DOWN THE YUKON.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 January 1917, Page 6

DOWN THE YUKON.

MIGHTY STREAM OF FAR NORTH. TOWNS OF GOLD-MINERS AND . ESKIMOS. (By Frank G. Carpenter, in Chicago Tribune). Leaving the flats near tiie Arctic Cirt'lo the Yukon twists about liKe a ;.'roat liquid corkscrew until it comes to Fort Hamlin. Hero it narrows and fillers the Ramparts, a valley with fortlike walls rising up on both sides. Here the course is reduced from a width of several miles to oen of 800 ft or 000 ft, and the valley in places is only half » iisile wide. High hills, covered with trees and mors rise straight up from the river, and in some places they are more than iOOOft high. The current is swift, and •,ii the heart of the valley the water <:ows'at the rate of seven miles an hour.

The Ramparts end at Fort Gibbon. 'I he hills disappear and the land drojn into a great low plain. Here the T'li:iana River flows into the Yukon, and you have an inland sea with great itlands. Turning to the south, through the islands the steamers from Dawson go up the winding Tanana to Fairbanks, a distance of 275 miles, rind, steaming southwards, other ships make rbcir way down the broad lower Yukon to Bering Sea.

LOWER YUYON SOO MILES LONG. The lower Yukon is about 800 miles long. It comprises one-third of the main stream and one-sixth or one-, seventh of its navigable waters. The Yi;kun is 2300 miles long, and its basin is ten times as large as the state oi Indiana. Next to the Mississippi-Mis-souri and the St. Lawrence, it is the greatest river under Uncle Sam's, flag

The country on both sides of the lower Yukon is a wilderness. That part of tho stream is about as long afrom New York to Chicago. It drains thousands of square miles, and its population, I venture to say, is numbered by hundreds. Going down the river you now and then 'pass an Indian village and stop at several towns which form ihe ports of gold mines. One of the chief towns is Ruby, 175 raMes below Fort Gibbon. It. is a placet ■ru'd-mining. centre which liad a stam■i'lfic in 1911. There are, perhaps, 1000 ' people there now. They live in a jura--1 ale of buildings made of logs, galvanised iron, and unpainted boards, all thrown j together without regard to order or I beauty. Most of the houses are of one storey, and t-hty look as though ftey lin.d been pitched out of the sky and let fall where they would.

TOWN SUPPORTED BY MINES. The town lies in a little cove on ilie south bank of the river. A rock thirty foet high mark? one end of the cov?, and the space beyond it, running to the e ige of the Yukon, is just large enough for the town. The people are supported by the gold mines, and the most of ileir supplies come from outside. A little below Ruby we passed the mouth of the Koyukuk River, a stream which is navigable for more than fi'J'l miles north cf where it flows into the. Yukon. It has rich mining camps whicn art; reached by small steamers. Gold was found along the creeks leading into it fourteen or fifteen years ago, ami about ten years ago 300,000 dollars' worth of nuggets were taken from oi<<! :<mall patch on Nolan Creek.

CAPTAIN INDIANS.

A few miles below the mouth of the Koyukuk we stopped at Nulato. This is an Indian village noted as being one of the oldest trading posts on the Yukon. It was established, by the Russians when Van Buren was president, and at about the time that Tyler entered the White House it became a post of the Russian-American company and the chief market for the' furs of tliia oart of Alaska.

About ten years later an English ship came up the Yukon to searcli for .Mm Franklin. It stopped at Nulato and the commander said something that angered the Indians. They killed him and lie is buried somewhere near by. II Is grave is unmarked. There are tv.o stores at Nulato and also a wireless station, whose tall mast can be seen rising high above the Indian cabins that line the shores. The towns is mostly made up of Indians. It has a Government hospital and a governmental school. It has 'also a mis:sioi: station and an Indian cemetery.

INDIANS LEAVE FOR FEAST. The next town below Nulato is Ko.l- - Kaltag is a trading poat and a Government telegraph station. It awo hn» a wireless tower which was erected

by private enterprise to maintain communication with the Iditarod goldliclds. Passing through tho village, consisting of a dozen one-storey cabins all fastened with padlocks because the Indian owners had gon eoff'for a feast to some town in the neighborhood, I entenkl a wilderness as untouched as it was when the Mongols crossed Bering Strait to form the first of our Indian popu lation. The grass back of the towa reached to my waist.

In ordinary years the mosquitoes are alrr ost unbearable. They come in May and June, shortly after the breaking of the ice. At that time everyone who gees through tho country must wear a liend net and have his hands protected with gloves. It is best to wear boots, for the mosquitoes bore their way through the eyelet holes in one-s shoes. Leaving Kaltag, the Yukon 'flows almost straight south for a distance v, 150 miles or more to the -Holy Cross mission, near which the Innoko River flows in. Tho Innoko gives access to the rich gold-mining region known as the Iditarod! 1 The Iditarod gold region wss discovered in l' 90!), and it had yiofc. Ed 0,000,000d0l worth of gold within the next two vears. .

ESKIMOS BULK OF POPULATION. Between Kaltag and the Holy Crass mission is Anvik, an Indian settlement with a Russian church, and still farthu- down the . river is Andreafski, which was established by the Russians' ; n 1853. Andreafski is now a little trading station on the banks of the Yukon. It has a great oil tank, and the steamers stop there to take fuel. The town is. populated almost altogether by Eskimos, about the only whites being the storekeepers; who have charge of some galvanised warehouses and a supply of country goods, i The Eskimos live in log cabins, and there is a large village of them about" thirty'or forty rnihs away. Those we saw were drejsod in skins, 'with 'boots of sealskin and caps of skin with ftir coming out around their faces. They had skin boots and fur coats and trousers. It is at Andreafski that the delta oi the Yukon is said to begin. The country is flat, and you can see for milei over the low grass on both sides of the rivir.

As • you go on from Andreafski the i'ukon widens. It is over three mil.:*

from one bank to the other. Then it branches out into wide channels, each of which is a mouth, and, where it iloivs into the sea, these months have become a nrsat fan 100 miles w'ide, the various streams forming the ribs.

U.S. DOES NOTITTXft FOR NAVIGATION. The Government has done little to protect the navigation of the Yukon. The only lights in this mighty stre.ui with its winding course, its scores of tributaries aiid its thousands of sliift'ng sand-banks and islands, arc where the rivar flows into the ocean. The system all told has 4000 miles or 'iiora «>f navigable and navigated waters, and

there is 110 a lighthouse, a buoy or a lnfirk of any kind to aid the shipping. Some of the captains are accustomed to put up their own marks to aid them in subsequent voyages.