206 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



In 1847, Mr. Bell, having heard of the Yukon from the 

 Kutchin who visisted the fort on Peel's River, set out 

 in quest of it accompanied by a native guide. He first 

 crossed the mountains to a stream termed the Rat River, 

 on which an outpost named La Pierre's House has since 

 been built. This post is about sixty miles distant from 

 Bell's Fort on the Peel, and is about ten miles to the 

 southward of it. Shortly after embarking in a canoe on 

 the Rat River, Mr. Bell came to one of much larger size 

 to which it is tributary, and which is named the Por- 

 cupine. Three days' descent * of this carried him into the 

 Yukon, which it enters at right angles in the 66th parallel, 

 and in the supposed longitude of 147^° west. f At this 

 place the Yukon is 1^ mile wide, and is full of well- 

 wooded islands, with a very strong current in the channels 

 which separate them. After issuing from the mountainous 



the Indians, might, perhaps, lead you to have a wrong impression 

 respecting the mouth of the river. I am now convinced that it is not 

 the same with the Colville, and I have for some years suspected that 

 its mouth lay to the west. The Russians have come up the lower part 

 of the river regularly for some seasons : I was at first informed that 

 they entered it from another river, but I am now told positively by 

 Indians who went down and met them last summer that they come 

 into it direct from the sea. By one of these Indians I received a 

 letter from the Russians, which, being in their own language, is 

 unintelligible to me. Salmon and hooked-nosed trout (Salmo scouleri) 

 ascend the river, but are not found in the Mackenzie, or rivers falling 

 into the Arctic Sea. Again, I have made frequent inquiries of the 

 ' Gens du large,' or the northern Indians, who visit the Arctic Sea- 

 coast, and find that they are unacquainted with the mouth of the 

 river. For two winter days' walking below the Porcupine, the Yukon 

 trends to the west and south-west, and the natives say that it flows 

 on in the same direction. I am therefore inclined to believe that 

 the Colville is a smaller river, and that the Yukon empties its waters 

 into Norton Sound." 



* In returning from the Yukon against the stream, by tracking the 

 canoe, nine days were required to reach Rat River. 



f By Mr. Murray's courses and distances. 



