i8 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



headlong plunge into the river. At times these streams, taking their 

 rise in some extensive glacier, are of considerable magnitude, and 

 fairly roar as they leap and hurl themselves downward from their 

 dizzy height. And here we learned a curious fact about the river: 

 in summer it falls when it rains, and rises when the sun shines, so 

 rapidly do the pent-up snows of winter disappear and rush down the 

 mountain sides under the heat of the spring sun. 



Until noon of the second day we had been making good time, 

 but now the fun began, for we had left deep water and had arrived 

 at the first flight of the eight-hundred-foot stairway which the Cale- 

 donia had to climb ere Hazelton could be reached. The river had 

 been gradually widening as one island after another had been passed, 

 until now it was nearly half a mile wide and flowed through four 

 channels. The captain attempted one channel, but we couldn't gain 

 an inch, and in drifting back again down the rapids the current car- 

 ried the boat against the rocks and, with a crash and a lurch, but 

 minus some woodwork, she was in the stream again. Then two 

 other channels were tried, but without avail, although the wheel was 

 throwing water and gravel over the pilot house. The fourth channel 

 was next tried, but the current was too strong. Then we " lined her 

 out," and this novel method of getting a huge steamboat up a stream 

 soon became only too commonplace. The method of procedure is 

 this : The boat is forced against a sand bar and allowed to rest while 

 men go forward in a skiff with a long four-inch cable, which is made 

 fast to a tree on the bank or to a " dead man," a long spar buried 

 deep in the earth of a sand bar and heaped over with bowlders. 

 When all is ready, the boat is attached to the capstan and the wheel 

 begins to revolve. It is tedious work and often provoking, as when 

 the cable parts, or the " dead man " gives up his hold, and the whole 

 work must be done over again. The boat quivers from stem to stern, 

 and the wheel, with all possible steam on, is simply one revolving- 

 ball of water. We fairly hold our breath as we listen to the dull 

 vibration of the boat, the rumbling of the capstan, and the grating- 

 sound of the keel of the steamer as she is being dragged through the 

 rapids over the bar; but above all can be heard the voice of Cap- 

 tain Bonser as he shouts to his Indian pilot, " Go 'head capstan," 

 " Stop steamboat," " Stop capstan," "Go 'head steamboat," "Go 'head 

 capstan! " In four hours we have made about fifty yards, but we 

 are in open water again and the boat settles down to its regular chug, 

 chug, chug. 



Eighty miles from Essington the Skeena in its flight to the sea 

 makes its first plunge into the Cascade Mountains, and its entrance is 

 indescribably grand. No pen or brush can do justice to the beau- 

 ties of the Kitselas Canon. At its mouth we are in a broad, 



