For more than an hour they talked of the wonderful sight, and Phil told what he could remember of the gigantic hairy mammoth discovered frozen in a Siberian glacier, and so perfectly preserved that sledge-dogs were fed for weeks on its flesh.
As they talked their fire burned low, and the outside cold creeping stealthily into camp turned their thoughts to fur-lined sleeping-bags. So they slept, and dreamed of prehistoric monsters; while Musky, Luvtuk, Amook, and their comrades restlessly sniffed and gnawed at the ancient bones of this strange encampment, and wondered at finding them so void of flavor.
Glad as our sledge travellers would have been to linger for days and fully explore the mysteries of that great moss-hidden cavern, they dared not take the necessary time. It was already two weeks since they had left the mining camp, winter was waning, and they must leave the river ere spring destroyed its icy highway. So they were off again with the first gray light of morning, and two days later found them at the mouth of the Pelly River, the upper Yukon’s largest tributary, and two hundred and fifteen miles from Forty Mile.
The last half of this distance had been traversed amid scenes of the same stupendous grandeur that attracts thousands of tourists to the Yosemite and Yellowstone. But our travellers only shuddered at its wind-swept silence and terrible loneliness. The latter was increased by the melancholy ruins of old Fort Selkirk, whose three gaunt chimneys still stand, about one mile below the mouth of the Pelly, on the opposite side of the Yukon. That evening in the snug quarters of Harper, the Pelly River trader, who was the last white man they could hope to meet before reaching the coast, they listened to the story of Fort Selkirk.
It was established in 1850 by the Hudson Bay Company, and was their remotest post. So far removed was it from the base of supplies that goods destined for it were two full years in making the journey from London by ship and across the great northern wilderness by river and portage. Previous to that time the Indian trade of the Yukon valley had been monopolized by the Chilkats, wealthiest, most enterprising, and most warlike of Alaskan natives. Securing goods from the Russians at Sitka, they would carry them to their distant villages in canoes, and transport them across the mountains to Yukon head-waters on their backs. There they would be met by the interior Indians, whom they never allowed to visit the coast.
The Chilkats were shrewd enough to reap enormous profits from this trade, and to fully appreciate its value. As soon, therefore, as they learned of the establishment of Fort Selkirk, and realized that it meant the overthrow of their lucrative business, they resorted to the only method of trade competition of which they had any knowledge. They organized a war party, crossed the mountains, descended the Yukon nearly five hundred miles, and wiped Fort Selkirk out of existence, seizing its goods in payment for their trouble.
From the Pelly River trader our travellers gained much valuable information concerning the routes they might pursue and the difficulties they had yet to encounter. They had indeed heard vaguely of the great cañon of the Yukon, through which the mad waters are poured with such fury that they can never freeze, of the rocky Five Fingers that obstruct its channel, the Rink and White Horse rapids, and the turbulent open streams connecting its upper chain of lakes; but until this time they had given these dangers little thought. Now they became real, while some of them, according to the trader, were impassable save by weary détours through dense forests and deep snows that they feared would delay them beyond the time of the river’s breaking up.
“What, then, can we do?” asked Phil.
“I’ll tell you,” replied the trader. “Leave the Yukon at this point, go about fifty miles up the Pelly, and turn to your right into the Fox. Ascend this to its head, cross Fox Lake, Indian Trail Lake, Lost Lake, and three other small lakes. Then go down a creek that empties into the Little Salmon, and a few miles down that river to the Yukon. In this way you will have avoided the Five Fingers and the Rink Rapids, and found good ice all the way. After that keep on up the main river till you pass Lake Le Barge. There again leave the Yukon, this time for good, by the first stream that flows in on your right. It is the Tahkeena, and will lead you to the Chilkat Pass, which is somewhat longer, but no worse than the Chilkoot. Thus you will avoid most of the rough ice, the great cañon, and all the rapids.”
“But we shall surely get lost,” objected Phil.