BRI

CHAPTER VII.

Adjacent Territories and their Inhabitants.

RITISH COLUMBIA is too well known in America to require much notice here. It is probable that the mines of coal or gold, the only wealth of that colony, extend northward into Alaska. Further exploration in the southern portion of that narrow strip of coast is necessary to determine the localities where the above-mentioned minerals crop out; but that they exist there is little doubt.

The colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia have been recently united under one government, with the capital at New Westminster. The costly machinery of two British colonial governments proved too heavy a burden for the slender resources. of the colonists, and necessitated the change. There can be little doubt but that annexation to the United States would be hailed with joy by the majority of the inhabitants of this region, who have already taken to celebrating the Fourth of July with a heartiness not surpassed by the citizens of the United States on the adjacent shores of Puget Sound.

Victoria, V. I., formerly a thriving town of some twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, is now comparatively depopulated. After the placer mines of British Columbia had become worked out, and quartz mills became a necessity, the population dwindled. For some time, as a free port, it invited some commerce, and was a noted base for smuggling operations. The consolidation of the two colonies, and the imposition of import duties, still more reduced its prosperity, and long lines of deserted houses stand in evidence of the fact that mineral wealth alone will never make a prosperous country. The fisheries of British Columbia have been neglected, her timber is in great part inaccessible, and she has no farming land, except in small isolated patches.

Lakes Kennicott and Ketchum, the sources of the Yukon, are

in British Columbia. The exploration of this part of the territory is mainly due to the employés of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Táhco Lake was reached in August, 1867, by Mr. Michael Byrnes, a miner, well known in Caribou. He had been temporarily employed as an explorer by the Company. The object which tempted him to leave the gold-fields of Caribou was more the hope of finding gold than the love of exploration. Unaccompanied, except by a few Indians, he made his way over hills, down narrow cañons and difficult rapids, until he lighted his pipe and built his camp-fire on the beach of Táhco Lake. In June of the same year, Ketchum and Lebarge had visited Fort Selkirk, or rather the spot, distinguished by two rubble-built chimneys, where the fort had stood before it was burnt by the Chilkáhts. One hundred and twenty miles, two days down stream, easy travel, nay, hardly a day and a half in their swift birch canoes, and the explorations would have been finished, and he would have earned the honor of completing them. That evening a canoe with two Indians arrived in haste, with the news that the enterprise was abandoned, and Mr. Byrnes might return, as the Company would not require his services as explorer any longer; the success of the Atlantic Cable rendering the failure of this audacious but poorly executed enterprise no longer a matter of doubt.

Mr. Byrnes returned, moody and silent, refusing to converse on the subject. It is said he has returned to the wilderness, still in search of gold!

The Yukon, from Fort Selkirk to the mouth of the Porcupine River, was, I believe, first descended by Mr. Campbell of the Hudson Bay Company's service. He was in charge of Fort Selkirk, and learning from the Indians that there were no obstructions to navigation, he supposed, correctly, that it would be easier to transport their furs and supplies by the way of the Porcupine and Peel Rivers, than by the more laborious route previously employed. After the first trip this was thoroughly demonstrated, and that route was followed for several years.

One day, however, in 1851, the Chilkáhts, instigated it was said by the Russians, appeared before the fort in force. Mr. Campbell and two men who held the fort saw it was of no use to exasperate them, and, like the coon in the story, came down and

let them in. No violence was offered them, except that they were tied while the Indians plundered the storehouse. Mr. Campbell afterward said, that it made his blood boil to see the goods, brought so far at the cost of so much hard work, carried off with perfect sang-froid by these good-for-nothing Indians. Prudence, however, kept him quiet, and after the Indians had had their fill of plunder, they allowed him and his men to depart in peace.

After their departure the Indians amused themselves by making a bonfire of the fort, as they had previously of Pelly Banks Fort and the post at Frances's Lake. The two blackened chimneys alone were found by Messrs. Ketchum and Lebarge on their visit in 1867.

This spot is interesting to practical men as being the head of navigation, and to botanists as being the most northern point where true pines are found on the Yukon. The trees are small, but bring cones to maturity, and from them it has been determined that the tree is the Pinus contorta of botanists. All the so-called pines on the Yukon north of this are spruce (A. alba). The scenery in the vicinity of the Stikíne, Táhco, and Lewis rivers is mountainous. The mountains do not attain any very great height. Near Fort Selkirk they are moderately high, but increase in grandeur as we descend the Yukon. Toward the Alaskan boundary the river cuts its way through a high and mountainous country. The great Rocky Mountain or Chippewyan Chain, trending with the coast-line of the continent, does not, as represented on many maps, form an unbroken line to the Arctic Sea, but bends with the coast-line, and finally merges into the Alaskan Range, which forms the backbone of the peninsula of Aliáska, and farther west the chain of the Aleutian Islands.

On the river, according to Captain Ketchum, the rocks are principally metamorphic quartzites and black and gray slates. The Yukon cuts through this chain at its broadest part in the bend, about latitude 64° N. Here the river is narrow and dark, running with the greatest impetuosity, though without rapids, for many miles. The current is such that it is only a four days' trip drifting from Fort Selkirk to the mouth of the Porcupine River, in the month of July. Later, when the water is very low, it is less rapid. Wrangell Land. - Baron Wrangell and Dr. Kyber in 1820-23 made explorations in Eastern Siberia, and received information

from the natives of high peaks visible in fine weather from Cape Yakán. In 1849, from the vicinity of Herald Island, Kellett saw high mountains, which were probably the same. On the old Russian maps land is laid down in this direction. As yet no explorers have landed upon these shores. The latest and most circumstantial account of Wrangell Land is derived from an American whaler. Captain Theodore Long, of the bark Nile, reports having seen, August 14, 1867, in lon. 180°, lat. 70° 45', land distant about sixteen miles; along which he held his course for three days. It extended east and west apparently about three degrees of longitude. Several high peaks, one supposed to be volcanic, were observed, and the eastern and western capes were named by Captain Long respectively Cape Hawaii and Cape Thomas. There was abundance of ice between the vessel and the shore, and Captain Long did not consider himself justified in risking his vessel for the pleasure of landing on the unknown coast. The passage between it and the Siberian coast has been named Long Strait.

The reports of whalers from the Arctic Sea would seem rather to point against the probability of an open Polar Sea as understood by Kane and Wrangell. While warm currents passing northward through Bering and Davis Straits would doubtless tend to keep open, even in winter, large sheets of water (such as exist, during the most extreme cold of winter, in the more rapid portions of the Yukon River), still it seems improbable that any very extensive portion should remain permanently free from ice; obstructed, as is the case with much of the Polar Sea, with islands and shoals, each gathering its girdle of ice about it. That portion of the Arctic Ocean north of Bering Strait has hitherto been unduly neglected. It offers many inducements for more thorough exploration.

In June, 1647, Michael Stádukin, a Cossack, was sent from Nijni Kolymsk to discover an island, or land separated from the continent, which was reported as being visited by the Chúkchees, with reindeer in winter, over the ice. He returned unsuccessful. This reported land may have been Wrangell Land, but was more probably the small islands off the mouth of the Kolyma River; still, if the latter was the case, it seems singular that he did not reach them without difficulty.

There are traditions among the Chúkchees of implements of wood and bone washed ashore on the northern coast, of a fashion differing from those of Chúkchee manufacture, and from those made by the Innuit to the eastward, with whom they are well acquainted.

There are also stories told how years ago, yet in the memory of Chúkchees now living, one very cold winter, strange men, speaking a different language from Chúkchee, Innuit, or Russian, came from the north over the ice, landed on the Siberian shore, took many of the Chúkchee reindeer, and went back, no one knew whither. A few years later the incursion was repeated, the Chukchees rallied to protect their property, a bloody fight ensued, many Chúkchees were killed, and the strangers retreated to the northward, and have never since been seen.

This legend may be due to the aboriginal imagination, or it may be founded on a fact; I give it as it was told; future explorers may find confirmation, or determine its mythical nature.

The Chukchee Peninsula. - That portion of Eastern Siberia which is known under this name is situated east of the valley of the Anádyr River, Chaun Bay, and Anádyr Bay. It has never been thoroughly explored, and is a desolate waste of tundra and low mountains, with small trees along the Anádyr River, and elsewhere only the moss and grass on which the reindeer feed. The argali, or mountain sheep, is said to exist in the mountains, while immense herds of wild reindeer roam over the tundri.

This peninsula, forming the western boundary of Bering Strait, and part of Bering Sea, is of interest from its near approach to our territory.

The coast, from Cape Sérdze Kámen (Heart of Stone) to East Cape, and thence to Cape Bering in Anádyr Gulf, is generally high and rocky. Granitic hills rise sharply from the water, covered with keen -edged fragments detached by the frost, and broken by the same agency to the size of a man's fist and upwards. Snow may always be found somewhere on them, if not on the summits, at least in some of the sheltered fissures of the mountain-sides.

There are no watercourses, as water filters through the immense masses of broken stone, far below the surface; and is only to be obtained near the base of the hills.