USA > Alaska > Alaska, its neglected past, its brilliant future > Part 12
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While it is open to navigation the ships have a clear course of 2,300 miles: but business is all hurried at breathless speed in order to get as much as possible attended to before the frost settles down to its winter work. The Yukon and its tributaries abound in fish, salmon being exceptionally fine. The first point at which the vessel touches on the upper part of the river is Fort Yukon, an old station which was established by Robert Bell, who, mistaking its locality for Canadian ground, established a trading post for the Hudson Bay Company. In point of fact, it was never a fort at all, but so named as are several other trading stations in the North. It is in the lati- tude of this place that one sees almost perpetual day-
PLACER MINING.
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light during the first summer months. The light of one day dissolves into the effulgence of the next with no darkness, except a luminous twilight between, in which only the great planets can be distinguished. The next stop is Circle City, a considerable town of about 2,000 inhabitants, when they are at home, but subject to variation of population. Many fine placer mines surround this really important city, but the rage for the Klondyke gold fields has, for the time, almost depopulated the comfortable log houses of which the town is built. Next comes Fort Cudahy, across the boundary line, at the mouth of Forty Mile Creek, a town already important as a centre of supplies for the miners in the whole section of country, included in the Forty Mile district, which has turned out a great quantity of gold. At Fort Cudahy the steamer takes on passengers and freight for the return trip, the way up the Yukon to Klondyke, Frazer, Pelly and other rivers being made in small crafts, native canoes, etc. The loneliness of the miners has been slightly relieved by the establishment of a post-office at Circle City, to which point letters are taken from Juneau every two weeks and return mail matter is delivered in the same length of time, by experienced carriers, who are now recognized by the Government and re- ceive about $500 for the round trip. For safety, ease and comfort this Yukon River route is undoubtedly the best, except when the shortness of the season is considered.
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Small places and landings are found all along the river. After going about two or three hundred miles through a low, flat country the mountains are reached. Here you have a constant change of magnificent coun- try, far beyond description. Thus the boat proceeds to Ft. Yukon, where during the months of June and July the sun shines for twenty-four hours without a break, in fact, all along the river during these months, it is continuous daylight and you can read easily at night without a lamp. Then comes Fort Reliance and a little farther on is Dawson City, at the mouth of the Klondyke River. But this river is sixty-five miles this side of the Klondyke placer mines, which lay away over the hills. Some distance farther up beyond the sup- posed rich gold fields of the Stewart River is Fort Selkirk.
The Stewart and the old Rein-deer Rivers, the latter now called the Klondyke, extend eastward to their heads and are located entirely within British Co- lumbia.
Beginning at the Yukon's mouth the following places are passed on the way up, and, for convenience of reference, I have noted them from the north or south side of the Yukon. First on the north side comes Andreafski, then the Holy Cross Mission, the city of Anvik and a river of the same name, Hamil- ton's Landing, Naplatoo; the Kuyukuk River comes in at the northward bending of the Yukon, then comes
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the Melozikakat River; a little farther on past the Gold Mountains come the towns of Nowikakat and Weare. Here the Nowikakat River flows in. Shamans Village is still farther up on a small stream called the Outt River, then comes Fort Hamlin and Fort Yukon on the Porcupine River, which flows in at another angle of the Yukon and extends into British Columbia away off toward the Mackenzie River that empties into the Arctic Ocean. A little farther on flows in the Big Black River and several other small rivers; then come the townsites of Forty Mile and Sixty Mile, the Chan- dindu River, Fort Reliance and Dawson at the con- fluence of the Klondyke and Yukon Rivers and just below these is the town of Ogilvie; next comes the Stewart River. A short distance above this the Lewis and Pelly Rivers join and form the Yukon. The Pelly River with its branches, McMillan, Orchay and Ross Rivers run northeast, but at present the Lewis River and its tributaries are the most important, as they run through the gold regions. Its branches are Little Sal- mon, Big Salmon, Teslin or Hootalinqua, Little and Mendenhall Rivers.
On the south side the Kashunuk River flows in an easterly direction; then the Yukon turns northward and here we have the towns of Koserefski and Shage- luk; then come the Innoko, Kaiyah, Soonkakat and Nowikakat Rivers. From the same direction, right at the Arctic Circle, come the Tanana River and Beaver
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Creek, and a little farther up Birch Creek. Here the river makes another bend and quite a distance south we have Circle City, which lies to the west of the dis- puted boundary line. Then come the North Fork, Birch Creek and Forty Mile Creek, the latter with its numerous gulches and creeks, empties into the Yukon at Fort Cudahy, said to be in Canadian Territory. A little farther down comes the Sixty Mile Creek with its tributaries, Gold, Glacier, Miller and Red Rock Creeks, and the White River with its tributaries, Kat- rina, Nisling, Kluantu Rivers, and others following in between the mountains; then we have the Selwyn River a short distance from the confluence of the Lewis and Pelly Rivers.
THE NORTH CANADIAN ROUTE.
The next easiest, but not yet much used, as those who have had experience assert, is the North Canadian route, an old, well-worn established roadway to the Por- cupine River, and then to the Yukon ; but a land jour- ney between the first two rivers is required, and also from Edmonton to Athabasca Landing. It is in reality the old Hudson Bay Company's line of march into the districts through which their trading posts were dis- tributed. It starts from the town of Calgary, on the Canadian Pacific. Ninety miles of railroad lands the traveler at Edmonton, a town of some importance in that neighborhood. From this the trip is made over
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a good road about nine miles long which leads to Athabasca Landing, named for the Athabasca River, where the Hudson Bay Company's Steamer, engages to take passengers and freight to Grand Rapids, a dis- tance of over one hundred and sixty miles.
At Grand Rapids there is a change made to a larger steamer, which stops at a fort belonging to the Hud- son Bay Company, called Fort Chipewgue. From that point it runs to the head of a great rapid in Slave River, passing over the Jake River on the way. Instead of shooting these rapids the company transfers goods and people to a horse-car railway about six- teen miles in length, ending at Fort Smith, at which place another large steamer takes up the cargo, human and otherwise, and bears it through an unin- terrupted water course of fifteen hundred miles to its mouth, stopping at the larger forts on the way, such as Forts Resolution, Providence, Simpson, Wrigley, Norman and Good Hope, the Hudson Bay Company's posts of a half a century ago. Near Fort Pherson, at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, comes in the Pearl River. It is navigable for small boats nearly all the way. From this point a few miles further on is the Porcupine River, down which all goods can be safely transported to Fort Yukon. With the excep- tion of the one point, the rapids above mentioned, this route is by water, and having been in use for two- thirds of a century, stands to reason that it must be
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as safe and sure as any other. The windings of the rivers make the distance greater, but the cost is less and the route very advantageous for comfort and safety, though it is also limited to the open season, beginning as soon as the ice melts in the spring and ceasing when winter ap- pears. One great advantage is the forts on the way, whose established stores would prevent the terrible danger of starvation to belated prospectors. The route being entirely Canadian may not become as popular to Americans as their own, notwithstanding its superior accommodations. The miners reside mostly in the western part of the country, so that the Alaskan routes are the most accessible. The Yukon Route ex- tends over at least thirty days from Chicago, embrac- ing four days from that city to Seattle, sixteen from the latter city to St. Michaels, and thence ten to Dawson City, making a distance of six thousand miles, at a cost for fare alone of about $280 at the least calculation. The very minimum of cash required for the trip and outfit would be $600.00. For the Canadian Route, distance and price have not yet been made public, nor will it likely be known until the proposed trip to be made by a Philadelphia party has been accomplished and the difficulties and expenses calculated.
The Overland Routes are all by way of Juneau, Dyea, Fort Wrangel, Skaguay, Chilkat Inlet, or Taku Inlet. A new one is projected by the Stikine River.
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Juneau, is the most important city of Alaska to- day, and its extent and enterprise is bound to ad- vance surprisingly, whether the new gold fields prove extremely rich or not. The city can be reached by elegant steamers from Tacoma, Seattle, Port Town- send, Victoria, or Vancouver City, taking about four days and covering nearly nine hundred miles. By either inland way the trip to the Yukon must be made by boat to Dyea, a small port about ninety-six miles from Juneau, and one-half that distance if it were pos- sible to reach it by direct line.
Landing at Dyea or Skaguay, a few miles from there, the route for reaching the Yukon River commences. There being no stage road, rail nor even turnpike, the only thing to be done is to carry goods, provisions and tools over the mountain trail to the Lake Linderman Valley.
OVER THE CHILKOOT PASS.
This is the oldest and shortest in actual geograph- ical measurement, but its altitude, in crossing the Chil- koot Mountains being at least one thousand feet greater than the White Mountain pass, makes its pas- sage extremely arduous. It begins at the Dyea Inlet, the station of Dyea or Taiya being the supply point, and follows the river of the same name until it reaches Chilkoot Canyon, about six miles from the inlet. It crosses the timber line at Sheep Camp, and for seven miles to this point it continues through a desolate
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stretch of mountain land, with neither tree nor mark of civilization in sight. Across this pass all goods must be carried in packs, for which native packers have been employed, at least for the heaviest articles, for which they will charge all the way from twenty or thirty cents to thirty-five or even fifty cents per pound. The trail covers twenty-four miles. Combine with this, blinding snow, blustering winds and small gla- ciers, up which to climb and down which to slip and slide, and you have a picture of the hard- ships of a would-be miner with a pack of from fifty to one hundred pounds weight fastened upon his shoulders. If he be so unfortunate as to have refused to pay the pack carriers, he must take from six to eight trips, to the top or across the pass if he wishes to take the eight hundred pounds conceded to be necessary for a proper outfit. Canoes can be used about six miles up the Dyea River, then the trail, steep and precipitous, leads up the canyon to the summit, three thousand five hundred feet above tide water. From this summit to a descent of five hun- dred feet and then to the shore of Crater Lake, thirty miles distant, he can sled his goods. The ice cap is steep at the top for half a mile, and then the mountain tapers off gradually to the valley. The water has cut a small canyon down the mountain side, which should be followed to Lake Linderman. Here there is a saw mill, where he can procure a boat for $75.00. If he thinks
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that is too much, he can purchase the lumber at the rate of $50.00 for five hundred feet, which is about sufficient for the building of a suitable small transport craft. Counting the time and labor, there are few that will grudge the additional $25.00 for a stormworthy boat. A short portage of three-fourths of a mile (the fall being about twenty feet), leads to Lake Bennett. The stream connecting the two lakes is crooked and rocky, making it unsafe for a boat. Lake Linderman is about six miles long, and opens up from May fifteenth to June tenth. After reaching Lake Bennett, which is some twenty-six miles long, and on whose shores good boat timber may be found, the journey may be continued by raft or by ascending a small river, which enters the head of the lake from the west, a distance of one mile. The only timber used in the construction of boats is spruce or Norway pine. Caribou Crossing leads to Tagish Lake. Navigation on these two lakes is some- times interrupted by the high winds. A wide, slug- gish river leads to Lake Marsh, which is twenty miles long. The river from here to the next canyon has about a three-mile current, and quantities of salmon are found. The gorge proper is five-eighths of a mile in length, but the distance to portage is about a mile, and that run by boat is three-fourths of a mile. The average width of this outlet is one hundred feet, and the water is very deep, but there is little danger in
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passing through it, if the helmsman does not lose his presence of mind. The water in the centre is four feet higher than at the sides, and if the boat is kept under control, it will remain on this crest, and avoid striking the walls. The boat should be strong and the cargo well protected from the water. It takes two minutes and twenty seconds to pass through this rapid. Two miles below, White Horse Rapids are reached, the shooting of which is dangerous and often disastrous, owing to the swirl of waters at the lower part. It is practically impossible to safely pass these, and portage must be resorted to. This part of the river can never be made navigable for steamers, but a tramway could easily be built and operated by the power from the falls. About fifteen miles from here the Tahkeena and Lewis Rivers join. This is the inland waterway used in connection with the Chil- kat pass, which is long and less used by miners or Indians. The Tahkeena is easily navigated, a steamer could ascend it perhaps seventy miles. Lake Le- barge, twelve miles below, is thirty-one miles long, and is often very rough. After leaving it the current of the river increases to five or six miles an hour. The course is very crooked and the bed is filled with bould- ers, which make it dangerous for river steamers, es- pecially on the down trip. The Hootalinqua, Big Salmon and Little Salmon Rivers enter the Lewis within the next hundred miles, the first
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two showing signs of gold. Fifty-three miles be- low the Little Salmon is the Five Fingers Rapids, which can be run with a good boat with comparative ease. Four buttes are here seen and the river divides into five water ways. The right hand is the only safe one, and the boatman must keep the centre of the rapids in passing through. Rink Rapids are six miles below Five Fingers, and the east shore should be followed closely. Old Fort Selkirk, once an im- portant trading post, is fifty-five miles from Five Fin- gers, and just below the confluence of the Pelly and Lewis Rivers. Here the Yukon begins and broadens to a mile in width. Ninety-six miles below, the White River, a large stream, extremely muddy, enters from the west. It probably flows over volcanic deposits. Eighty miles farther on is the mouth of Sixty Mile Creek, where there is a trading post and sawmill, and where a number of miners annually winter. Indian Creek enters the Yukon thirty miles be- low, and twenty miles from Indian Creek, at the mouth of the Klondyke, is Dawson City. Farther on, about twenty miles, is the mouth of Forty Mile Creek. There is a trading post at its outlet. Circle City is 140 miles from Forty Mile Post and Dawson City is 676 miles from Juneau.
THE CHILCAT ROUTE.
This pass is the old Indian road or trail. It be- gins at Chilkat Inlet and passes over a mountainous
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way one hundred and twenty-five miles long to its opening upon the shore of the Tahkeena River, down which you proceed by raft or boat to the Lewis River, and thence to the Yukon. The objection to this route is the long march from river to river, the difficulty of getting pack carriers to go so far and the enormous cost if they do, although it has been said that it has less laborious climbing than either of the other highways, but recently returned miners say many obstructions and streams are met with.
THE WHITE PASS OR SKAGUAY ROUTE
has more recently been considered one of the most im- portant ways by which to reach the Yukon, when re- deemed from its almost impassable condition, there be- ing no good trail. The miners have turned in, in a body, and constructed a road over the pass, so that hundreds of horses, already there, can be hired for transport, but it is as yet closed. The greatest altitude in White Pass is about twenty-six hundred feet, while it has not the perilous grade of either the Chilkoot or Chilcat. The distance across this pass could be made in about thirty-five hours, while from it three distinct waterways lead to the Yukon, by way of Lake Bennett, Windy Arın of the Tagish, or the Tuchi Lake. They are all within twenty miles of the crest of the Pass, and the descent is not dangerously abrupt. Through any of . these waters a way could be safely made to the great
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river. An advantage to be considered in this route is the protection afforded in the canyon by the moun- tains on either side. Then, too, there are timber lands nearly all along the route. It was said that if a road was made through the Skaguay Pass that mails might be carried all through the year, and this seems now nearly accomplished. It has been the wagon road, which, with the present improvements completed, will make it possible to reach Victoria, on Vancouver Is- land, or Seattle and Tacoma, in fourteen or fifteen days; a most desirable arrangement to all concerned.
LAKE TESLIN ROUTE
will some day become as popular as any road to the gold regions. It starts at Fort Wrangel, through Telegraph Creek. There is one hundred miles of clear boating in the creek, after which the trail traverses one hundred and seventy miles over a smooth prairie land, until it reaches Lake Teslin. Through this lake you enter Hatalinqua or Hootalinqua River, which empties into the Lewis River, and thence to the Yukon. The greatest obstacle to be encountered by any route that leads through the Lewis River is the Five Fingers Rapids, in which care is required that nothing may be lost in shooting them, which is the only thing to be done, if you do not wish to make a laborious journey around them. This would embrace hauling cargo and boat for a considerable distance.
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Still another proposed route, and one destined to be quite favored by the people from British Columbia, is
THE TAKU ROUTE,
which leads through Canadian Territory and over more level country than the others from Alaska. It has been proposed, but not yet adopted.
The route pursued by Lieut. Frederick Schwatka, in the expedition of 1883, was the same as that fol- lowed by travelers now going over the Chilkoot Pass. In all paths it must be remembered that there are dangers entirely beyond the ken of men and women who live in the East. Cold, hunger and illness are almost certain companions, while the vast extent of territory covered, embraces climates diverse and dan- gerous to persons nurtured in city homes or in Eastern mild regions.
A Schwatka exploring party of seven started from Portland, Oregon, in May, 1883, going by the inland passage to Chilkoot Inlet, or the present route by way of Dyea. After crossing the glacier-clad mountains and reaching the lakes or head waters, they constructed a raft and on it passed down to the Lewis River, then down the Yukon all the way to its mouth, in Bering Sea, returning by the Aleutian Islands.
A CANOE ROUTE FROM DEASE LAKE.
From Edmonton you can go north on the Peace River, through 400 miles of unknown territory to
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Liard, then through Dease Lake to the Pelly River, which joins the Lewis River near Fort Selkirk and forms the Yukon. It is 700 miles above Dawson City, and about 100 miles above the Stewart River.
This will very likely become the cattle trail of the future, although it will be impossible to make the drive through in one season. A stop will have to be made about half way, and the cattle wintered; fortunately there is plenty of food to be found en route.
Surveys for American and Canadian railroads are in contemplation and will soon be completed no doubt to the Yukon. Several other new routes are under con- sideration likewise.
CHAPTER XXXII.
INTERNATIONAL LAW AS AFFECTING ALASKA.
T HE decision of the learned tribunal, who were called upon to settle the question of the United States' right to Bering Sea, has passed into a position as one against which there can be no appeal. Therefore all that can be done is to take it in its rela- tion to all bodies of water of the same description. The question being legally decided by an international com- mission, it naturally follows that the decison must bear the same weight in other countries as in this, and all such bodies of water are forever open to every nation with out reserve, provided the three mile limit is rigidly respected.
That the honorable Commissioners held no other points, under advisement than the Republic's right, so far as controlling the seal fisheries in the Sea, must be understood, because had they considered the breadth over which their conclusion would reach they would possibly have made different provision respecting the possession of those animals. In reading the article upon this subject written by Russell Duane, Esq., and published in the "American Law Register and Re- view," I find the position, I originally took regarding the matter, most ably and consistently upborne. He says, "It is, perhaps, not too much to say that no
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INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR ALASKA. 225
court of greater dignity has ever sat to administer justice at any period in the history of the world. Hence when such a tribunal decides a legal question, or enumerates a proposition of international law, rules and principles so laid down must be regarded thence- forth as altogether removed from the sphere of con- troversy."
When England so forced the matter as to practi- cally compel the United States to submit to arbitra- tion, neither she, nor the other nations involved in the controversy, seem to have noted that their own pre- rogatives were also being weighed and that the same justice that opened Bering Sea to the world, also un- locked the British Channel, the North Sea, the Bay of Biscay, the Bay of Fundy and all other such branches of the great oceans. For no more are those waters inclosed than are the waters of Bering Sea, with the Aleutian Chain of Islands holding it in between Rus- sia and America.
No one can suppose that the seals, whose fur is valuable only so long as it holds the lead as a fashion- able article of commerce, could have been the true and only cause for such a grandly organized discussion!
If so, of what value would the law become, when fashion changed in her usual fickle manner ?
The seals so released from persecution might multi- ply until their numbers became a nuisance, while some other animal, or production would possibly come to
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demand equal importance as a commercial object.
Here, too, I am supported by Mr. Duane, the de- cision, though legally against the United States as to possession of the Sea, acts entirely in her favor, as to the scals, giving her the right over them so long as the fur is financially valuable, for when the close season opens and the animals claimed to become pub- lic property, they are in such condition as to render them comparatively valueless.
Great Britain knew this, and questionably used the seal arbitration as a key by which the right to Ber- ing Sea should be open to the nations of the world in general, and herself in particular.
The right has been gained beyond doubt-now it must one day act in reflex fashion, and the powers be either compelled to accept [the prescribed limit in the cases of all other except truly inland seas, or else a counter-arbitration must be convened and the rights to such waters be re-established. In which event Russia and the United States would again be the legal- ized owners of Bering Sea and its contents. It is true that all such water-ways as Bering Sea, the North Sea, etc., were once considered State property, as we again quote from Mr. Duane's article-"Proprietory rights over these seas were not only asserted by the different nations, but they were conceded in practice, and in many instances they were sanctioned by treaties." The Bering Sea arbitration has adjudicated the matter
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