Golden Alaska Part 2

This river flows through a wide and somewhat arid valley, and was roughly prospected about 1887 by men who reported finding fine gold all along its course, and also in tributaries of the lake. As the mountains about the head of the lake belong to the Ca.s.siar range, upon whose southern slopes the Ca.s.siar mines are situated, there is every reason to suppose that gold will ultimately be found there in paying quant.i.ties.

This part of the Lewes is called Thirty-mile River, under the impression that it is really a tributary of the Teslintoo, which is, in fact, wider than the Lewes at the junction (Teslintoo, width 575 feet; Lewes, 420 feet), but it carries far less water. From this confluence the course is north, in a deep, swift, somewhat turbid current, through the crooked defiles of the Seminow hills. Several auriferous bars have been worked here, and some sh.o.r.e-placers, including the rich Ca.s.siar bar. Thirty-one miles below the Teslintoo the Big Salmon, or D'Abbadie River, enters from the southeast--an important river, 350 feet wide, having clear blue water flowing deep and quiet in a stream navigable by steamboats for many miles. Its head is about 150 miles away, not far from Teslin Lake, in some small lakes reached by the salmon, and surrounded by granite mountains. Prospectors have traced all its course and found fine gold in many places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAVIDSON GLACIER. CHILKAT INLET.]

Thirty-four miles below the Big Salmon, west-north-west, along a comparatively straight course, carries the boatman to the Little Salmon, or Daly River, where the valley is so broad that no mountains are anywhere in sight, only lines of low hills at a distance from the banks.

Five miles below this river the river makes an abrupt turn to the southwest around Eagle's Nest rock, and 18 miles beyond that reaches the Nordenskiold, a small, swift, clear-watered tributary from the southwest. The rocks of all this part of the river show thin seams of coal, and gold has been found on several bars. The current now flows nearly due north and a dozen miles below the Nordenskiold carries one to the second and last serious obstruction to navigation in the Rink rapids, as Schwatka called them, or Five-finger, as they are popularly known, referring to five large ma.s.ses of rock that stand like towers in mid channel. These other islands back up the water and render its currents strong and turbulent, but will offer little opposition to a good steamboat. Boatmen descending the river are advised to hug the right bank, and a landing should be made twenty yards above the rapids in any eddy, where a heavily loaded boats should be lightened. The run should be made close along the sh.o.r.e, and all bad water ends when the Little Rink Rapids have been pa.s.sed, six miles below. Just below the rapids the small Tatshun River comes in from the right. Then the valley broadens out, the current quiets down and a pleasing landscape greets the eye as bend after bend is turned. A long washed bank on the northeast side is called Hoo-che-koo Bluff, and soon after pa.s.sing it one finds himself in the midst of the pretty Ingersoll archipelago, where the river widens out and wanders among hundreds of islets.

Fifty-five miles by the river below Rink Rapids, the confluence of the Lewes and Pelly is reached, and the first sign of civilization in the ruins of old Fort Selkirk, with such recent and probably temporary occupation as circ.u.mstances may cause. Before long, undoubtedly, a flouris.h.i.+ng permanent settlement will grow up in this favorable situation.

The confluence here of the Lewes and Pelly rivers forms the Yukon, which thenceforth pursues an uninterrupted course of 1,650 miles to Behring Sea. The country about the confluence is low, with extensive terrace flats running back to the bases of rounded hills and ridges. The Yukon below the junction averages about one-quarter of a mile in width, and has an average depth of about 10 feet, with a surface velocity of 4 miles an hour. A good many gravel bars occur, but no s.h.i.+fting sand. The general course nearly to White River, 96 miles, is a little north of west, and many islands are seen; then the river turns to a nearly due north course, maintained at Fort Reliance. The White River is a powerful stream, plunging down loaded with silt, over ever s.h.i.+fting sand bars.

Its upper source is problematical, but is probably in the Alaskan Mountains near the head of the Tenana and Forty-mile Creek.

For the next ten miles the river spreads out to more than a mile wide and becomes a maze of islands and bars, the main channel being along the western sh.o.r.e, where there is plenty of water. This brings one to Stewart river, which is the most important right-hand tributary between the Pelly and the Porcupine. It enters from the east in the middle of a wide valley, and half a mile above its mouth is 200 yards in width; the current is slow and the water dark colored. It has been followed to its headquarters in the main range of the Rockies, and several large branches, on some of which there are remarkable falls, have been traced to their sources through the forested and snowy hills where they rise.

These sources are perhaps 200 miles from the mouth, but as none of the wanderers were equipped with either geographical knowledge or instruments nothing definite is known. Reports of traces of precious metals have been brought back from many points in the Stewart valley, but this information is as vague as the other thus far. All reports agree that a light draught steamboat could go to the head of the Stewart and bar up its feeders. There is a trading post at its mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW FROM INDIAN CHURCH, LOOKING NORTHEAST.]

The succeeding 125 miles holds what is at present the most interesting and populous part of the Yukon valley. The river varies from half to three-quarters of a mile wide and is full of islands. About 23 miles below Stewart River a large stream enters from the west called Sixty-mile Creek by the miners, who have had a small winter camp and trading store there for some years, and have explored its course for gold to its rise in the mountains west of the international boundary.

Every little tributary has been named, among them (going up), Charley's Fork, Edwards Creek and Hawley Creek, in Canada, and then, on the American side of the line, Gold Creek, Miller Creek and Bed Rock Creek.

The sand and gravel of all these have yielded fine gold and some of them, as Miller Creek, have become noted for their richness. Forty-four miles below Sixty-mile takes one to Dawson City, at the mouth of Klondike River,--the center of the highest productiveness and greatest excitement during 1897, when the gold fields of the interior of Alaska first attracted the attention of the world. Leaving to another special chapter an account of them, the itinerary may be completed by saying that 6 miles below the mouth of the Klondike is Fort Reliance, an old private trading post of no present importance. Twelve and a half miles farther the Chan-din-du River enters from the east, and 33 below that in the mouth of Forty-mile Creek, or Cone Hill River, which until the past year was the most important mining region of the interior. It took its name from the supposition that it was 40 miles from Fort Reliance, but the true distance is 46 miles. On the south side of the outlet of this stream is the old trading post and modern town of Forty-Mile, and on the north side the more recent settlement Cudahy.

Both towns are, of course, on the western bank of the Yukon, which is here about half a mile wide. Five miles below Cudahy, Coal Creek comes in from the east, and nearly marks the Alaskan boundary, where a narrowed part of the river admits one to United States territory.

Prominent landmarks here are two great rocks, named by old timers Old Man rock, on the west bank, and Old Woman, on the east bank, in reference to Indian legends attached to them. Some twenty miles west of the boundary--the river now having turned nearly due west in its general course--Seventy-mile, or Klevande Creek, comes in from the south, and somewhat below it the Tat-on-duc from the north. It was ascended in 1887 by Mr. Ogilvie, who describes its lower valley as broad and well timbered, but its upper part flows through a series of magnificent canons, one of which half a mile long, is not more than 50 feet wide with vertical walls fully 700 feet in height. There are said to be warm sulphur springs along its course, and the Indians regard it as one of the best hunting fields, sheep being especially numerous on the mountains in which it heads, close by the international boundary, where it is separated by only a narrow divide from Ogilvie River, one of the head streams of the Peel river, and also from the head of the Porcupine, to which there is an Indian trail. Hence the miners call this Sheep River. The rocks along this stream are all sandstones, limestone and conglomerates, with many thin calcite veins. Large and dense timber prevails, and game is abundant.

Below the mouth of the Tat-on-duc several small streams enter, of which the Kandik on the north and the Kolto or Charley's River--at the mouth of which there used to be the home of an old Indian notability named Charley--are most important. About 160 miles from the boundary the Yukon flats are reached, and the center of another important mining district--that of Birch Creek and the Upper Tenana--at Circle City, the usual terminus of the trip up the Lower Yukon from St. Michael.

HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UPPER YUKON VALLEY.

The sources of the Yukon are just within the northern boundary of British Columbia (Lat. 62 deg.) among a ma.s.s of mountains forming a part of the great uplift of the Coast range, continuous with the Sierras of California and the Puget Sound coast. Here spring the sources of the Stikeen, flowing southwest to the Pacific, of the Fraser, flowing south through British Columbia, and of the Liard flowing northeasterly to the Mackenzie. Headwaters of the Stikeen and Liard interlock, indeed, along an extensive or sinuous watershed having an elevation of 3,000 feet or less and extending east and west. There are, however, many wide and comparatively level bottom lands scattered throughout this region and numerous lakes. The coast ranges here have an average width of about eighty miles and border the continent as far north as Lynn Ca.n.a.l, where they trend inland behind the St. Elias Alps. Many of their peaks exceed 8,000 feet in height, but few districts have been explored west.

Eastward of this mountain axis, and separated from it by the valleys of the Fraser and Columbia in the south and the Yukon northward, is the Continental Divide, or Rocky Mountains proper, which is broken through (as noted above) by the Laird, but north of that canon-bound river forms the watershed between the Liard and Yukon and between the Yukon and Mackenzie. These summits attain a height of 7,000 to 9,000 feet, and rise from a very complicated series of ranges extending northward to the Arctic Ocean, and very little explored. The valley of the Yukon, then, lies between the Rocky Mountains, separating its drainage basin from that of the Mackenzie, and the Coast range and St. Elias Alps separating it from the sea. Granite is the princ.i.p.al rock in both these great lines of watershed-uplift, and all the mountains show the effects of an extensive glaciation, and all the higher peaks still bear local remnants of the ancient ice-sheet.

The headwaters of the great river are gathered into three princ.i.p.al streams. First, the Lewes, easternmost, with its large tributaries, the Teslintoo and Big Salmon; second, the Pelly, with its great western tributary, the MacMillon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE IN JUNEAU--MOUNTAINS AND INDIAN HOUSES.]

The Lewes River has been described. It was known to the fur traders as early as 1840, and the Chilkat and Chilkoot pa.s.ses were occasionally used by their Indian couriers from that time on. The gold fields in British Columbia from 1863 onwards stimulated prospecting in the northern and coastal parts of that province, and in 1872 prospectors reached the actual headwaters of the Lewes from the south, but were probably not aware of it; and that country was not scientifically examined until the reconnaissance of Dr. G. M. Dawson in 1887. In 1866 Ketchum and La Barge, of the Western Union Telegraph survey, ascended the Lewes as far as the lakes still called Ketchum and La Barge. In 1883 Lieut. Frederick Schwatka, U. S. A., and an a.s.sistant named Hayes, and several Indians, made their way across from Taka inlet to the head of Tahgish (a Tako) Lake, and descended the Lewes on a raft to Fort Selkirk, studying and naming the valley. From Fort Selkirk an entirely new route was followed toward the mountains forming the divide between the Yukon and the White and Copper rivers, which flow to the Gulf of Alaska, north of Mt. St. Elias. After discovering a pa.s.s little more than 5,000 feet high, they struck the Chityna River and followed that to the Copper River and thence to the coast. The Copper River Valley was thoroughly explored somewhat later by Lieuts. Abercrombie and Allen, U.

S. A., who added greatly to knowledge of that large river, which, however, seems to have no good harbor at its mouth. The miners began to use the Chilkoot Pa.s.s and the Lewes River route to the Yukon district in 1884. Some additions were made to geography in this region by an exploring expedition despatched to Alaska in 1890 by Frank Leslie's Weekly, under Messrs. A. J. Wells, E. J. Glave and A. B. Schanz. They entered by way of Chilkat pa.s.s and came to a large lake at the head of the Tah-keena tributary of the Lewes, which they named Lake Arkell, though it was probably the same earlier described by the Drs. Krause.

Here Mr. Glave left the party and striking across the coast range southward discovered the headwaters of the Alsekh and descended to Dry Bay. At Forty-mile creek Mr. Wells and a party crossed over into the basin of the Tanana and increased the knowledge of that river. Mr.

Schanz went down the Yukon and explored the lower region. In 1892 Mr.

Glave again went to Alaska, demonstrated the possibility of taking pack horses over the Chilkat trail, and with an aid named Dalton made an extensive journey southward along the crest of the watershed between the Yukon valley and the coast.

Turning now to the Pelly, we find that this was the earliest avenue of discovery. The Pelly rises in lakes under the 62nd parallel, just over a divide from the Finlayson and Frances Lake, the head of the Frances River, the northern source of the Liard, and this region was entered by the Hudson Bay Company as early as 1834, and gradually exploring the Laird River and its tributaries, in 1840 Robert Campbell crossed over the divide north of Lake Finlayson (at the head of the Frances), and discovered (at a place called Pelly Banks) a large river flowing northwest which he named Pelly. In 1843 he descended the river to its confluence with the Lewes (which he then named), and in 1848 he built a post for the H. B. Company at that point, calling it Fort Selkirk. This done, in 1850, Campbell floated down the river as far as the mouth of the Porcupine, where three years previously (1847) Fort Yukon had been established by Mr. Murray, who (founded by James Bell in 1842) crossed over from the mouth of the Mackenzie. The Yukon may thus be said to have been "discovered" at several points independently. The Russians, who knew it only at the mouth, called it Kwikhpak, after an Eskimo name. The English at Fort Yukon, learned that name from the Indians there, and the upper river was the Pelly. The English and Russian traders soon met, and when Campbell came down in 1850 the ident.i.ty of the whole stream was established. The name Yukon gradually took the place of all others on English maps and is now recognized for the whole stream from the junction of the Lewes and Pelly to the delta.

The Yukon basin, east of the Alaskan boundary, is known in Canada as the Yukon district, and contains about 150,000 square miles. This is nearly equal to the area of France, is greater than that of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by 71,000 square miles, and nearly three times bigger than that of the New England states. To this must be added an area of about 180,000 square miles, west of the boundary, drained by the Yukon upon its way to the sea through Alaska. Nevertheless, Dr. G.

M. Dawson and other students of the matter are of the opinion that the river does not discharge as much water as does the Mackenzie--nor could it be expected to do so, since the drainage area of the Mackenzie is more than double that of the Yukon, while the average annual precipitation of rain over the two areas seems to be substantially similar. Remembering these figures and that the basin of the Mississippi has no less than 1,225,000 square miles as compared with the 330,000 square miles of the Yukon basin, it is plain that the statement often heard that the Yukon is next to the Mississippi in size, is greatly exaggerated. In fact, its proportions, from all points of view, are exceeded by those of the Nile, Ganges, St. Lawrence and several other rivers of considerably less importance than the Mississippi.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY MORNING AT JUNEAU.]

Resuming the historical outline, a short paragraph will suffice to complete the simple story down to the year 1896.

Robert Campbell had scarcely returned from his river voyage to his duties at Fort Selkirk, when he discovered that its location in the angle between the rivers was untenable, owing to ice-jams and floods.

The station was therefore moved, in the season of 1852 across to the west bank of the Yukon, a short distance below the confluence, and new buildings were erected. These had scarcely been completed, when, on August 1st, a band of Chilkat Indians from the coast came down the river and early in the morning seized upon the post, surprising Mr. Campbell in bed, and ordered him to take his departure before night. They were not at all rough with him or his few men, but simply insisted that they depart, which they did, taking such personal luggage as they could put into a boat and starting down stream. The Indians then pillaged the place, and after feasting on all they could eat and appropriating what they could carry away, set fire to the remainder and burned the whole place to the ground. One chimney still stands to mark the spot, and others lie where they fell. This act was not dictated by wanton destructiveness on the part of the Chilkats--bad as they undoubtedly were and are; but was in pursuance of a theory. The establishment of the post there interfered with the monopoly of trade that they had enjoyed theretofore, with all the Indians of the interior, to whom they brought salable goods from the coast, taking in exchange furs, copper, etc., at an exorbitant profit, which they enforced by their superior brutality. The Hudson Bay Company was robbing them of this, hence the demolition of the post, which was too remote to be profitably sustained against such opposition.

A little way down the river, Mr. Campbell met a fleet of boats bringing up his season's goods, and many friendly Indians. These were eager to pursue the robbers, but Campbell thought it best not to do so. He turned the supply-boats back to Fort Yukon and led his own men up the Pelly and over the pa.s.s to the Frances and so down the Liard to Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie. Such is the story of the ruins of Fort Selkirk. Fort Yukon flourished as the only trading post until the purchase of Alaska by the United States, when Captain Raymond, an army officer, was sent to inform the factor there that his post was on United States territory, and require him to leave. He did so as soon as Rampart House could be built to take its place up the Porcupine. Old Fort Yukon then fell into ruins, and Rampart House itself was soon abandoned. In 1873 an opposition appeared in the independent trading house of Harper & McQuestion, men who had come into the country from the south, after long experience in the fur trade. They had posts at various points, occupied Fort Reliance for several years, and in 1886 established a post at the mouth of the Stewart River for the miners who had begun to gather there two years before. Many maps mark "Reed's House" as a point on the upper Stewart, but no such a trading-post ever existed there, although there was a fis.h.i.+ng station and shelter-hut on one of its upper branches at an early day. This firm became the representatives of the Alaska Commercial Company (a San Francisco corporation) and opened a store in 1887 at Forty Mile, where they still do business.

Gold Discoveries.--The presence of fine float gold in river sands was early discovered by the Hudson Bay Company men, but in accordance with the former policy of that company, no mining was done and as little said about it as possible. The richness of the Ca.s.siar mines led to some prospecting northward as early as 1872, and by 1880 wandering gold hunters had penetrated to the Testintos, where for several years $8 to $10 a day of fine gold was sluiced out during the season by the small colony. In 1886 Ca.s.siar Bar, on the Lewes, below there, was opened, and a party of four took out $6,000 in 30 days, while other neighboring bars yielded fair wages. By that time Stewart River was becoming attractive, and many miners worked placers there profitably in 1885, '86 and '87. During the fall of 1886 three or four men took the engines out of the little steamboat "New Racket," which was laid up for the winter there, and used them to drive a set of pumps lifting water into sluice-boxes; and with this crude machinery each man cleared $1,000 in less than a month. A judicious estimate is, that the Stewart River placers yielded $100,000 in 1885 and '86.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARBOR OF SITKA.]

Prospecting went on unremittingly, but nothing else was found of promise until 1886, when coa.r.s.e gold was reported upon Forty Mile Creek, or the s.h.i.+tando River, as it was known to the Indians, and a local rush took place to its canons, the princ.i.p.al attraction being Franklin Gulch, named after its discoverer. Three or four hundred men gathered there by the season of 1887, and all did well. This stream is a "bed-rock"

creek,--that is, one in the bed of which there is very little drift; and in many places the bed-rock was sc.r.a.ped with knives to get the little loose stuff out of crannies. Some nuggets were found. At its mouth are extensive bars along the Yukon, which carry gold throughout their depth.

During 1888 the season was very unfavorable and not much accomplished. Sixty Mile Creek was brought to notice, and Miller Gulch proved richer than usual. It is one of the headwaters of Sixty Mile, and some 70 miles from the mouth of the river where, in 1892, a trading store, saw-mill and little wintering-town was begun. Miller Creek is about 7 miles long, and its valley is filled with vast deposits of auriferous drift. In 1892 rich strikes were made and 125 miners gathered there, paying $10 a day for help, and many making fortunes. One clean-up of 1,100 ounces was reported. Glacier Creek, a neighboring stream, exhibited equal chances and drew many claimants, some of whom migrated thither in mid-winter, drawing their sleds through the woods and rocks with the mercury 30 degrees below zero. All of these gulches and other golden headwaters on both Forty Mile and Sixty Mile Creek, are west of the boundary in Alaska; but the mouths of the main streams and supply points are in Canadian territory. In all, the great obstacle is the difficulty of getting water up on the bars without expensive machinery; and the same is true of the rich gravel along the banks of the Yukon itself. Birch Creek was the next find of importance, and was promising enough to draw the larger part of the local population, which by this time had been considerably increased, for the news of the richness of the Forty Mile gulches had reached the outside world and attracted adventurous men and not a few women from the coast not only, but from British Columbia and the United States. A rival to Harper & McQuestion, agents of the Alaska Commercial Company, appeared in the North American Transportation and Trading Company, which increased the transportation service on the Yukon River, by which most of the new arrivals entered, and by establis.h.i.+ng large compet.i.tive stores at Fort Cudahy (Forty Mile) and elsewhere reduced the price of food and other necessaries. About this time, also, the Canadian government sent law officers and a detachment of mounted police, so that the Yukon District began to take a recognized place in the world.

Birch Creek is really a large river rising in the Iauana Hills, just west of the boundary and flowing northwest, parallel with the Yukon, to a debouchment some 20 miles west of Fort Yukon. Between the two rivers lie the "Yukon Flats," and at one point they are separated by only six miles. Here, at the Yukon end of the road arose Circle City, so-called from its proximity to the Arctic Circle. This is an orderly little town of regular streets, and has a recorder of claims, a store, etc.

Birch Creek has been thoroughly explored, and in 1894 yielded good results. The gold was in coa.r.s.e flakes and nuggets, so that $40 a day was made by some men, while all did well. The drift is not as deep here as in most other streams, and water can be applied more easily and copiously,--a vast advantage. Molymute, Crooked, Independence, Mastadon and Preacher creeks are the most noteworthy tributaries of this rich field.

The Koyukuk River, which flows from the borders of the Arctic Ocean, gathering many mountain tributaries, to enter the Yukon at Nulato, was also prospected in 1892, '93 and '94, and indications of good placers have been discovered there, but the northerly, exposed and remote situation has caused them to receive little attention thus far.

THE KLONDIKE.

During the autumn of 1896 several men and women, none of whom were "old miners," discouraged by poor results lower down the river resolved to try prospecting in the Klondike gulch. They were laughed at and argued with; were told that prospectors years ago had been all over that valley, and found only the despised "flour gold," which was too fine to pay for was.h.i.+ng it out. Nevertheless they persisted and went at work.

Only a short time elapsed, when, on one of the lower southside branches of the stream they found pockets of flakes and nuggets of gold far richer than anything Alaska had ever shown before. They named the stream Bonanza, and a small tributary El Dorado. Others came and nearly everyone succeeded. Before spring nearly a ton and a half of gold had been taken from the frozen ground. Nuggets weighing a pound (troy) were found. A thousand dollars a day was sometimes saved despite the rudeness of the methods, but these things happened where pockets were struck.

Probably the total clean-up from January to June was not less than $1,500,000. The report spread and all those in the interior of Alaska concentrated there, where a "camp" of tents and shanties soon sprang up at the mouth of the Klondike called Dawson City. A correspondent of the New York Sun describes it as beautifully situated, and a very quiet, orderly town, due to the strict supervision of the Canadian mounted police, who allowed no pistols to be carried, but a great place for gambling with high stakes. It bids fair to become the mining metropolis of the northwest, and had about 3,000 inhabitants before the advance-guard of the present "rush" reached there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIVE FINGER RAPIDS, YUKON RIVER.]

Hundreds of claims were staked out and worked in all the little gulches opening along Bonanza, Eldorado, Hunker, Bear and other tributaries of the Klondike, and of Indian River, a stream thirty miles south of it, and a greater number seem to be of equal richness with those first worked. All this is within a radius south and east of 20 miles from Dawson City, and most of it far nearer. The country is rough, wooded hills, and the same trouble as to water is met there as elsewhere, yet riches were obtained by many men in a few weeks without exhausting their claims.

So remote and shut in has this region been in the winter that no word of this leaked out until the river opened and a party of successful miners came down to the coast and took pa.s.sage on the steamer Excelsior for San Francisco. They arrived on July 14, and no one suspected that there was anything extraordinary in the pa.s.senger list or cargo, until a procession of weather beaten men began a march to the Selby Smelting works, and there began to open sacks of dust and nuggets, until the heap made something not seen in San Francisco since the days of '49. The news flashed over the world, and aroused a fire of interest; and when three days later the Portland came into Seattle, bringing other miners and over $1,000,000 in gold, there was a rush to go north which bids fair to continue for months to come, for one of the articles of faith in the creed of the Yukon miner is that many other gulches will be found as rich as these. One elderly man, who went in late last fall and with partners took four claims on Eldorado Creek, told a reporter that his pickings had amounted to $112,000, and that he was confident that the ground left was worth $2,000,000 more. "I want to say," he exclaims, "that I believe there is gold in every creek in Alaska. Certain on the Klondike the claims are not spotted. One seems to be as good as another.

It's gold, gold, gold, all over. It's yards wide and deep. All you have to do is to run a hole down."

One might go on quoting such rhapsodies, arising from success, to end of the book, but it is needless, for every newspaper has been full of them for a month.

One man and his wife got $135,000; another, formerly a steamboat deck-hand, $150,000; another, $115,000; a score or more over $50,000, and so on. These sums were savings after having the heavy expenses of the winter, and most of them had dug out only a small part of their ground.

It is curious in view of this success to read the only descriptive note the present writer can discover in early writings as to this gold river.

It occurs in Ogilvie's report of his explorations of 1887, and is as follows: "Six and a half miles above Reliance the Tou-Dac River of the Indians (Deer River of Schwatka) enter from the east. It is a small river about 40 yards wide at the mouth and shallow; the water is clear and transparent and of a beautiful blue color. The Indians catch great numbers of salmon here. A miner had prospected up this river for an estimated distance of 40 miles in the season of 1887. I did not see him."