THE 



National Geographic Magazine 



Vol. X JANUARY, 1899 No. 1 



THE STIK1NE RIVER IN 1898 

 By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore 



The Klondike excitement of 1897 turned attention to the 

 Stikine river as affording an easy route through the Coast range 

 of mountains to the interior of the Northwest Territory, since it 

 was known that Indians, Hudson's Bay Company traders, and 

 surveyors of the Western Union Telegraph Company had long 

 ago used a trail from the upper Stikine across to the lakes and 

 waterways leading to the upper Yukon. 



The Stikine was not an unknown or undiscovered country, 

 but only an abandoned one, as the discoveiy of gold in its river 

 bars in 1861 and richer placers in the Cassiar country beyond in 

 1873 drew thousands of miners to summer camps, until the ex- 

 haustion of the richer placers, the need of machinery, and the 

 discoveries elsewhere drew that fickle and floating population 

 away. Steamers were withdrawn from the river ten years ago, 

 the old camps disappeared in underbrush, and Ft Wrangell, the 

 post of transshipment for all this trade and travel, fell away to a 

 mere Indian village again. 



The Klondikers appeared in numbers last January, and con- 

 tinued in an unending procession over the Stikine's frozen surface 

 until the river opened in April, when a dozen light draft stern- 

 wheel steamers, fitted with powerful engines, ran, crowded to 

 the guards, for a few weeks. The Hudson's Bay Company put 

 on some fine boats, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company 

 sent up a dozen strainers, all named for eminent Canadians, the 

 two swiftest river boats <>n the Stikine appropriately bearing the 

 names Ogilvie and McConnell, in honor of those two members of 

 the Dominion Geological Survey. Glenora, the head of naviga- 



