6 THE STIKINE RIVER IN 1898 



nection with the surveys for determining the international 

 boundary line ; and to Mr 0. H. Tittmann I am very greatly in- 

 debted for several of these accompanying illustrations, repro- 

 duced from photographs taken during the boundary survey. 



The international boundary line has moved up and down 

 stream on the charts for these thirty-odd years, and Canadian 

 custom-houses and Hudson's Bay Company posts wandered with 

 it, five different places having been accepted as the temporary 

 boundary until a commission can determine it. The place last 

 settled upon for the passing of the imaginary line is a few miles 

 above the Popoff glacier, near the Great bend. In this past 

 summer of 1898 the United States was temporarily and econom- 

 ically represented by a custom-house in a tent on the river bank, 

 to whose canvas sides a small and faded flag was pinned, like 

 an outworn towel. Two men and a dog constituted the Amer- 

 ican force, both men looking very weary, bored, and homesick, 

 as one lounged down for his mail and fresh beef, and the other 

 whistled in his doorway. There is a station of Canadian mounted 

 police on the river bank a few rods beyond, an officer and twenty 

 men occupying a group of hewn-log buildings on a knoll, with 

 the red flag of the Dominion flying from a tall pole. Their 

 storehouses were on the bank, and men in canvas working- 

 clothes were putting company gardens in order and giving an 

 appearance of permanency, trimness, and order to the edges of 

 British domain. 



The Iskoot river, which enters by a long, deep valley from 

 southward, is said to present greater scenic spectacles along its 

 way than even the Stikine river. The Stikine region is the best 

 " bear country " on the northwest coast, and the finest grizzly, 

 cinnamon, and black bears hold the Iskoot wildernesses almost 

 undisturbed, since few sportsmen come this way. Mountain 

 sheep, mountain goat, deer, and elk tempt the big-game stalker, 

 to whom the Stikine and Iskoot would be perfect paradise were 

 it not for the plagues of mosquitoes and gnats. The sharp 

 needle-peaks of the lofty Glacier range are aligned along the 

 Iskoot's course, and there are unnamed and untrodden peaks, 

 passes, glaciers, and snow-fields to occupy Alpine club climbers 

 for many years along the Iskoot's course. 



The Orlebar or Great glacier of the Stikine shows first in dis- 

 tant profile as a grayish white mass pressing out between two 

 mountain slopes and spreading in a great curving, fan-shaped 

 front of boulders and dirty ice for fully two miles along the river 



