Dawson, September 5, 1903.

This letter is headed Dawson, for I shall mail it there, but I begin it at White Horse, a thriving town of over 2,000 people, on the west bank of the Fifty Mile River, just below the famous rapids. The streets are wide, of hard gravel, many large buildings. We are in the “Windsor” Hotel, a three-storied wooden structure, iron bedsteads, wire mattresses, modern American oak furniture—very comfortable, but as all the partitions are of paper—no plaster—you can hear in one room all that is said on six sides of you—above and below, too. The city and hotel are electric-lighted. Many churches, a commodious public school, public hall and reading-room supplied with all current American, Canadian and English magazines. The town is up to date. It is at the head of the Yukon navigation, where those “going out” take the White Pass and Yukon Railway for Skagway, and those “going in” take the boats for “Dawson.” Just now the town is half deserted, many of its inhabitants having stampeded to the new Kluhane gold strike, some one hundred and forty miles away. It is here claimed that a new Eldorado as rich as the Klondike has been found, and White Horse now expects to yet rival Dawson. Extensive finds of copper ore of high grade are also reported in the neighborhood.

We arrived at Caribou yesterday morning on the little S. S. “Scotia,” built on Lake Bennett, after a very comfortable night, and went over to Dawson Charlie’s hotel for a good breakfast. By this time H—— and the Indian housekeeper had become fast friends, and the girl accordingly brought out her store of nuggets and nugget jewelry for H—— to see. A lovely chain of little nuggets linked together, a yard or more long, earrings, breastpins, buckles, and sundry nuggets, large and small. It is Dawson Charlie’s habit, when in a good humor, to give her one of the pocketful of nuggets he usually carries around.

We crossed the bridge over the rushing outflow of Lake Bennett and went down to the Indian village, and called on the man whom all Canadian churchmen affectionately and reverently term the “Apostle of the North,” old Bishop Bompas and his quaint, white-haired wife. For over forty-five years he has wrought among the Indians of the Peace River, the Mackenzie and Yukon watersheds. He is an old man, but as erect as a Cree brave. His diocese is now limited to the Yukon waters, where, he says, are about 1,000 Indians, and, of course, an increasing number of white men. They lived in this back, wild country long before the white men thought of gold, or the Indian knew of its value. I took their pictures and promised to send them copies.

This morning we have walked a few miles up the river to see the celebrated White Horse Rapids, and I went four miles further, and saw also the Miles CaÑon, where the waters of Lake Taggish and Fifty Mile River begin their wild six miles before reaching here. The caÑon is sharply cleft in trap rock, and the sides rise sheer and pilastered as though cut into right-angled pillars. These cliffs rise up 200 feet or more and go down as deep below the foaming tide. The cleft does not seem more than 100 yards wide, and through it the waters boil and roar. How the early gold hunters ever got through the furious waters alive is the wonder, and indeed very many did lose their lives here, as well as in the dashing rapids below.

On the Yukon, September 7, 1903.

We have boarded the steamer “White Horse,” whose captain is commodore of the Yukon fleet—twenty-odd large steamers owned by the White Pass & Yukon Ry. Co. We have a stateroom at the rear of the texas, with a window looking out behind as well as at the side. I can lie in my berth and see the river behind us. We swung out into the swift blue current about a quarter to seven, yet bright day, the big boat turning easily in the rather narrow channel. The boat is about the size of those running between Charleston, W. Va., and Cincinnati or Pittsburg—165 feet long, 35 feet wide, and draws 2½ feet, with a big stern wheel:—the Columbia River type rather than the Mississippi, such as run from Dawson down—sits rather high in the water and lower parts all enclosed. She has powerful machinery fit for breasting the swift waters; a large, commodious dining salon; a ladies’ parlor in the rear; a smoking-room for gentlemen forward; lighted with electricity, and all modern conveniences. She was built at White Horse, as were also ten of the sister boats run by the railway company. Six years ago no steamboat had traversed these waters. With the current we travel fourteen to twenty miles an hour, against the current only five! The river winds among hills and flats, and mountains all fir-clad and yellowed with much golden aspen, turned by the nightly frosts.

We came down through Fifty Mile River, which is the name given to the waters connecting Lake Taggish and Lake Lebarge. The moon hung full and low in the south, giving a light as white as upon the table-lands of Mexico, so clear is the atmosphere and free from atmospheric dust. We sat upon the upper deck until late in the night, watching the varying panorama. From the window of my stateroom, lying in my berth, I looked an hour or more while we sailed through Lake Lebarge—five or six miles wide, thirty miles long—hemmed in by lofty, rounded, fir-clad limestone mountains, 4,000 or 5,000 feet in altitude—the full moon illuminating the quiet waters. Only the frequent mocking laugh of the loon echoed on the still night air—there seemed to be hosts of them. Once I heard the melancholy howling of a timber wolf among the shadows of a deep bay. From Lake Lebarge we entered the swift and dangerous currents of Thirty Mile River. Here the boats usually tie up till daylight, but with the full moon and our immense electric searchlight, the captain ventured to go down. Again I sat up watching the foaming waters behind us and how deftly we backed and swung round the many sharp bends:—high mountains quite shutting us in, the foaming waters white and black in the moonlight and shadow. At last, when the mountains seemed higher, blacker, more formidable than ever, we suddenly rounded a precipitous mass of limestone and granite and floated out into an immense pool, while away to the east seemingly joined us another river as large as our own, the Hootalinqua, fetching down the yet greater tides of Lake Teslin, and forming with the Thirty Mile, the true Yukon—though the stream is mapped as the Lewes, until joined by the Pelly, many miles below.

We have now been descending this great river all day long; as wide as the Ohio, but swifter and deeper and always dark blue water. The valley is wide like the Ohio; the bottom lands lying higher above the water and the country rising in successive benches till the horizon is bounded by rounded mountains eight or ten miles away. Mountains green with fir, golden yellow with the aspen and the birch, and red and scarlet with the lutestring herb and lichens of the higher slopes. A magnificent panorama, an immense and unknown land, not yet taken possession of by man! The soil of many of these bottoms is rich, and will yield wonderful crops when tilled. Some distant day, towns and villages will be here. We have seen many loons upon the river, and probably twenty or thirty golden eagles soaring high in mighty circles—more than I have seen in a single day before. We caught sight of a black fox in the twilight last evening, and surprised a red fox hunting mussel shells upon a river bar to-day.

We have passed several steamers coming up the river and stopped twice to take on firewood and a few times to put off mail at the stations of the Northwest Mounted Police. About four o’clock P. M. we safely passed through the dangerous rocky pass of the Five Fingers, where five basalt rocks of gigantic size tower 100 feet into the air and block the passage of the foaming waters. Just where we passed, the cliffs seemed almost to touch our gunwales, so near are they together. The banks are high slopes of sand and gravel, now and then striped by a white band of volcanic dust. The trees are small and stunted, but growing thickly together, so as scarcely to let a man pass between. We have seen two puny coal banks where is mined a dirty bituminous coal, but worth $30.00 to $40.00 per ton in Dawson. Better than a mine of gold!

We have just now run through the difficult passage known as Hell’s Gates, where on one side a mass of cliff and on the other a shifting sand bar confine the waters to a swift and treacherous chute. So close to the rocks have we passed that one might have clasped hands with a man upon them, yet for a mile we never touched their jagged sides. Clever steering by our Norwegian pilot!

Now we are past the mouth of the great Pelly River, itself navigable for steamboats for some three hundred miles, as far as up to White Horse by the main stream, and are hove to at Fort Selkirk, an old Hudson Bay Company post. Here the mounted police maintain a considerable force. They are standing on the bank, many of them in their red coats, together with a group of the Pelly Indians, a tribe of famous fur hunters.

Passing safely through the treacherous Lewes Rapids above the mouth of the Pelly, we have swung out into the true Yukon, an immense river, wide as the Mississippi at St. Louis, many islands and sand bars. At high water the river must here be two miles across. The moon hangs round and white in the south, not much above the horizon, and we shall slowly steam ahead all night.

September 7, 1903.

We are making a quick trip. We passed the mouth of the Stewart River in the early dawn. Another great stream navigable for 200 miles. By the Pelly Valley or by the Stewart, and their feeding lakes, will some day enter the railroads from the valley of the Mackenzie, coming up from Edmonton and the southeast. There is supposed to be yet much undiscovered gold on both of these streams, and fine grass land and black soil fit for root crops.

The Yukon, the mighty Yukon, is surely now become a gigantic river, its deep blue waters carrying a tide as great as the St. Lawrence. We are making a record trip, Ogilvie by 11 A. M., and Dawson, sixty miles below, in three more hours! So the captain cheerily avers—the fuller current and deeper tide of waters carrying us the more swiftly.

The mountains are lower, more rounded in outline, fir and golden aspen and now red-leaved birch forests covering them to their summits. The air is cold and keen. Ice at night, grey fogs at dawn, clear blue sky by the time the sun feebly warms at nine or ten o’clock.

We are reaching lands where the ground is frozen solid a few feet below the summer thaws, and the twilight still lingers till nine o’clock. They tell us the days are shortening, but it is hard to credit it, so long is yet the eventime.

I shall mail this letter at Dawson and send you yet another before we go down the river to the Behring Sea.

To-day I saw the first gulls, white and brown, some ducks on wing, many ravens and but few eagles. We are having a great trip, worth all the time and effort to get here—on the brink of the Arctic north, and in one of the yet but half-explored regions of the earth.