226 
lequin ducks were noticed on the southern 
end of Lake Bennett, and black and brown 
bear and caribou tracks in the valley of a 
small stream emptying into the lake near 
by. <A couple of Tahk-heesh Indians were 
here encountered, one of whom stammered 
considerably. Among my Chileat packers I 
also noticed one that was deaf and dumb, and 
two or three afilicted with cataract in the eye. 
On the 19th of June we commenced traversing 
Lake Bennett. Through the ice-fields capping 
the timbered mountains to the east of the lake 
protruded a great many dull red rocks and 
ridges, specimens of which, found in the ter- 
minal moraines of the little glaciers putting 
down the gulches, showed iron; and I named 
this bold range the Iron-capped ‘Mountains. 
By three p.m. it was blowing a gale; and by 
five the waves were washing over our raft, and 
threatening to tear it to pieces, for there was 
not a single log that extended the whole length 
of the raft proper. We accordingly put into 
a cove, where we obtained four large spruce to 
strengthen the raft, and on the 21st resumed 
the journey, reaching the northern end of Lake 
Bennett that evening. The lake is thirty miles 
long, and flanked by precipitous hills three thou- 
sand to thirty-five hundred feet high, capped 
with glaciers. At its north-western face there 
come in a couple of streams, forming a wide, 
flat, and conspicuous valley that we all felt sure 
was going to be our outlet as we approached 
it. Several well-marked buttes spring from this 
valley, giving it a very picturesque appear- 
ance ; its largest river being sixty to seventy- 
five yards wide, but quite shallow. I called it 
Watson valley, after Professor Sereno Watson 
of Harvard. 
The draining river of Lake Bennett is about 
two hundred yards wide, and is called by the 
Tahk-heesh, ‘ the place where the caribou 
Cross ;’ these animals, in their migrations, ford- 
ing its wide, shallow current, and passing out 
and in through Watson valley. It is hardly 
two miles long before it expands into another 
lake, whose general course now turns to the 
east; and our old friend, the steady, summer 
south wind, was of no avail for sailing our huge 
craft. Although this lake (Lake Nares, after 
Sir George Nares) was but three or four miles 
long, its eastern trend kept us three days 
before we got a favorable wind, the banks not 
being good for tracking. Although small, 
Lake Nares was one of the prettiest in the 
lacustrine chain. The country was percepti- 
bly opening; and trap, granite, gneiss, and 
metamorphic and eruptive rocks generally, 
were giving way to the sedimentary and frag- 
SCIENCE. 
mental. 
the hills were less steep, and the snow disap- 
pearing from their crests. Roses of varying 
hues were in bloom, and also wild pansies ; 
while wild onions lined the lake-shore in pro- 
fusion, and everywhere there was a general 
change of verdure, and variation for the better. 
Grand terraces in beautiful symmetry on the 
two sides of the lake plainly showed its ancient 
and subsiding levels. These, too,—in a less 
conspicuous manner, however, — had been no- 
ticed on the northern shores of Lake Bennett. 
Lake Nares drains through a short river of a 
hundred yards into another lake’ about eight 
miles long, and on whose limited shore-line I 
was compelled to make two camps and a half- 
dozen extra landings, so baffling was the wind 
on which we had to depend. Two bungling 
side-oars on the huge raft allowed us to make 
about a half a mile an hour with laborious 
effort, a wall-tent for a sail driving us along 
as fast as two miles and a half under the most 
favorable wind. An oar on the bow and stern 
gave us steering apparatus, and a dozen strong 
wooden poles served us as pries over many a 
lake and river bar of sand, gravel, and mud. 
During one of these temporary landings on 
the shores of Lake Bove, some of my Indians 
set fire to the green spruce-trees by a large 
blaze kindled under them, and a dense yolume 
of smoke ascended high in the heavens. Late 
that day a smoke was seen north of us some 
ten or fifteen miles away, and our Indians told 
us it was an answer to the one they had acci- 
dentally made that morning. These signal- 
smokes between the two bands were formerly 
quite common; the Chilcats thus heralding to 
the Tahk-heesh that they had crossed the Ko- 
tusk Mountains, and were in their country for 
trading purposes. Not many years ago, as I 
was told by an old Hudson-bay trader in these 
parts, this Chilcat-Tahk-heesh trade has been 
known to be so great that not less than seventy- 
five or eighty of the Chilcats and Chilcoots 
crossed the mountains twice annually, each 
carrying a hundred pounds of trading-material, 
or a grand total of eight tons, to be exchanged 
for furs that were collected from a wide circuit 
by intertribal commerce. Fort Selkirk, estab- 
lished by the Hudson-bay company near the 
junction of the Pelly and Yukon, interfered 
with their trade for a brief period, until 1851, 
when a war party of Chilcats extended their 
trading-tour nearly five hundred miles in order 
to destroy it; and its blackened chimneys still 
attest their success. 
Lake Bove has a deep bay in its southern 
1 Lake Bove, after Lieut. Bove of the Royal Italian navy. 
Many level places were appearing, 
alts ese es a 
