and allow him to look at the "fire ship" of the traders.

The first man to run the gauntlet of the Chilkoot Pass was a red-headed Scotchman in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, who left Fort Selkirk in 1864 and forced his way alone through the unknown country to Chilkoot Inlet. The Indians seized the adventurer and held him prisoner until Captain Swanson, with the Hudson Bay Company steamer Labouchere, came up and took him away. In 1872 one George Holt dodged through the Chilkoot Pass, and went down the Lewis River to the Yukon. In 1874 Holt again crossed the Chilkoot Pass, followed the Lewis River to the Yukon, and then down that mighty stream to a place near its mouth, where he crossed by a portage to the Kuskokquin River, and thence to the sea.

In 1877 a party of miners set out from Sitka under the leadership of Edmund Bean, and attempted to cross by the Chilkoot Pass, but the Indians obliged them to turn back.

In 1878 and in 1880, prospecting parties left Sitka for the head waters of the Yukon, and the latter company, through the clever diplomacy and active interest of Captain Beardslee, commanding the U. S. S. Jamestown, were hospitably received by the Chilkats and guided through their country, when convinced that they would not interfere with their fur trade. They found indications of gold all the way, and large gravel deposits. This party descended the Lewis River to Fort Selkirk and there divided, one set of prospectors going down to Fort Yukon, and the others up the Pelly River and thence to the head waters of the

Stikine River and the Cassiar region of British Columbia.

In the spring of 1882 a party of forty-five miners, all old Arizona prospectors, left Juneau for the head waters of the Yukon. They returned in the fall, and reported discoveries of gold, silver, copper, nickel, and bituminous coal in the region between the Copper and Lewis Rivers.

In the spring of 1883 one Dugan led a party from Juneau over the divide. In September they sent back by Indians for an additional supply of provisions, intending to remain in the interior all winter. They reported placer mines yielding one hundred and fifty dollars a day to the man, but another party, that left Juneau soon after Dugan, returned in September without having found any placers that yielded more than twenty-five dollars a day.

Altogether more than two hundred prospectors crossed from Lynn Canal to the Yukon country during the first three years after the Chilkats raised their blockade. The Chilkats kept control of the travel, and charged six and ten dollars for each hundred pounds of goods that they packed across the twentyfour-mile portage intervening between the river and the chain of lakes.

In May, 1883, Lieut. Schwatka and party crossed this same divide, and made a quick journey of more than two thousand miles by raft down the Lewis River to the Yukon, and down the Yukon to St. Michael's Island in Behring Sea, and thence to San Francisco by the revenue cutter Corwin.

In April, 1884, Dr. Everette, U. S. A., and two companions went over the Chilkat Pass to work their

way westward to Copper River and descend it to its mouth. In June, Lieut. Abercrombie, U. S. A., and three companions were landed at the mouth of Copper River, with orders to ascend that stream and descend the Chilkat to Lynn Canal. These expeditions were sent out by order of General Miles, commanding the Department of the Columbia, who visited Alaska in 1882, and has since manifested a great interest in the Territory.

The present maps of this upper region of the Yukon give only the general courses of the rivers, and have not changed in any important details the Russian charts. A unique map of the country is one drawn by Kloh-Kutz and his wife for Professor Davidson, and which was made the basis and authority for one official chart, the original remaining in Professor Davidson's possession at San Francisco. KlohKutz has known the Yukon route from childhood, and, lying face downward, he and his wife drew on the back of an old chart all the rivers, with the profile of the mountains as they appear on either side of the watercourses. The one great glacier in which the Chilkat and the Lewis branch of the Yukon River head, is indicated by snow-shoe tracks to show the mode of progress, and the limit of each of the fourteen days' journey across to Fort Selkirk is marked by cross lines on this original Chilkat map. The father of Kloh-Kutz was a great chief and fur-trader before. him, and was one of the party of Chilkats that went across and burned Fort Selkirk in 1851, in retaliation for the Hudson Bay Company's interference with their fur trade with the Tinnehs.

The Doctors Krause, of the Geographical Society

of Bremen, who spent a year at the mouth of the Chilkat lately, made some explorations of the region about the portages of the Yukon, and their maps and publications have been of great value to the Coast Survey. There are dangerous rapids and cañons on the watercourses leading to the Yukon, and none but miners and the most adventurous traders will probably ever avail themselves of this route; although by going some six hundred miles up to Fort Yukon, which is just within the Arctic Circle, the land of the midnight sun is reached. Professor Dall, who spent two years on the Yukon, has fully described the country below Fort Yukon in his "Resources of Alaska;" and the Schiefflin Brothers, of Tombstone, Arizona, who followed his path on an elaborately planned prospecting expedition in 1882, added little and almost nothing more to the general knowledge of the region. The Schiefflins found gold, but considered the remoteness from the sources of supplies, and the long winters, too great obstacles for any mines to be ever successfully worked there. There are furtraders' stations all along the two thousand miles of the great stream, and within the United States boundaries, the Alaska Commercial Company, and the Western Fur Company of San Francisco, buy the pelts from the Indians, and divide the great fur trade of this interior region.

CHAPTER IX.

FR

BARTLETT BAY AND THE HOONIAHS.

ROM Pyramid Harbor the ship went south to Icy Straits and up the other side of the long peninsula to Glacier Bay, so named by Captain Beardslee in 1880. At the mouth of it, in unknown and unsurveyed waters, began the search for a new trading station in a cove, since known as Bartlett Bay, in honor of the owner of the fishery, a merchant of Port Townsend.

Vancouver's boats passed by Glacier Bay during his third cruise on this coast, and his men saw only frozen mountains and an expanse of ice as far as the eye could reach. It is only within a decade that anything has been known of the extent of the great bay at the foot of the Fairweather Alps, and no surveys. have been made of its shores to correct the imperfect charts now in use. Revenue cutters, men-of-war, and traders' ships had gone as far as the entrance, but were prevented from advancing by adverse winds. and currents, floating ice, and shoaling waters. The old moraine left by the ice-sheet that once covered the whole bay forms a bar and barrier at its mouth, and the channel has to be sought cautiously.

Skirting the wooded shores and sailing through ice floes, every glass was brought into requisition for signs