12G C. W. Hayes — Exjiedition tJirough the Yukon District. 



We were so fortunate as to reach Taral just as Nicolai was 

 preparing for his annual visit to the coast, and after a delay of 

 four days we embarked in a large skin boat manned by ten of 

 his vassals. A couple of clays brought us down to Miles glacier, 

 where the river tumbles over a dam of huge moraine bowlders. 

 It is necessary to make a portage here sometimes across both 

 moraine and glacier. Crossing about two miles of moraine 

 covered with a dense alder thicket, we came out upon a high 

 ridge of freshly deposited bowlders. Immediately in front was 

 a broad expansion of the river in front of the glacier, which 

 formed an ice cliff along one side nearly four hundred feet in 

 height. Bergs were almost constantly falling, with reports like 

 thunder, dashing the spray high above the top of the cliff. The 

 current of the river sets across the lake toward the front of the 

 glacier, and where it meets the swell produced by a falling mass 

 of ice the Avater is throAvn into enormous breakers which, with 

 the grinding icebergs, would swamp a boat instantly. Nicolai 

 decided that we might get past by waiting for a lull in the fall- 

 ing of the ice and for a wind from the right direction to open a 

 passage through the floating bergs. The right moment came 

 after a wait of nearly a day, and tumbling things into the boat 

 we were soon past the dangerous spot, to the evident relief of 

 Nicolai and his crew. A short distance below we passed the 

 front of Childs glacier, running within a stone's throw of the 

 lofty wall of ice, and found ourselves at the head of the river 

 delta, with the blue Pacific in sight far to the southward. It 

 lacked a few days of being three months since we had left the 

 coast at Juneau, and in that time we had travelled almost 

 exactly a thousand miles, nearly half the distance being on 

 foot. 



Nicolai intended going to Eyak, where two salmon canneries 

 are located on a narrow neck of the peninsula between the 

 Copper River delta and Prince A^'illiam sound. When within a 

 few miles of that place we were met by a native with the report 

 that the Eyak canneries had closed and the traders had left. 

 This report, which we afterward found to be the invention of a 

 rival trader, turned us back to the head of the delta and down 

 one of the eastern channels fifty miles out of our Avay and de- 

 layed our arrival at Eyak about four days. On account of this 

 delay we missed the August mail steamer from the sound by 

 twelve hours and Avere obliged to Avait there a month for the 



