250 
SCIENCE. 
[Vou. IIL, No. 
YT Proclaien 
VIEW IN MILES’ CANON FROM ITS SOUTHERN ENTRANCE. 
The only canon, and head of navigation, on the Yukon, 1866 miles from Aphoon mouth. 
fifty miles beyond the Daly, and the peer of 
any of the three. We passed its mouth the 
11th, and that same day our Indians told us 
of a perilous rapid ahead that the Indians of 
the country sometimes shot with their small 
rafts; but they felt very anxious in regard to 
our very bulky and clumsy one of forty-two 
feet, as there were some sharp bends to make. 
Reaching the rapid on the 12th, I found it to 
be a contraction of the river-bed into about 
one-half its usual width of five hundred to 
seven hundred yards, and further impeded by 
a number of massive trap rocks, thirty to forty 
feet high, lying directly in the channel, and 
really converting it into three or four well- 
marked channels, the second one from the east 
being the usual one used by the Indians, but 
rejected by us on account of a necessary sharp 
turn. We essayed the extreme right-hand pas- 
sage, although running waves three and four 
feet high were seen in its boiling current, but 
still the straightest, and therefore the best. 
On these rocks innumerable numbers of gulls 
had sought a breeding-ground, safe from all 
intrusion, and saluted us with a perfect din 
of screamings as we rushed by. This extreme 
right-hand channel through which we shot, I 
believe could be ascended by a river-steamer 
with a steam windlass, a sharp bend in the 
river-bank giving a short and secure hold ; and, 
if Iam right in my conjectures, Miles’ Canon 
and rapids mark the head of navigation on 
the Yukon for very light-draught but powerful 
river-boats, or a total navigable distance of 
eighteen hundred and sixty-six miles from the 
Aphoon mouth. I named this picturesque lit- 
tle rapid after Dr. Henry Rink of Copenhagen, 
a well-known Greenland authority. 
After the Yukon receives the many large 
rivers [ have noticed, it swells out into quite 
formidable proportions, interspersed with many 
islands, all of which are so loaded with great 
piles of driftwood on their upper ends, that, 
when in one of these archipelagoes, the scene 
up and down the river is quite different. The 
river also becomes very tortuous in many 
places ; and at the mouth of the Nordenskidld 
a conspicuous bald butte could be seen directly 
in front of our raft no less’ than seven times, 
on as many different stretches of the river. 
I called it Tantalus Butte on the map. 
The day we shot the Rink Rapids we also 
saw our first moose ploughing through the wil- 
low-brush like a hurricane in his endeavors to 
escape, —an undertaking in which he was suc- 
cessful. That same night we camped near the 
first Indian village we had met on the river, 
and even it was deserted. It is called Kitl- 
