Through the Yukon Gold Diggings: A Narrative of Personal Travel

by Josiah Edward Spurr

In a Tent Beneath Spruce Trees.

To wake up on a gloriously bright morning, in a tent pitched beneath spruce trees, and to look out lazily and sleepily for a moment from the open side of the tent, across the dead camp-fire of the night before, to the river, where the light of morning rests and perhaps some early-rising native is gliding in his birch canoe; to go to the river and freshen one's self with the cold water, and yell exultingly to the gulls and hell-divers, in the very joy of living; or to wake at night, when you have rolled in your blankets in the frost-stricken dying grass without a tent, and to look up through the leaves above to the dark sky and the flashing stars, and hear far off the call of a night bird or the howl of a wolf: this is the poetry, the joy of a wild and roving existence, which cannot come too often. No one need look for such moments during mosquito time in Alaska. But the pests were over now, and men and animals who had been fighting them all summer rested and drew deep draughts of peace, and strengthened themselves for the stinging cold of the winter, likewise hard on the temper and on the vital powers.

In our downward journey we passed close by mountains whose tops were beginning to be snow-covered, and were higher than those of the Rampart Mountains, which we had crossed above the Tanana; yet they were further from the river, with level country between. Leaving these behind we came to flats similar to the great Yukon flats above the Ramparts, but not so extensive. Here the river split into many channels, enclosing low green islands. The clay banks were fifty or a hundred feet high, and as we followed the current it took us against the side which it was engaged in cutting away. We had to avoid getting too close, for one never knew when a portion, undermined by the stream, would topple over with a tremendous splash; and if such a mass should strike the boat it would bear it to the bottom of the river and bury it so deeply and easily that when the dust of the fall should clear away, the circles on the water would be as regular as usual.

The banks showed on the upper parts, deposits of black peat, twenty or thirty feet thick, and it was evident that the accumulations are going on at the surface yet. Alaska is, like other Arctic regions, densely covered with moss, which grows alike in the swamps and on the steep hillsides; and the successive generations of mosses, one rearing itself on the remains of the others, bring about in time a deposit of peat which one can find nearly everywhere, if he digs down. It is well known that such vegetable accumulations, after having been transformed into peat, may by further change become a lignite or sort of brown coal, and when much altered by the heat or pressure attending the uneasy movement of the earth's crust may even become anthracite. In many regions the crust, apparently still, is in reality constantly moving, although so slowly that we do not notice it; yet in the course of ages the most stupendous changes have been brought about. We are accustomed to picture coal as originating in tropical swamps of the carboniferous period, with enormous trees bearing leaves many feet long, and bullfrogs as big as men squatting in the background, while the air is so heavily laden with carbonic acid that it would put out a candle; but here, at the Arctic Circle, the formation of coal is evidently going on rapidly, and future generations may derive benefit from it.

Beds of vegetable matter belonging to a past age are abundant all along the Yukon, but the coal is as yet only a black shiny lignite, for it has not been altered much; and leaves found in it show that the vegetation of the period when the beds accumulated was not far different from what it is to-day, and had nothing to do with gigantic tadpoles and malaria.

One of the most interesting of the high clay bluffs which we passed lies on the left-hand side of the river, not far below the Tanana. It has been called by some early travellers the Palisades, and this name appears on the map, but the miners and traders know it by the name of the Boneyard, from the fact that there are buried in the silts near the top (which is about two hundred feet high) many bones of large animals, which come down to the river as portions of the bluff are undermined and fall. We stopped at this place, and, slumping through the mud to the foot of the bluff, we came across the tusk of a mammoth, which probably weighed over a hundred and fifty pounds. It was as thick as a man's leg at its larger end, but the whole of it was evidently not there. Further on we found a smaller tusk with the end worn off as if the animal had been using it severely for some purpose. Afterwards we saw other bones,—leg bones, fragments of the backbone, etc.,—in great abundance. Our little boat was too small to carry these gigantic relics, but we preserved a huge molar tooth from a mammoth, measuring several inches across, and we sawed off portions of one of the tusks.

The extinct hairy elephant, or mammoth, inhabited Alaska at a time previous to the memory of man, yet not very ancient, geologically speaking. Remains of these animals are also abundant in Arctic America and Siberia. It was at first supposed that the climate was tropical when they existed, since it is well known that the elephant is a native of hot countries, and the bones are almost exactly like those of the elephants of the tropics. The discovery of some of these remains in the River Lena in Siberia was one of the most interesting of modern scientific events. From some reason or the other, many mammoth had been caught in the ice of the river and had been frozen in, the ice never melting through all the thousands of years that followed. So well preserved were they at the time of their discovery that it is said they furnished food for dogs; but what amazed scientists most was to find that this elephant was covered with very long hair or fur, forming a protection against the cold such as few creatures possess. The fur and much of the skin of one of these mammoth may be seen in the museum at St. Petersburg.

We know from geologic evidence that Alaska, firm and solid land though it appears to be, is really slowly rising out of the sea, and we also know that this rising motion has been going on for a very long time. At a period which must have been many hundred years ago, the country was covered with a multitude of shallow lakes, many of them large, and some of immense size—rivalling our Great Lakes of the St. Lawrence river system. Most of these lakes are now drained and we have, as records of them, only broad flats composed of fine clays and silts which accumulated as sediments in the lake bottoms. Through this vast lake region roamed the mammoth in herds, and so far as we can tell the climate was much the same as it is now; but with the elevation of the land and the draining of the lakes the mammoth has disappeared—the reason no one is able to tell.

The Eskimos carve the mammoth tusks into ornaments, pipes, and other ivory articles. They are familiar, in fancy, with the animal, and have a special name for it, as well as for its ivory as distinguished from walrus ivory. They also have some vague legends about it, which the traveller may learn through an interpreter. At St. Michael's a Mahlemut Eskimo told me that a long time ago, when the whole country was full of lakes and darker than it is now, these animals were alive, and in the time of their fathers they were said to still exist, far in the interior, on the shores of a great lake; and that their fathers never went near this lake, hunting, for fear of this beast. It is more than likely, however, knowing what we do of the Eskimo habits and character, that this was simply fancy, which grew out of finding the tusks and the bones; or an invention, gotten up to satisfy the white man's curiosity, for the Eskimo is so willing to please that he always tells exactly what he thinks will be appreciated, whether or not it is the truth. Moreover, so far as I have been able to judge from other things, the Eskimo tradition does not run nearly so far back as it needs must to extend to the time of the mammoth.

Breaking camp one morning, just as the smoke was beginning to curl from the camp of our Siwash neighbors on the other bank of the river, we ran rapidly down stream, and by the early afternoon passed the mouth of the Koyukuk. This is a large stream of clear water contrasting sharply with the muddy roily waters of the Yukon, from which it is separated almost by a distinct line. Above the rivers at the point of junction rises a beautiful sharp cliff, probably a thousand feet high and nearly perpendicular to the top.