99 Northern search 



little Richardson's goose, as well as a race of the grizzly bear, and, 

 of course, the mountain range. This last is quite a monument. 

 As we reached and identified the rushing torrent of the Rat River 

 and as Bob pulled our little amphib around so that its blunt nose 

 was headed directly toward them, the mountains rose before us 

 in all their hard and craggy aloofness. The river tumbles down 

 a great gash in the rocky slopes, and the width and character of 

 this opening didn't look exactly hospitable. Bob flew in fairly low 

 so as to keep out of the uncertain and drafty altitudes of the 

 summits and we skimmed over broad alpinelike meadows, high on 

 the face of the lower slopes. On one of these a light-colored moun- 

 tain sheep stared at us without moving, as staunch as the rocks 

 about him. Then the pass narrowed and the sides grew steep until 

 we were flying through a winding canyon, with the river a thin 

 torrent 1,000 feet beneath us. Far above, we could make out 

 scudding clouds and mist around the peaks, but in the lower 

 altitudes the sun was shining and the visibility good. Now and 

 then the air was a little rough and we struck both updrafts and 

 downdrafts, but nothing unusual or alarming. 



On the Yukon side of the mountains we found ourselves over 

 the upper reaches of the Bell, which joins the Porcupine and 

 flows on into the Yukon River above Yukon Flats. The canyons of 

 the Bell twist and turn every which way, so that we were constantly 

 banking around great steep walls of rock and slipping this way 

 and that to keep as near the middle of the cut as possible. But 

 the weather remained clear and fairly calm, so that we had no 

 trouble getting through. 



The settlement at Old Crow is a Loucheux village of log huts. 

 We could see them crowded together along the edge of a high 

 bank overlooking the Porcupine, which makes its start here at 

 the junction of the Old Crow and the Bell. But we headed off 

 across the flats to the north, for we wanted to get this chore out 

 of the way before trying to land at the settlement. It is an en- 

 trancing region and appealed to me at once as having a sort of 

 "lost world" character. No wonder the Loucheux speak of them- 

 selves as "The People," as if they lived in a separate universe in- 

 habited by no one else. It is true, of course, that many primitive 



