134 C. W. Hayes — Expedition through the Yukon District. 



The current is from four to six miles per hour and, except for a 

 few sluggish expansions near the lake, is quite uniform through- 

 out. The water was exceptionally high in the spring of 1891, 

 however, and this would tend to increase the uniformity and 

 velocity of the current. There are no shoals or rapids which 

 would prevent the passage of a river steamer from its mouth to 

 the head of the lake. 



The course of White river, except for a short distance near its 

 mouth, has hitherto been entirely unknown. Some miners are 

 said to have spent a winter at the first fork, about sixty miles 

 from the Yukon, but beyond this they have failed to penetrate, 

 probably because of the unpromising character of the stream, 

 for it is difficult to conceive physical obstacles sufficiently for- 

 midable to turn back these hardy explorers. 



The White River basin was entered by the Avriter fifty miles 

 southwest of Selkirk. From the high land between the Nisling * 

 and Donjek the main valley could be seen for a long distance 

 north and south, with the river pursuing its extremely tortuous 

 course among innumerable low islands and bars. At one point 

 above the mouth of the Nisling the river passes through the point 

 of a mountain spur by a narrow canyon, probably a case of 

 superposed drainage due to the occupation of the valley by ice. 

 Further northward it turns sharply toward the west and enters 

 a deep narrow valley, in which, by native report, there are many 

 dangerous rapids. 



For the first seventy miles in the White River basin only clear 

 tributaries were crossed. The largest of these, the Nisling, prob- 

 ably drains the greater part of the large area bounded on the 

 east by the Tahkeena and Lewes, occupying very nearly the 

 position which Dawson has assigned for the main A¥hite river, 

 but receiving no part of its waters from the high Coast range. 

 Evidently the greater part of the northward-flowing drainage of 

 the St Elias mountains is carried off by other tributaries of the 

 White river, which show ample evidence of glacial origin in 

 their extreme turbidity. The Donjek is the largest eastern tribu- 



* In naming the tributaries of White river I have followed usage among 

 the native Indians so far as possible. Some of the names required slight 

 modification to render them pronounceable, and in most cases the generic 

 part of the name has been dropped, as " too," meaning river, and " dek," 

 creek. The names, however, are near enough to their indigenous forms 

 to be recognized by the natives themselves. 



