FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Jan. 31, 1884. 



third of our time will be spent in bed and surely that third 

 warrants us in doing our best to make it pass pleasantly," 

 said the Judge, and the sweet and restful sleep that carne to 

 us all through our camp life on the Akmeek-we-se-pe proved 

 the wisdom - of his words. Many campers-out, through 

 ignorance in some instances doubtless, but generally through 

 indolence, neglect to provide their camps with fixtures con- 

 ducive to convenience and comfort, and as a consequence 

 the discomforts endured often overbalance the pleasures en- 

 joyed. A few hours of intelligent labor will make a com- 

 fortable woods home. 



I think it was the afternoon of our third day in this camp 

 that the Greek Professor came up the bluff with rod in hand 

 and eyes fairly bursting from their sockets. "I never saw 

 the like!" he exclaimed. 



"What is it? Where is it?" we both asked. 

 "I never had such an experience before," returned the 

 Greek Professor. 



"Was it a bear?" asked the judge. Every novel happen- 

 ing in the woods can generally be connected in some way 

 with a bear, although a bear is less apt to be encountered by 

 the summer visitor to the lake region than any other animal 

 save the wolf. 



The Greek Professor said it was not a hear, but trout — 

 speckled trout. "I have just caught seventeen running 

 from ten inches up to fifteen down there at the mouth of the 

 creek. " 



"Oh, pshaw 1" exclaimed the Judge as his under jaw per- 

 ceptibly dropped. 



"But I have!" said the Greek Professor with energy, "and 

 they axe down there now in the minnow bucket." 

 "Darn it! Why didn't you tell me?" 

 "I couldn't," said the Greek Professor. "I mean I hadn't 

 the time — that is, I couldn't stop." 



But I don't think the Judge heard all the Greek Professor 

 said. He flung aside the book he had been reading, and 

 jointing his rod and tieing on his flies, he fairly Hew down 

 the bluff, notwithstanding his avoirdupois made such a feat 

 somewhat hazardous, and cast into the swift waters below 

 the drift pile at the mouth of the stream. The feathery 

 lure scarcely touched the rough water ere there was a splash 

 and a bite. The Judge "never saw the like," he said. The 

 Greek Professor had followed close after the Judge's heels. 

 and with great interest I watched the two as they plied their 

 rods. Trout of excellent size and shining in the sun as un- 

 willingly they came ashore, as if studded with brilliants, re- 

 warded the lisherinen's zeal. 



O, what happiness.what felicity! Butalas! They reminded 

 me of children playing with pearls. Time and "time again 

 both had descanted on the criminal waste that characterized 

 the sportsman in general and each had over and over asserted 

 his abhorrence of the wanton destruction of fish and game, 

 so common in our country; yet there they were fishing away 

 till not a trout would rise to fly or spring at a worm. They 

 had exhausted the preserve. The fish were "on the feed," 

 and all the conditions happening to be right for them rising 

 to the lure that afternoon, the beautiful and wary creatures 

 had been transferred from the swift waters of the stream to 

 the narrow confines of the minnow pails, and ere we could 

 consume them, the half died and were thrown away. Thence 

 on the greedy sportsmen were driven to other waters. The 

 creek above its mouth contained many fine trout, but it was 

 with great difficulty the fishermen could make their casts for 

 the overhanging brush and the log-filled channel. In my 

 presence they never afterward denounced in strong language 

 greedy sportsmen. 



The country we were in abounded in game as well as its 

 waters in fish. Grouse, called partridge up there, were not 

 infrequently met with in the woods, and any bright day the 

 Beaver Lake visitor would be rewarded with a view of a 

 deer at some point on the lake's margin. On the north shore 

 of the lake and immediately across the ridge from our camp, 

 the bank was high, whence you could see seven-eighths of the 

 entire south shore line. One day we counted six deer at 

 one time feeding here and there along that shore, and it was 

 seldom, when the weather was favorable, that one or two 

 were not seen. 



The smaller lake lying westward of Beaver Lake, was even 

 more frequented by them than the larger one. Along its 

 west shore was quite a pasture ground of lily pads which was 

 daily and nightly visited. One afternoon the Judge and I 

 made the tour of this little lake, and we ran four in as many 

 separate places out of the water, 



[to be continued.] 



DOWN THE YUKON ON A RAFT. 



A 



BY LIEUT. FRED'K SCHWATKA, TJ. S. ARMY. 



Fifth Paper. 



T Marsh a few miserable "Stick" Indians put in an 

 appearance, and not a single solitary curiosity could be 

 obtained of them. A rough-looking pair of shell earings 

 that a small boy had he instantly refused for the great finan- 

 cial consideration of a jack-knife from one of the party, who 

 supposed them to be purely local in character. Another 

 trinket was added to the jack knife, and still refused, and 

 additions kept on to the original offer, until just to see if 

 there was any limit to their acquisitiveness, the last offer 

 stood at a double-barreled shotgun with a thousand rounds 

 of ammunition, a gold watch, two sacks of flour and a camp 

 stove, and in refusing this the boy generously added the in- 

 formation that its value was based on the fact that it had 

 been received from the Chilkats, wbo had gotten it from 

 the white traders. It had probably been made in Connecti- 

 cut, A few scraggy, half-starved dogs nearly completed 

 the outfit, the greater part of their composition being unmiti- 

 gated belligerency, two of them fighting until they were so 

 exhausted that they had to lean up against each other to rest. 

 A dirty group of assorted sizes of children finished out the 

 picture of one of the most dejected races of people on the 

 face of the earth. They visited their fishlines at the mouth 

 of the incoming river at the head of Lake Marsh, and 

 caught enough to keep body and soul together after a fashion. 

 This manner of fishing of theirs is quite common in this 

 part of the country, and at the mouth of a number of 

 streams, or where the main stream debouches into a lake, 

 their long willow poles diiven into the mud far enough to 

 prevent washing away, are often seen sticking up, swinging 

 backward and forward by the force of the current, and on 

 closer examination they reveal a sinew line tied to them 

 about or a little above the water line. They occasionally 

 did us good service as buoys, indicating the mud flats which 

 we could thereby avoid, but the number of fish that we ever 

 saw taken off of them was not alarming. The greatest num- 

 ber are usually secured by means of their double-pronged 



fish-spear, which is such a common fishing instrument 

 among nearly all the nations of sub-arctic America, and even 

 further south and north, and which I represent in the engrav- 

 ing. 



The bent arms are made of very elastic wood or of the 

 horn of mountain goat, musk-ox, or some such material, and 

 armed at their free ends with re-entering sharpened spikes 

 of metal, the long pole to which the bent arms are attached 

 having a third spike, complete the triangle of barbs which 

 receive the fish when speared from overhead, 8 in the 

 figure being a salmon's back as the harpoon is applied. I 

 never noticed the Tahk-heesh or "Sticks," with any nets, 

 although they could easily have had them, so slight were my 

 investigations in this respect. Among my trading material 

 to pay for services, fish hooks were eagerly sought for by all 

 of the Indians, until after White Biver was passed, and then 

 the Yukon becomes too muddy for any kind of fishing de- 

 pending on the fish's eyesight. Lines they are not so eager 

 to obtain, their common ones of sinew evidently subserving 

 all their purposes. 



No good bows or arrows were seen among them, their only 

 weapons being the stereotype Hudson Bay flintlock smooth- 

 bore musket, the only kind of gun throwing a ball that this 

 great tradiug company has ever issued since they have come 

 into existence. They also sell a cheap variety of double- 

 barreled percussion-cap shotgun which the natives buy, and 

 loading them with ball find them supeiior to the first named 

 instrument of destruction (to powder). Singular as it may 

 appear, these natives, like the Esquimaux I found around 

 the northern part of Hudson's Bay, prefer the flintlock to 

 the percussion-cap, probably for the reason that the latter 

 depends on three articles of trade — caps, powder and lead — 

 while the former depends on but two of these, and the 

 chances of being short of ammunition, often many weeks' 

 journey away from these supplies, are thereby lessened. 

 These old muskets are tolerably good at forty to fifty yards, 

 and are even reasonably dangerous at two and three times 

 that distance, and in all their huntings they manage by that 

 tact peculiar to savages to get within this distance of moose, 

 black bear and caribou, and thereby to have a pretty fair 

 subsistence the year round, with a summer diet of salmon 

 and a few berries and roots. Some few of them had old 

 horse (mustang) pistols, flintlock and smoothbore, that I 

 could hardly imagine the use to which they could possibly 

 put them unless it would be to present to their enemies on 

 the verge of a war, or to give to the mother of their in- 

 tended bride as one of the gifts usual to savages under such 

 circumstances. 



This Camp 15 was on a soft boggy shore covered with 

 reeds, where a tent could not be pitched and blankets 

 could not be spread and with the raft way out in the lake 

 through soft white mud. I think that the whole combina- 

 tion, taken together and mixed with the inevitable mosquitoes 

 and a few rain showers, made about as disagreeable a predica- 

 ment as could be well imagined, and shows in a small way 

 some of the usually unmentioned concomitants of explora- 

 tion. 



On the 29th of June we passed out of Lake Marsh and 

 once more entered the river. On the lakes one man at the 

 stem oar of the raft had been sufficient, but on the river an 

 additional oarsman at the bow was needed, for at short turns 

 and nearing sunken boulders or sand and gravel hrrs or steer- 

 ing clear of eddies it was often necessary to do some lively 

 work in swinging the ponderous craft around to avoid these 

 obstacles. I believe I made the remark in a previous article 

 that managing a raft on a lake, especially with a favorable 

 wind (and you cannot mauage it at all if you have not a 

 favorable wind) was a tolerable simply affair. It was cer- 

 tainly simplicity emphasized compared with managing it on 

 a river, although one would think the reverse. Especially 

 was this so on a swift river like the Yukon or any of its 

 branches. Naturally a raft or any floating object will keep 

 the center of the current of a stream if only left alone, after 

 it is once put on that part, but the number of_ things that 

 present themselves from time to time to drag it out of this 

 channel seem marvelous. Old watermen and lumbermen 

 know that when a river is rising it is very hard to keep the 

 channel, and even the drift wood lines the shores of the 

 stream, and they eagerly await the time when this com- 

 mences flowing along the main current or at least is equally 

 distributed over the water, for then they know that the water 

 has started to subside, or is at a "stand still," as they say. 



Again, a river with soft banks (and in going the whole 

 length of the Yukon, over 2,000 miles, we saw all varieties 

 of shore), the swift current, which one desires to keepin, 

 using it for his motive power, only nears the shores at points 

 or curves, where it digs out the ground into steep perpen- 

 dicular banks, and here it is almost impossible to find a 

 camping place, and this swift current has to be rowed out 

 of to secure a camp at night, and has to be worked back 

 into after breaking camp next morning. If the banks are 

 wooded the trees that are constantly tumbling in off of these 

 places that are being cut out, and yet hauging on by their 

 roots, form a sort of chevnux ck fiise, that have received the 

 backwoods cognomen of ••sweepers," and a man on the 

 atmospheric side of a raft plunging through them wishes 

 he was dead, or at least that he was a muskrat so that he 

 could dive out. To the inexperienced man who has never 

 had his hair combed by a whole timber district in a brief 

 minute these remarks may seem absurd, but to the old vet- 

 eran raftsman it will awaken many a sigh of sympathy from 

 his breast as he picks splinters three inches long out of it 

 and digs the moss driftwood and leaves out of his eyes to 

 look at bis hat dancing on a limb a mile back, and takes an 

 inventory of stock to see if that is all that is lost. 



Again, when an island is made out ahead, the varieties of 

 guesses as to which side the raft will pass shows how hard it 

 is to tell, and it would be a splendid question for a civil ser- 

 vice reform examination. It takes a peculiarly practiced 

 eye to follow the line of the current of the stream from the 

 raft's position beyond any obstruction in sight a good dis- 

 tance ahead, and more times than one our hardest work was 

 rewarded by stranding us on the very bar or flat we were 

 striving to avoid. The position of the sun, the clearness 

 and swiftness of the water, the nature and strength of the 

 wind blowing, however light it might be, and a dozen other 

 abstruse functions determined whether a person could solve 

 this apparently simple problem. If the upper point of the 

 island that split the current around its two sides could be 

 determined (and this was often as hard a problem as the 

 other at any great distance) one could tell by projecting a 

 tree directly beyond this point against the distant hills or 

 mountains,' and if it crept along them to the right, the raft 

 might pass to the left of the island, and surely would do so 

 if the current was not deflected by some bar or shoal be- 

 tween the raft and the island. And such shoals and bars of 

 gravel, sand and niui are very common obstructions 



in front of islands, much more common than one 

 would suppose, and too common not to be some 

 dependency between them. These bars were not 

 prolongations from the point of the island, but sub- 

 merged islands, just in front of them, and between the two 

 probably a steamboat could have passed. Using trees as 

 guides to tell on which side of the island the raft might pass 

 was, as I have said, not so easy as appears at first sight, for 

 unless the tree directly over the splitting point of the current 

 could be made out, all guesses were of but little value. The 

 trees on the right and left flanks were always the most con- 

 spicuous by being fewer in number titan the'dense growth of 

 the center of the island, and persons were prone to use these 

 in making their calculations, and one can readily reason that 

 when they were near and the island wide, both outside trees 

 would appear to diverge, and according as you took right or 

 left you would surmise you were going to left or right of the 

 island. As a person sttod on the' bow, or down-stream end 

 of a raft, and looked out on still water flowing along, the 

 imagination easily conceives that they can follow upfrorn 

 that position to anything ahead aud see the direction of the 

 current leadiug straight for it. Again, eddies and slack cur- 

 rents are great nuisances, for though you may not get into 

 the very heart of them, every time the sum total in a day's 

 drift that they can injure you is considerable, and by a little 

 careful management in steering the raft they can neatly al- 

 ways be avoided. Of course, you are often called upon to 

 choose between them and other impediments, so that the mind 

 is constantly alert as you drift on. 



In a stream with no eddies or slack currents, every- 

 thing goes happy until along toward evening, when you 

 want to go into camp and the river tearing along at four and 

 live miles an hour. 1 defy any person, who has never been 

 similarly situated, to have any adequate conception of how 

 a ponderous vessel like our raft, made of large logs and 

 loaded with four or five tons, will bring up on any obstacle 

 going at the rate already mentioned. If there are'no eddies 

 or slack currents into which it can be rowed or steered and 

 its progress stopped or slackened, it is almost impossible to 

 go into camp, for should the raft strike end on, a side log 

 may be torn out and the raft converted into a lozenge by the 

 shock. Under these circumstances we would bring the* raft 

 close into the shore, and with the bow oar hold the head out, 

 while with the steering oar the stern end would be thrown 

 against the bank, and this f actional brake would be kept up 

 until the raftsloWed down a little, when one or two, or even 

 a half a dozen would jump ashore at a favorable spot, aud 

 with a rope complete the slackening until it was a gait that 

 would warrant twisting the rope u round a tree on the bank 

 and a cross log on the raft, when from both places the tope 

 would be slowJy allowed to play out under strong aud in- 

 creasing friction, or "snubbing," as logmeu call it, and this 

 would bring the craft to a stand where she woidd receive a 

 series of snug lashings if the current was swift. 



Good camping places were not to be had in every stretch 

 of the river, and worse than all, they had to >e picked out a 

 long ways ahead in order to swing the rait into them from 

 the middle of the broad river. Oftentimes a tine place would 

 be seen just as we wer» abreast of it, thathad been concealed 

 until then by some heavily wooded spur or point, and then 

 of course it would be too late to reach it with our slow craft 

 and to go skimming along near shore was to compromise a 

 good deal of our rapid gait. Running from swift into slacker 

 water could be readily done by simply pointing the craft in 

 the direction one wanted to go, but the reverse was not so 

 easy, at least by the same easy means. I suppase the proper 

 way to manage such an amphibious animal as a raft would 

 be by side oars and rowing it end on, but as our two end 

 oars — bow and stern — were the most convenient for work, 

 and in going into camp" at night or seeking the middle of the 

 current in the morning we used them entirely, and iw 

 our bundle of logs broadside on to the position we desired, 

 that is, if nothing prevented. We generally kept the bow 

 end inclined to the shore we were trying the reach, and this, 

 in passing from swift to slack, water helped us as already 

 stated, and in a three-mile, current we could keep at about 

 au angle of thirty degrees from the axis of the .stream as we 

 made shorewards, and thus roughly calculate the spot on the 

 beach where we would bring up. The greater or less swift- 

 ness of the current would vary this angle of course, and oar 

 calculations accordingly. 



Our bundle of effects on the two decks made quite high 

 piles fore and aft, and when a high wind was blowing — and 

 Alaska in the summer is the land of wind — we had a Bailing 

 power with us that we could not lower, and that often 

 swept us under ' 'sweepers" or dragged us over bars or sent 

 us down unwelcomed channels of slack water and in violent 

 gales actually held us against the bank and successfully" 

 vetoed all possible movements forward. During hot days on 

 the wide, open river the sun would come down with a blister- 

 ing effect that would make one feel as if he was floating on 

 the Nile or Niger, anywhere in fact except under the shadows 

 of the Arctic Circle. Roughly improvised tent flies helped 

 us screen ourselves to a limited extent from this equatorial 

 torment, but if built too high, the stern oarsman, who had 

 charge of the "ship," could see nothing ahead and it would 

 have to be pulled clown. 



"Cut-offs" through channels that led straight across were 

 often most deceptive affairs, the swifter currents always 

 swinging around the great bends, and time was always made 

 by keeping in them. Especially bad was a peculiarly se- 

 ductive "cut-off" with a swift current as you entered it, on 

 account of flowing over a bar, and then immediately deepen- 

 ing the current would slow down to a rate that was provok- 

 ing beyond measure as you saw piece after piece of drift 

 wood go rushing by in the main channel behind you. and in 

 a little while could be recognized passing in front, having 

 "taken the longest way r around and the shortest way home," 

 especially if both ends of the "cut-off" were visible' from its 

 interior. 



Of submerged obstructions, snags were of little account, 

 for the great ponderous craft would go wading through 

 them. Sand, mud and gravel bars were by far the worst 

 that we had to contend with, and I think I have given them 

 in the order of their general meanness in raft navigation. 

 Sand was particularly" obstreperous, and when the gridiron 

 of logs ran up on one in a swift current there was "fun 

 ahead," to use a Western expression of negation. Sometimes 



the mere jumping overboard of all the crew would send the 

 craft ahead a few yards, and in lucky instances clear the 

 obstruction; but, this was seldom, aud those who made pre- 

 parations for hard work were seldom disappointed. In a 

 swift current the water would sweep out the sand around 

 the logs until its buoyaucy would prevent its sinking any 

 lower, and out of this rut the great bulky thing would have- 

 to be lifted before it would budge an inch iu horizontal direc- 

 tion, and when this was done we would often be cheered by 



