BY FREDERICK SCHWATKA, LAUREATE OF THE PARIS GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AND OF THE IMPERIAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF RUSSIA; HONORARY MEMBER BREMEN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC., ETC., COMMANDER OF THE EXPEDITION. Together with the Latest Information on the Klondike Country. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. CHICAGO NEW YORK George M. Hill Company MDCCCC CHICAGO NEW YORK George M. Hill Company MDCCCC Copyright , 1898, Geo. M. Hill Co....

These pages narrate the travels, in a popular sense, of an Alaskan exploring expedition. The expedition was organized with seven members at Vancouver Barracks, Washington, and left Portland, Oregon, ascending through the inland passage to Alaska, as far as the Chilkat country. At that point the party employed over three score of the Chilkat Indians, the hardy inhabitants of that ice-bound country, to pack its effects across the glacier-clad pass of the Alaskan coast range of mountains to the hea

This Alaskan exploring expedition was composed of the following members: Lieut. Schwatka, U.S.A., commanding; Dr. George F. Wilson, U.S.A., Surgeon; Topographical Assistant Charles A. Homan, U.S. Engineers, Topographer and Photographer; Sergeant Charles A. Gloster, U.S.A., Artist; Corporal Shircliff, U.S.A., in charge of stores; Private Roth, assistant, and Citizen J. B. McIntosh, a miner, who had lived in Alaska and was well acquainted with its methods of travel. Indians and others were added a

The Inland Passage" to Alaska is the fjörd-like channel, resembling a great river, which extends from the north-western part of Washington Territory, through British Columbia, into south-eastern Alaska. Along this coast line for about a thousand miles, stretches a vast archipelago closely hugging the mainland of the Territories named above, the southernmost important island being Vancouver, almost a diminutive continent in itself, while to the north Tchichagoff Island limits it on the seaboard.

CHILEAT BRACELET MADE FROM SILVER COIN. The Chilkat country was reached on the morning of the 2d of June and we dropped anchor in a most picturesque little port called Pyramid Harbor, its name being derived from a conspicuous conical island that the Chilkats call Schlay-hotch, and the few whites, Pyramid Island, shown on page 43 . There were two salmon canneries just completed, one on each side of the inlet, awaiting the "run" or coming of salmon, which occurred about two weeks later. Each canne

CHILKAT INDIAN PACKER. By the 6th of June all of our many arrangements for departure were fully completed, and the next day the party got under way shortly before 10 o'clock in the forenoon. Mr. Carl Spuhn, the Manager of the North-west Trading Company, which owned the western cannery in the Chilkat Inlet, where my party had been disembarked, who had been indefatigable in his efforts to assist me in procuring Indian packers, and in many other ways aiding the expedition, now placed at my disposal

IN A STORM ON THE LAKES. This large lake near the head of the Yukon I named in honor of Dr. Lindeman, of the Bremen Geographical Society. The country thus far, including the lake, had already received a most thorough exploration at the hands of Dr. Aurel Krause and Dr. Arthur Krause, two German scientists, heretofore sent out by the above named society, but I was not aware of the fact at that time. Looking out upon Lake Lindeman a most beautiful Alpine-like sheet of water was presented to our vi

"SNUBBING" THE RAFT. Lake Marsh gave us four days of variable sailing on its waters, when, on the 29th of June, we emerged from it and once more felt the exhilaration of a rapid course on a swift river, an exhilaration that was not allowed to die rapidly away, by reason of the great amount of exercise we had to go through in managing the raft in its many eccentric phases of navigation. On the lakes, whether in storm or still weather, one man stationed at the stern oar of the raft had been suffic

GRAYLING. As we slowly floated out of Lake Marsh it was known to us by Indian reports that somewhere not far ahead on the course of the river would be found the longest and most formidable rapid on the entire length of the great stream. At these rapids the Indians confidently expected that our raft would go to pieces, and we were therefore extremely anxious to inspect them. By some form of improper interpretation, or in some other way, we got the idea into our heads that these rapids, "rushing,"

IN THE RINK RAPIDS. One evening about eight o'clock, while encamped below the cascades, we could hear dull, heavy concussions occurring at intervals of two or three minutes. The sound did not at all resemble that of distant thunder, and moreover, the sky was cloudless. Earthquakes were suggested, but the theory did not seem plausible, and we were compelled to attribute it to the cascades, which, I believe, have been known to cause earth tremblings and analogous phenomena. I noticed that a Tahk-h

"In the Upper Ramparts." At the site of old Fort Selkirk commences the Upper Ramparts of the Yukon, or where that mighty stream cuts through the terminal spurs of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, the first hundred of which, terminating near the mouth of the Stewart River, are almost equal to the Yosemite or Yellowstone in stupendous grandeur. I was very anxious to determine beyond all reasonable doubt the relative sizes of the two rivers whose waters unite just above

After passing Johnny's village in descending the stream, and more perceptibly after leaving Charley's village, the country opens rapidly, and another day's drift of forty-two and a half geographical miles brought us to what an old trader on the lower river calls the "Yukon flat-lands," an expression so appropriate that I have adopted it, although I have never heard any other authority for its use. While descending the stream on the 24th, late in the forenoon, we saw a large buck moose swim from

INDIAN "CACHE" ON LOWER YUKON. Very well defined indeed are the upper gates of the lower ramparts, and one enters them from above with a suddenness that recalls his childish ideas of mountain ranges taken from juvenile geography-books, where they are represented as a closely connected series of tremendously steep peaks, with no outlying hills connecting them with the level valleys by gently rolling slopes, as nature has fortunately chosen to do; this approach to the lower ramparts being one of t

INDIAN OUT-DOOR GUN COVERING, ON THE LOWER YUKON RIVER. The 7th of August we remained over pumping out the bilge-water from the "barka" and transferring freight from the raft to the schooner, and making use of our photographic apparatus. At Nuklakayet the Eskimo dogs begin to appear, forty or fifty being owned by the station, the majority of which Mr. Harper feared he should have to kill to save the expense of feeding them through the winter. As each of them ate a salmon a day, it will be seen t

On page 244 , Schwatka says: "We camped that night at the mouth of a noticeable stream coming in from the east, which we afterwards learned was called Deer Creek by the traders, from the large number of caribou or woodland reindeer seen in its valley at certain times of their migrations." This is the stream that is now known the world over as the Klondike. What the Indians really called it was "Thron-Diuck," from which comes the word "Klondike." The Klondike is a small river about forty yards wi

The actual discovery of the great north-western peninsula of the American continent cannot be dated further back than the middle part of the eighteenth century. Its remoteness from the centres of European settlement and from the lines of trade and travel, and its inhospitable climate made Alaska one of the latest regions to yield to the advances of the explorer, surveyor and settler. At a date when the colonies on the North Atlantic coast of America numbered millions of prosperous people, alread

The United States census of 1890 definitely enumerated 21,929 inhabitants of Alaska, and estimated the existence of about 8,400 more. Of those enumerated there were 3,922 white males and 497 white females; 82 black males; 770 "mixed" males, and 798 "mixed" females; and 2,125 male Chinese; while the native population included 7,158 males and 6,577 females. According to the same census there were in Alaska 11 organizations of the Orthodox Greek Church; with 22 edifices with a seating capacity of 2

According to the terms of the treaty between the United States and Russia, the boundaries of Alaska are as follows: "Commencing from the southernmost point of the island called Prince of Wales Island, which point lies in the parallel of 54° 40´ north latitude, and between the 131° and 133° west longitude (meridian of Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to the north along the channel called Portland Channel, as far as the point of the continent where it strikes 56° north latitude; from this la