Alaska Part 56

The Lewes River gradually narrows from a width of three or four hundred yards to one of about fifty yards at the mouth of the Grand Canyon, which it enters in a great bore.

The walls of the canyon are perpendicular columns and palisades of basalt. They rise without bend to a height of from one to two hundred feet, and then, set thickly with dark and gloomy spruce trees, slope gradually into mountains of considerable height. The canyon is five-eighths of a mile long, and in that interval the water drops thirty feet. Halfway through, it widens abruptly into a round water chamber, or basin, where the waters boil and seethe in dangerous whirlpools and eddies. Then it again narrows, and the waters rush wildly and tumultuously through walls of dark stone, veined with gray and lavender.

The current runs fifteen miles an hour, and rafts "shooting" the rapids are hurled violently from side to side, pushed on end, spun round in whirlpools, buried for seconds in boiling foam, and at last are shot through the final narrow avenue like spears from a catapult--only to plunge madly on to the more dangerous White Horse Rapids.

The waves dash to a height of four or five feet and break into vast sheets of spray and foam. Their roar, flung back by the stone walls, may be heard for a long distance; and that of the rapids drifts over the streets of White Horse like distant, continuous thunder, when all else is still.

We found a difficult way by which, with the a.s.sistance of alpenstocks and overhanging tree branches, we could slide down to the very water, just above Whirlpool Basin. We stood there long, thinking of the tragedies that had been enacted in that short and lonely stretch; of the lost outfits, the worn and wounded bodies, the spirits sore; of the hearts that had gone through, beating high and strong with hope, and that had returned broken. It is almost as poignantly interesting as the old trail; and not for two generations, at least, will the perils of those days be forgotten.

It was about noon that, remembering our long walk, we turned reluctantly and set out for White Horse.

Somewhere back of the basin we lost our way. We could not find the "tram"; searching for it, we got into a swamp and could not make our way back to the river; and suddenly the mosquitoes were upon us.

The underbrush was so thick that our netting was torn into shreds and left in festoons and tatters upon every bush; yet I still bear in my memory the vision of my friend floating like a tall, blond bride--for my dark-haired Scotch friend was not with me on the Yukon voyage--through the shadows of that swamp before her bridal veil went to pieces.

Her bridal glory was grief. In a few moments we were both as black as negroes with mosquitoes; for, desperately though we fought, we could not drive them away. The air in the swamp was heavy and still; our progress was unspeakably difficult--through mire and tall, lush gra.s.ses which, in any other country on earth, would have been alive with snakes and crawling things.

The pests bit and stung our faces, necks, shoulders, and arms; they even swarmed about our ankles; while, for our hands--they were soon swollen to twice their original size.

We wept; we prayed; we said evil things in the hearing of heaven; we asked G.o.d to forgive us our sins, or, at the very least, to punish us for them in some other way; but I, at least, in the heaviest of my afflictions, did not forget to thank Him because there are no snakes in Alaska or the Yukon. It seemed to me, even, in the fervor of my grat.i.tude, that it had all been planned aeons ago for our special benefit in this extreme hour.

But I shall spare the reader a further description of our sufferings.

I had always considered the Alaskan mosquito a joke. I did not know that they torture men and beasts to a terrible death. They mount in a black mist from the gra.s.s; it is impossible for one to keep one's eyes open.

Dogs, bears, and strong men have been known to die of pain and nervous exhaustion under their attacks.

After an hour of torture we forced our way through the network of underbrush back to the river, and soon found a narrow path. There was a slight breeze, and the mosquitoes were not so aggressive. There was still a three-mile walk, along the sh.o.r.e bordering the rapids, before we could rest; and during the last mile each step caused such agony that we almost crawled.

When we removed our shoes, we found them full of blood. Our feet were blistered; the blisters had broken and blistered again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

TELLER]

But we had seen the Grand Canyon of the Yukon--which Schwatka in an evil hour named Miles, for the distinguished army-general--and White Horse Rapids; and seeing them was worth the blisters and the blood. And we know how far it is from the head of the canyon to White Horse town. No matter what the three "oldest" settlers, the railway folders, Schwatka, and all the others say,--_we know_. It is fifteen miles! Also, among those who scoff at Rex Beach for having the villain in his last novel eaten up by mosquitoes on the Yukon, we are not to be included.

Numerous and valuable copper mines lie within a radius of fifteen miles from White Horse. The more important ones are those of the Pennsylvania syndicate, The B. N. White Company, The Arctic Chief, The Grafter, the Anaconda, and the Best Chance. The Puebla, operated by B. N. White, lies four miles northwest of town. It makes a rich showing of magnet.i.te, carrying copper values averaging four and five per cent, with a small by-product of gold and silver.

In the summer of 1907 this mine had in sight two hundred and fifty thousand tons of pay ore. The deepest development then obtained had a hundred-foot surface showing three hundred feet in width, and stripped along with the strike of the vein seven hundred feet, showing a solid, unbroken ma.s.s of ore. Tunnels and crosscuts driven from the bottom of the shaft showed the body to be the same width and the values the same as the surface outcrop.

The Arctic Chief ranks second in importance; and extensive development work is being carried on at all the mines. The railway is building out into the mining district.

Six-horse stages are run from White Horse to Dawson after the river closes. The distance is four hundred and thirty-five miles; the fare in the early autumn and late spring is a hundred and twenty-five dollars; in winter, when sleighing is good, sixty dollars.

White Horse was first named Closeleigh by the railway company; but the name was not popular. At one place in the rapids the waves curving over rocks somewhat resemble a white horse, with wildly floating mane and tail of foam. This is said to be the origin of the name.

White Horse is only eight years old. The hotel accommodations, if one does not mind a little thing like not being able to eat, are good. The rooms are clean and comfortable and filled with sweet mountain and river air.

At eight o'clock that evening the steamer _Dawson_ struggled up the river and landed within fifty yards of the hotel. We immediately went aboard; but it was nine o'clock the next morning before we started, so we had another night in White Horse.

The Yukon steamers are four stories high, with a place for a roof garden. I could do nothing for some time but regard the _Dawson_ in silent wonder. It seemed to glide along on the surface of the water, like a smooth, flat stone when it is "skipped."

The lower deck is within a few inches of the water; and high above is the pilot-house, with its lonely-looking captain and pilot; and high, oh, very high, above them--like a charred monarch of a Puget Sound forest--rises the black smoke-stack, from which issue such vast funnels of smoke and such slow and tremendous breathing.

This breathing is a sound that haunts every memory of the Yukon. It is not easy to describe, it is so slow and so powerful. It is not quite like a cough--unless one could cough _in_ instead of _out_; it is more like a sobbing, s.h.i.+vering in-drawing of the breath of some mighty animal. It echoes from point to point, and may be heard for several miles on a still day. Day and night it moves through the upper air, and floats on ahead, often echoing so insistently around some point which the steamer has not turned, that the "cheechaco" is deluded into the belief that another steamer is approaching.

The captains and pilots of the Yukon are the loneliest-looking men!

First of all, they are so far away from everybody else; and second, pa.s.sengers, particularly women, are not permitted to be in the pilot-house, nor on the texas, nor even on the hurricane-deck, of steamers pa.s.sing through Yukon Territory.

Between White Horse and Lake Lebarge the river is about two hundred yards wide. The water is smooth and deep. It loiters along the sh.o.r.e, but the current is strong and bears the steamer down with a rush, compelling it to zigzag ceaselessly from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

Going down the Yukon for the first time, one's heart stands still nearly half the time. The steamer heads straight for one sh.o.r.e, approaches it so closely that its bow is within six inches of it, and then swings powerfully and starts for the opposite sh.o.r.e--its great stern wheel barely clearing the rocky wall.

The serious vexations and real dangers of navigation in this great river, from source to mouth, are the sand and gravel bars. One may go down the Yukon from White Horse to St. Michael in fourteen days; and one may be a month on the way--pausing, by no will of his own, on various sand-bars.

The treacherous current changes hourly. It is seldom found twice the same. It washes the sand from side to side, or heaps it up in the middle--creating new channels and new dangers. The pilot can only be cautious, untiringly watchful--and lucky. The rest he must leave to heaven.

It is twenty-seven miles from White Horse to Lake Lebarge. Midway, the Tahkeena River flows into the Lewes, running through banks of clay.

Lake Lebarge is thirty-two miles long and three and a half wide. The day was suave. The water was silvery blue, and as smooth as satin; gray, deeply veined cliffs were reflected in the water, whose surface was not disturbed by a ripple or wave; the air was soft; farther down the river were forest fires, and just sufficient haze floated back to give the milky old-rose lights of the opal to the atmosphere. There is one small island in the lake. It was not named; and it received the name--as Vancouver would say--of Fireweed Isle, because it floated like a rosy cloud on the pale blue water.

The Indians called this lake Kluk-tas-si, and Schwatka favored retaining it; but the French name has endured, and it is not bad.

The Lake Lebarge grayling and whitefish are justly famed. Steamers stop at some lone fisherman's landing and take them down to Dawson, where they find ready sale. At Lower Lebarge there is a post-office and a telegraph station. Our steamer paused; two men came out in a boat, delivered a large supply of fish, received a few parcels of mail, and went swinging back across the water.

A dreary log-cabin stood on the bank, labelled "Clark's Place." A woman in a scarlet dress, walking through the reeds beside the beach, made a bit of vivid color. It seemed very, very lonely--with that kind of loneliness that is unendurable.

A quarter of a mile farther, around a bend in the sh.o.r.e, the boat landed at the telegraph station, where the Canadian flag was flying.

The different reaches of the Yukon are called locally by very confusing names. The river rising in Summit Lake on the White Pa.s.s railway is called both Lewes and Yukon; the stretch immediately below Lake Lebarge is called Lewes, Thirty-Mile, and Yukon. When we reach the old Hudson Bay post of Selkirk, however, our perplexities over this matter are at an end. The Pelly River here joins the Lewes, and all agree that the splendid river that now surges on to the sea is the Yukon.

It is daylight all the time, and no one should sleep between White Horse and Dawson. Not an hour of this beautiful voyage on the Upper Yukon should be wasted.

The banks are high and bold, for the most part springing sheer out of the water in columns and pinnacles of solid stone. There are also forestated slopes rising to peaks of snow; and the same kind of clay cliffs that we saw at White Horse, white and s.h.i.+ning in the bluish light of morning, but more beautiful still in the mysterious rosy shadows of midnight.

There are some striking columns of red rock along Lake Lebarge, and their reflections in the water at sunset of a still evening are said to be entrancing: "two warm pictures of rosy red in the sinking sun, joined base to base by a thread of silver, at the edge of the other sh.o.r.e."

There are many high hills of soft gray limestone, veined and shaded with the green of spruce; vast slopes, timbered heavily; low valleys and picturesque mouths of rivers.

Five-Finger, or Rink, Rapids is caused by a contraction of the river from its usual width to one of a hundred and fifty yards. Five bulks of stone, rising to a perpendicular height of forty or fifty feet, are stretched across the channel. The steamer seems to touch the stone walls as it rushes through on the boiling rapids.

The Upper Ramparts of the Yukon begin at Fort Selkirk. Here the waters cut through the lower spurs of the mountains, and for a distance of a hundred and fifty miles, reaching to Dawson, the scenery is sublime.

"Quiet Sentinel" is a rocky promontory which, seen in profile, resembles the face and entire figure of a woman. She stands with her head slightly bowed, as if in prayer, with loose draperies flowing in cla.s.sic lines to her feet, and with a rose held to her lips. One of the greatest singers of the present time might have posed for the "Quiet Sentinel."