THE STIKINE RIVER IN 1898 3 



seeing an easier vent to their eager spirits in enlistment, and in- 

 vestors and investigators prudently holding back to watch the 

 fate of war. To one remembering how quickly and entirely the 

 Klondike retreated from general view and interest in the eastern 

 states, after the blowing up of the Maine even, it was not sur- 

 prising to find that the expected summer rush to the Klondike 

 had failed ; even Alaska tourists failed to come, and the fleet of 

 steamers brought around Cape Horn for the busy summer ex- 

 pected would have entailed great losses upon transportation 

 companies but for the sudden necessity of transports for the 

 Philippine expeditions. About the same time that the stream 

 of gold-seekers ceased coming the Teslin railway seemed doomed 

 never to be built, and certainly not before the railway from 

 Skagway over the White pass. The Teslin trail proved too long 

 and too hard for many who had undertaken it, and the river 

 boats that went up the Stikine empty returned crowded with 

 angry and discouraged Klondikers. The angry ones went on to 

 try the shorter routes to the Yukon from Lynn canal ; the dis- 

 couraged ones sacrificed their outfits recklessly in their one wish 

 to' return to civilization. A dozen of the useless river steamers 

 were boarded over at the bows and attempts made to tow them 

 across that roughest part of the Pacific ocean to the Yukon river's 

 mouth, but disaster attended nearly every one of these perilous 

 tows in the open ocean, the seams parting under the strain of 

 waves and hawsers, and the flimsy river boats going entirely to 

 pieces or drifting ashore in hopeless condition. 



While the Stikine boom lasted a first opportunity was afforded 

 for pleasure travelers to comfortably view the magnificent scenery 

 of that river, whose valley was aptly called by Dr John Muir "a 

 Yosemite one hundred miles long," but only three tourists or 

 actual pleasure travelers availed themselves of the chance, as far 

 as the most diligent inquiries could establish the fact. Although 

 so powerfully engined, the fleetest of the river boats could only 

 average seven miles an hour against the furious current, making 

 the average trip up to Glenora in eighteen hours, and returning 

 in seven or nine hours, the boats always timing their departures 

 so as to cross the flats at the mouth of the river at high tide, and 

 navigating only during clear daylight. There were no old river 

 captains or pilots surviving from Cassiar times to command this 

 hastily constructed fleet, and the best '' swift-water captains " 

 came from the Kootenai, the Snake, and the upper Columbia 

 and learned the Stikine route for themselves, " reading the water " 

 as they went along. 



