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I MADE a second trip up the
Stickeen in August and from the head of navigation pushed inland for general
views over dry, grassy hills and plains on the Cassiar trail.
Soon after leaving Telegraph
Creek I met a merry trader who encouragingly assured me that I was going
into the most wonderful region in the world, that "the scenery up the river
was full of the very wildest freaks of nature, surpassing all other
sceneries either natural or artificial, on paper or in nature. And give
yourself no bothering care about provisions, for wild food grows in
prodigious abundance everywhere. A man was lost four days up there, but he
feasted on vegetables and berries and got back to camp in good condition. A
mess of wild parsnips and pepper, for example, will actually do you good.
And here's my advice - go slow and take the pleasures and sceneries as you
go."
At the confluence of the
first North Fork of the Stickeen I found a band of Toltan or Stick Indians
catching their winter supply of salmon in willow traps, set where the fish
are struggling in swift rapids on their way to the spawning-grounds. A large
supply had already been secured, and of course the Indians were well fed and
merry. They were camping in large booths made of poles set on end in the
ground, with many binding cross-pieces on which tons of salmon were being
dried. The heads were strung on separate poles and the roes packed in willow
baskets, all being well smoked from fires in the middle of the floor. The
largest of the booths near the bank of the river was about forty feet
square. Beds made of spruce and pine boughs were spread all around the
walls, on which some of the Indians lay asleep; some were braiding ropes,
others sitting and lounging, gossiping and courting, while a little baby was
swinging in a hammock. All seemed to be light-hearted and jolly, with work
enough and wit enough to maintain health and comfort. In the winter they are
said to dwell in substantial huts in the woods, where game, especially
caribou, is abundant. They are pale copper-colored, have small feet and
hands, are not at all negroish in lips or cheeks like some of the coast
tribes, nor so thickset, short-necked, or heavy-featured in general.
One of the most striking of
the geological features of this region are immense gravel deposits displayed
in sections on the walls of the river gorges. About two miles above the
North Fork confluence there is a bluff of basalt three hundred and fifty
feet high, and above this a bed of gravel four hundred feet thick, while
beneath the basalt there is another bed at least fifty feet thick.
From "Ward's," seventeen
miles beyond Telegraph, and about fourteen hundred feet above sea-level, the
trail ascends a gravel ridge to a pine-and-fir-covered plateau twenty-one
hundred feet above the sea. Thence for three miles the trail leads through a
forest of short, closely planted trees to the second North Fork of the
Stickeen, where a still greater deposit of stratified gravel is displayed, a
section at least six hundred feet thick resting on a red jaspery formation.
Nine hundred feet above the
river there is a slightly dimpled plateau diversified with aspen and willow
groves and mossy meadows. At "Wilson's," one and a half miles from the
river, the ground is carpeted with dwarf manzanita and the blessed Linncea
borealis, and forested with small pines, spruces, and aspens, the tallest
fifty to sixty feet high.
From Wilson's to "Caribou,"
fourteen miles, no water was visible, though the nearly level, mossy ground
is swampy-looking. At "Caribou Camp," two miles from the river, I saw two
fine dogs, a Newfoundland and a spaniel. Their owner told me that he paid
only twenty dollars for the team and was offered one hundred dollars for one
of them a short time afterwards. The Newfoundland, he said, caught salmon on
the ripples, and could be sent back for miles to fetch horses. The fine,
jet-black, curly spaniel helped to carry the dishes from the table to the
kitchen, went for water when ordered, took the pail and set it down at the
stream-side, but could not be taught to dip it full. But their principal
work was hauling camp-supplies on sleds up the river in winter. These two
were said to be able to haul a load of a thousand pounds when the ice was in
fairly good condition. They were fed on dried fish and oatmeal boiled
together.
The timber hereabouts is
mostly willow or poplar on the low ground, with here and there pine, birch,
and spruce about fifty feet high. None seen much exceeded a foot in
diameter. Thousand-acre patches have been destroyed by fire. Some of the
green trees had been burned off at the root, the raised roots, packed in dry
moss, being readily attacked from beneath. A range of mountains about five
thousand to six thousand feet high trending nearly north and south for sixty
miles is forested to the summit. Only a few cliff-faces and one of the
highest points patched with snow are treeless. No part of this range as far
as I could see is deeply sculptured, though the general denudation of the
country must have been enormous as the gravel-beds show.
At the top of a smooth,
flowery pass about four thousand feet above the sea, beautiful Dease Lake
comes suddenly in sight, shining like a broad, tranquil river between
densely forested hills and mountains. It is about twenty-seven miles long,
one to two miles wide, and its waters, tributary to the Mackenzie, flow into
the Arctic Ocean by a very long, roundabout, romantic way, the exploration
of which in 1789 from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean must have been a
glorious task for the heroic Scotchman, Alexander Mackenzie, whose name it
bears.
Dease Creek, a fine, rushing
stream about forty miles long and forty or fifty feet wide, enters the lake
from the west, drawing its sources from grassy mountain-ridges. Thibert
Creek, about the same size, and McDames and Defot Creeks, with their many
branches, head together in the same general range of mountains or on
moor-like tablelands on the divide between the Mackenzie and Yukon and
Stickeen. All these Mackenzie streams had proved rich in gold. The
wing-dams, flumes, and sluice-boxes on the lower five or ten miles of their
courses showed wonderful industry, and the quantity of glacial and perhaps
pre-glacial gravel displayed was enormous. Some of the beds were not unlike
those of the so-called Dead Rivers of California. Several ancient,
drift-filled channels on Thibert Creek, blue at bed rock, were exposed and
had been worked. A considerable portion of the gold, though mostly coarse,
had no doubt come from considerable distances, as boulders included in some
of the deposits show. The deepest beds, though known to be rich, had not yet
been worked to any great depth on account of expense. Diggings that yield
less than five dollars a day to the man were considered worthless. Only
three of the claims on Defot Creek, eighteen miles from the mouth of Thibert
Creek, were then said to pay. One of the nuggets from this creek weighed
forty pounds.
While wandering about the
banks of these gold-besprinkled streams, looking at the plants and mines and
miners, I was so fortunate as to meet an interesting French Canadian, an old
coureur de bois, who after a few minutes' conversation invited me to
accompany him to his gold-mine on the head of Defot Creek, near the summit
of a smooth, grassy mountain-ridge which he assured me commanded extensive
views of the region at the heads of Stickeen, Taku, Yukon, and Mackenzie
tributaries. Though heavy-laden with flour and bacon, he strode lightly
along the rough trails as if his load was only a natural balanced part of
his body. Our way at first lay along Thibert Creek, now on gravel benches,
now on bed rock, now close down on the bouldery edge of the stream. Above
the mines the stream is clear and flows with a rapid current. Its banks are
embossed with moss and grass and sedge well mixed with flowers — daisies,
larkspurs, solidagos, parnassia, potentilla, strawberry, etc. Small strips
of meadow occur here and there, and belts of slender, arrowy fir and spruce
with moss-clad roots grow close to the water's edge. The creek is about
forty-five miles long, and the richest of its gold-bearing beds so far
discovered were on the lower four miles of the creek; the higher
four-or-five-dollars-a-day diggings were considered very poor on account of
the high price of provisions and shortness of the season. After crossing
many smaller streams with their strips of trees and meadows, bogs and bright
wild gardens, we arrived at the Le Claire cabin about the middle of the
afternoon. Before entering it he threw down his burden and made haste to
show me his favorite flower, a blue forget-me-not, a specimen of which he
found within a few rods of the cabin, and proudly handed it to me with the
finest respect, and telling its many charms and lifelong associations,
showed in every endearing look and touch and gesture that the tender little
plant of the mountain wilderness was truly his best-loved darling.
After luncheon we set out for
the highest point on the dividing ridge about a mile above the cabin, and
sauntered and gazed until sundown, admiring the vast expanse of open,
rolling, prairie-like highlands dotted with groves and lakes, the
fountain-heads of countless cool, glad streams.
Le Claire's simple, childlike
love of nature, preserved undimmed through a hard wilderness life, was
delightful to see. The grand landscapes with their lakes and streams, plants
and animals, all were dear to him. In particular he was fond of the birds
that nested near his cabin, watched the young, and in stormy weather helped
their parents to feed and shelter them. Some species were so confiding they
learned to perch on his shoulders and take crumbs from his hand.
A little before sunset snow
began to fly, driven by a cold wind, and by the time we reached the cabin,
though we had not far to go, everything looked wintry. At half-past nine we
ate supper, while a good fire crackled cheerily in the ingle and a wintry
wind blew hard. The little log cabin was only ten feet long, eight wide, and
just high enough under the roof peak to allow one to stand upright. The
bedstead was not wide enough for two,' so Le Claire spread the blankets on
the floor, and we gladly lay down after our long, happy walk, our heads
under the bedstead, our feet against the opposite wall, and though
comfortably tired, it was long ere we fell asleep, for Le Claire, finding me
a good listener, told many stories of his adventurous life with Indians,
bears and wolves, snow and hunger, and of his many camps in the Canadian
woods, hidden like the nests and dens of wild animals; stories that have a
singular interest for everybody, for they awaken inherited memories of the
lang, lang syne when we were all wild. He had nine children, he told me, the
youngest eight years of age, and several of his daughters were married. His
home was in Victoria.
Next morning was cloudy and
windy, snowy and cold, dreary December weather in August, and I gladly ran
out to see what I might learn. A gray, ragged-edged cloud capped the top of
the divide, its snowy fringes drawn out by the wind. The flowers, though
most of them were buried or partly so, were to some extent recognizable, the
bluebells bent over, shining like eyes through the snow, and the gentians,
too, with their corollas twisted shut; cassiope I could recognize under any
disguise; and two species of dwarf willow with their seeds already ripe, one
with comparatively small leaves, were growing in mere cracks and crevices of
rock-ledges where the dry snow could not lie. Snowbirds and ptarmigan were
flying briskly in the cold wind, and on the edge of a grove I saw a spruce
from which a bear had stripped large sections of bark for food.
About nine o'clock the clouds
lifted and I enjoyed another wide view from the summit of the ridge of the
vast grassy fountain region with smooth, rolling features. A few patches of
forest broke the monotony of color, and the many lakes, one of them about
five miles long, were glowing like windows. Only the highest ridges were
whitened with snow, while rifts in the clouds showed beautiful bits of
yellow-green sky. The limit of tree growth is about five thousand feet.
Throughout all this region
from Glenora to Cassiar the grasses grow luxuriantly in openings in the
woods and on dry hillsides where the trees seem to have been destroyed by
fire, and over all the broad prairies above the timber-line. A kind of
bunch-grass in particular is often four or five feet high, and close enough
to be mowed for hay. I never anywhere saw finer or more bountiful wild
pasture. Here the caribou feed and grow fat, braving the intense winter
cold, often forty to sixty degrees below zero. Winter and summer seem to be
the only seasons here. What may fairly be called summer lasts only two or
three months, winter nine or ten, for of pure, well-defined spring or autumn
there is scarcely a trace. Were it not for the long, severe winters, this
would be a capital stock country, equaling Texas and the prairies of the old
West. From my outlook on the Defot ridge I saw thousands of square miles of
this prairie-like region drained by tributaries of the Stickeen, Taku,
Yukon, and Mackenzie Rivers.
Le Claire told me that the
caribou, or reindeer, were very abundant on this high ground. A flock of
fifty or more was seen a short time before at the head of Defot Creek, —
fine, hardy, able animals like their near relatives the reindeer of the
Arctic tundras. The Indians hereabouts, he said, hunted them with dogs,
mostly in the fall and winter. On my return trip I met several bands of
these Indians on the march, going north to hunt. Some of the men and women
were carrying puppies on top of their heavy loads of dried salmon, while the
grown dogs had saddle-bags filled with odds and ends strapped on their
backs. Small puppies, unable to carry more than five or six pounds, were
thus made useful. I overtook another band going south, heavy-laden with furs
and skins to trade. An old woman, with short dress and leggings, was
carrying a big load of furs and skins, on top of which was perched a little
girl about three years old.
A brown, speckled marmot, one
of Le Claire's friends, was getting ready for winter. The entrance to his
burrow was a little to one side of the cabin door. A well-worn trail led to
it through the grass and another to that of his companion, fifty feet away.
He was a most amusing pet, always on hand at meal times for bread-crumbs and
bits of bacon-rind, came when called, answering in a shrill whistle, moving
like a squirrel with quick, nervous impulses, jerking his short, flat tail.
His fur clothing was neat and clean, fairly shining in the wintry light. The
snowy weather that morning must have called winter to mind; for as soon as
he got his breakfast, he ran to a tuft of dry grass, chewed it into fuzzy
mouthfuls, and carried it to his nest, coming and going with admirable
industry, forecast, and confidence.
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