the Indians, and remained deserted till Harper built the present post, close to the site of the old one. Forty miles below old Fort Reliance is Forty Mile Creek, so that the mouths of Forty Mile and Sixty Mile are a hundred miles apart. The river by this time is a mile wide in places, and filled with low wooded islands: its water is muddy and the eddying currents give the appearance of boiling.

We found no one on the site of old Fort Reliance, and we used the fragments of the old buildings lying around in the grass for fire-wood. It was practically broad daylight all night, for although the sun went down behind the hills for an hour or two, yet it was never darker than a cloudy day.

The day of leaving Fort Reliance we came to the junction of the Klondike or Thronduc River with the Yukon, and found here a village of probably two hundred Indians, but no white men. The Indians were living in log cabins: on the shore numbers of narrow and shallow birch canoes were drawn up, very graceful and delicate in shape, and marvellously light, weighing only about thirty pounds, but very difficult for any one but an Indian to manœuvre. Yet the natives spear salmon from these boats. At the time we were there most of the male Indians were stationed along the river, eagerly watching for the first salmon to leap out of the water, for about this time of the year the immigration of these fish begins, and they swim up the rivers from the sea thousands of miles, to place their spawn in some quiet creek. On account of the large number of salmon who turn aside to enter the stream here, the Indians called it Thronduc or fish-water; this is now corrupted by the miners into Klondike, the Indian village is replaced by the frontier city of Dawson, and the fame of the Klondike is throughout the world.