A°ril, 1919 
FOREST AND STREAM 
155 
Indians follow the run-out of ice in order to hxmt beaver 
bacon, or care for it. I made a present 
of a piece of excellent bacon to an old 
prospector who had lived on moose meat 
and fish all winter but he propmtly re- 
turned it with thanks. 
U PON our return to the cabin on the 
Stikine we met a young American 
twenty-four years old who had just 
come out of the mountains where he had 
been for a year with an uncle prospect- 
ing for gold. As I am always prone to 
ask questions I learned that he was eli- 
gible for the United States Army and 
had never registered. He said that he 
had thought of attending to it sometime, 
but upon my explaining to him the pen- 
alties for not having done so, he decided 
to attend to it at once. Like a good loyal 
American he went to Wrangell and reg- 
istered. 
This boy told us that for the two or 
three days before leaving his uncle’s 
cabin five grizzlies had been loafing about 
their mine and that he had seen another 
on the trail the day before. It was a 
twelve mile hike to that cabin and as it 
looked like a good bear hunting prospect 
we went there and though the boy’s uncle 
corroborated the boy in every respect, we 
did not see any bears but found the tracks 
of the one the boy had seen on the trail. 
The reason the boy did not go after the 
bears was that he had lost confidence in 
himself and his gun, as the result of 
having been obliged to take to a tree oc- 
casionally so he preferred to adopt the 
Golden Rule respecting bears, and espe- 
cially grizzlies. 
His uncle was the old prospector who 
did not like breakfast bacon. He cooked 
with moose fat, ate dried and corned 
moose meat, raised very good patotoes, 
and had worked until he had crippled 
himself, all for the hope of gold. He 
took me to a pit of gravel and washed a 
panful for my benefit showing me with 
pride the five little specks of color left 
in the bottom of the pan. He used a 
cradle and a rocker, sluice-boxes, and 
other primitive methods and had about 
three hundred dollars in nuggets and 
dust for his year’s work. He was writ- 
ing letters outside inviting men with 
money to come and invest in machinery 
and get rich quick, and at the same time 
help him to get rich. 
There was such a marked difference in 
the climate along the Clearwater from 
that along the Stikine, that we decided to 
start slowly down the Stikine and hunt 
as we went hoping to find the grizzlies 
out farther down the river and nearer 
the ocean. 
We had no sooner started down the 
swift flowing Stikine than a strong head 
wind made it so uncomfortable for us 
that we laid by at Mr. Frank Jackson’s 
cabin and hunted and visited with him and 
his wife for two days. Though we were 
royally entertained and urged to stay 
the relentless advance of time obliged us 
to pull out and buck the wind. The Jack- 
sons had lived there all winter practical- 
ly alone so were delighted to have com- 
pany even if only bear hunters. 
Our hundred and forty mile trip down 
the river carried us through regions com- 
paratvely free from snow to others 
where the snow still lay from five to fif- 
teen feet deep down to the water’s edge. 
In the former location the trees were 
leafing out and many varieties of birds 
were there even to the humming birds. 
Such differences in climate within such 
a short distance one cannot imagine. 
Why it is so I do not know unless it is 
the presence of the immense glaciers. 
The Big Glacier 
O NE night we camped on the opposite 
side of the river from the glacier 
locally known as the Big Glacier. 
The length of this glacier has not been 
ascertained but it has been explored by 
an international exploring party back to 
the west into the Coast Range for about 
forty miles. It presents a front on the 
river of more than a mile in width. It 
is usually quite dormant though once 
every summer an immense flood of water 
breaks loose from somewhere within its 
confines and floods the entire country at 
its mouth, and during the few days it 
takes for this water to spend its force 
the Stikine is very dangerous and often 
unnavigable in that vicinity. 
The big glacier cracked and groaned 
all night and made noises not unlike a 
large rock slide in full motion. The 
noise at one time was enough to wake 
me. My companion thought it a snow 
slide for there are many in the moun- 
tains during the periods of heavy snow. 
The next morning the whole front of the 
glacier showed fresh earth and rock 
heaped up in a great ridge on top of the 
snow indicating that the glacier had 
started to move and was pushing the 
terminal morraine ahead of it. Across 
its front it had the appearance of a large 
newly made fill composed of loose earth 
and rock, and behind it lay the great ice 
gorge cut in every direction by immense 
crevasses. 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 184 ) 
