I think them worthy of description. The pole is from eight to twelve feet in length, extending from P to P, as shown in the figure on this page. Two arms A A are made of elastic wood, and at their ends they carry incurved spikes of iron or steel, S S, which act as barbs on a fish-hook. Another sharpened spike projects from the tip of the pole P, and the three together make the prongs of the spear or gig. When the fish is speared the arms A A bend out as the spikes "ride" over its back, and these insert themselves in its sides, the pole spike penetrating its back. In the figure there is represented the cross-section of a fish (its dorsal-fin D) just before the spear strikes. Among the Eskimo of King William's Land I found the spear-handles made of driftwood thrown on the beach, the arms A A made of very elastic musk-ox horn, and the spikes of copper taken from the abandoned ships of Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition. Again at this camp (No. 4), the fishing-tackle of various kinds was employed vigilantly, but although the water seemed much clearer there were no results, the doctor advancing the theory that trout will not rise to a fly in streams where salmon are spawning, as they then live on the salmon roe to the exclusion of every thing else.
A VIEW IN THE DAYAY VALLEY. (FROM
CAMP 4.)
A finger of the Saussure Glacier is seen peeping round the mountain, the rest being covered with fog.
[Pg 78]
[Pg 79]
At this camp I saw the Chilkat boy packers wrestling in a very singular manner, different from any thing in that branch of athletics with which I am acquainted. The two wrestlers lie flat on their backs upon the ground or sand and against each other, but head to foot, or in opposite directions. Their inner legs, i.e., those touching their opponents, are raised high in the air, carried past each other, and then locked together at the knee. They then rise to a sitting posture, or as nearly as possible, and with their nearest arms locked into a firm hold at the elbows, the contest commences. It evidently requires no mean amount of strength to get on top of an equal adversary, and the game seems to demand considerable agility, although the efforts of the contestants, as they rolled around like two angle worms tied together, appeared more awkward than graceful.
POSITION OF THE FEET IN WALKING A LOG, AS PRACTICED BY THE CHILKAT INDIANS.
Northward from this camp (No. 4), lying between the Nourse and Dayay Rivers, was the southern terminal spur of a large glacier, whose upper end was lost in the cold drifting fog that clung to it, and which can be seen on page 77. I called it the Saussure Glacier, after Professor Henri de Saussure, of Geneva, Switzerland. The travels in the Dayay Inlet and up the valley of the river had been reasonably pleasant, but on the 10th of June our course lay over the rough mountain spurs of the east side for ten or twelve miles, upon a trail fully equal to forty or fifty miles over a good road for a day's walking. Short as the march was in actual measurement, it consumed from 7:30 in the morning until 7:15 in the evening; nearly half the time, however, being occupied in resting from the extreme fatigue of the journey. In fact, in many places it was a terrible scramble up and down hill, over huge trunks and bristling limbs of fallen timber too far apart to leap from one to the other, while between was a boggy swamp that did not increase the pleasure of carrying a hundred pounds on one's back. Sometimes we would sink in almost to our knees, while every now and then this agony was supplemented by the recurrences of long high ridges of rough bowlders of trachyte with a splintery fracture. The latter felt like hot iron under the wet moccasins after walking on them and jumping from one to the other for awhile. Some of these great ridges of bowlders on the steep hillsides must have been of quite recent origin, and from the size of the big rocks, often ten or twelve feet in diameter, I infer that the force employed must have been enormous, and I could only account for it on the theory that ice had been an important agent in the result. So recent were some of the ridges that trees thirty and forty feet high were embedded in the débris, and where they were not cut off and crushed by the action of the rocks they were growing as if nothing had happened, although half the length of their trunks in some cases was below the tops of the ridges. I hardly thought that any of the trees could be over forty or fifty years old. Where these ridges of great bowlders were very wide one would be obliged to follow close behind some Indian packer acquainted with the trail, which might easily be lost before re-entering the brush.
That day I noticed that all my Indians, in crossing logs over a stream, always turned the toes of both feet in the same direction (to the right), although they kept the body square to the front, or nearly so, and each foot passed the other at every step, as in ordinary walking. The advantage to be gained was not obvious to the author; as the novice, in attempting it, feels much more unsafe than in walking over the log as usual. Nearing Camp 5, we passed over two or three hundred yards of snow from three to fifteen feet deep. This day's march of the 10th of June brought us to the head of the Dayay river at a place the Indians call the "stone-houses." These stone-houses, however, are only a loose mass of huge bowlders piled over each other, projecting high above the deep snow, and into the cave-like crevices the natives crawl for protection whenever the snow has buried all other tracts, or the cold wind from the glaciers is too severe to permit of sleep in the open. All around us was snow or the clear blue ice of the glacier fronts, while directly northward, and seemingly impassable, there loomed up for nearly four thousand feet the precipitous pass through the mountains, a blank mass of steep white, which we were to essay on the morrow.
CHASING A MOUNTAIN GOAT IN THE PERRIER PASS.
Shortly after camping I was told that the Indians had seen a mountain goat nearly on the summit of the western mountain wall, and I was able to make out his presence with the aid of field-glasses. The Indians had detected him with their unaided eyes, in spite of his white coat being against a background of snow. Had the goat been on the summit of a mountain in the moon I should not have regarded him as any safer than where he was, if the Indians were even half as fatigued as I felt, and they had carried a hundred pounds over the trail and I had not. But the identity of the goat was not fully established before an Indian, the only one who carried a gun, an old flintlock, smooth bore, Hudson Bay musket, made preparations for the chase. He ran across the valley and soon commenced the ascent of the mountains, in a little while almost disappearing on the white sides, looking like a fly crawling over the front of a house. The Indian, a "Stick," finally could be seen above the mountain goat and would have secured him, but that a little black cur dog which had started to follow him when he was almost at the summit, made its appearance on the scene just in time to frighten the animal and started him running down the mountain side toward the pass, the "Stick" closely following in pursuit, assisted by the dog. Just as every one expected to see the goat disappear through the pass, he wheeled directly around and started straight for the camp, producing great excitement. Every one grabbed the first gun he could get his hands on and waited for the animal's approach. A shot from camp sent him flying up the eastern mountains, which were higher than those of the west, closely followed almost to the summit by the indefatigable "Stick," who finally lost him. I thought it showed excellent endurance for the mountain goat, but the Indian's pluck was beyond all praise, and as he returned with a jovial shake of the head, as if he met such disappointments every day, I felt sure that I would not have undertaken his hunt for all the goat meat in the country, even with starvation at hand.
On the morning of the next day about five o'clock, we commenced the toilsome ascent of this coast range pass, called by the Indians Kotusk Mountains, and by seven o'clock all my long pack train was strung up the precipitous pass, making one of the prettiest
