144 BERING STRAIT 



Dall started with two Indians and a steersman in a 

 skin canoe, the river still full of ice, and navigation 

 difficult. They had proceeded but a short distance 

 when they came to bends, round which logs and ice 

 were sweeping at a great rate, so that it was necessary 

 for a man to stand in the bows of the canoe, with a 

 pole shod at one end with iron, to push away the masses 

 of ice and tangle of driftwood. They could often feel 

 the ice and logs rolling and scraping under the canoe ; 

 and it was not the thickness of a plank between them 

 and destruction, but that of a piece of sealskin a 

 tenth of an inch thick. 



On the 7th of June they were two hundred and 

 forty miles above Nulato, at the junction of the 

 Tanana, the furthest point reached by the Russians, 

 and soon were in a part abounding with moose owing 

 to their seeking refuge in the stream from the millions 

 of mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy, 

 not wasting powder and shot, but manoeuvring round 

 the swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until they 

 tired the victim out ; and then stealthily approaching, 

 securing it with a stab from their knives. 



After twenty-six laborious days against the stream 

 they reached Fort Yukon, the then furthest outpost 

 of the Hudson's Bay Company, six hundred miles 

 from Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualled 

 from the east. Here the amount of peltry was 

 astonishing, the fur-room of the fort containing 

 thousands of marten skins, hanging from the beams, 

 and huge piles of common furs lying around, together 

 with a considerable number of foxes, black and silver- 

 grey, and many skins of the wolverine, thought so 



