Klondyke Nuggets: A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the NorthwestLadue, Joseph
History
Klondyke Nuggets: A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest
Ladue, Joseph
Alaska -- Gold discoveries; Klondike River Valley (Yukon) -- Gold discoveries
"Where the river debouches from it, it is about 150 yards wide, and for
a short distance not more than 5 or 6 feet deep. The depth is, however,
soon increased to 10 feet or more, and so continues down to what
Schwatka calls Marsh Lake. The miners call it Mud Lake, but on this name
they do not appear to be agreed, many of them calling the lower part of
Tagish or Bove Lake "Mud Lake," on account of its shallowness and flat
muddy shores, as seen along the west side, the side nearly always
travelled, as it is more sheltered from the prevailing southerly winds.
The term "Mud Lake" is, however, not applicable to this lake, as only a
comparatively small part of it is shallow or muddy; and it is nearly as
inapplicable to Marsh Lake, as the latter is not markedly muddy along
the west side, and from the appearance of the east shore one would not
judge it to be so, as the banks appear to be high and gravelly.
"Marsh Lake is a little over nineteen miles long, and averages about two
miles in width. I tried to determine the width of it as I went along
with my survey, by taking azimuths of points on the eastern shore from
different stations of the survey; but in only one case did I succeed, as
there were no prominent marks on that shore which could be identified
from more than one place. The piece of river connecting Tagish and Marsh
Lakes is about five miles long, and averages 150 to 200 yards in width,
and, as already mentioned, is deep, except for a short distance at the
head. On it are situated the only Indian houses to be found in the
interior with any pretension to skill in construction. They show much
more labor and imitativeness than one knowing anything about the Indian
in his native state would expect. The plan is evidently taken from the
Indian houses on the coast, which appear to me to be a poor copy of the
houses which the Hudson's Bay Company's servants build around their
trading posts. These houses do not appear to have been used for some
time past, and are almost in ruins. The Tagish Indians are now generally
on the coast, as they find it much easier to live there than in their
own country. As a matter of fact, what they make in their own country is
taken from them by the Coast Indians, so that there is little inducement
for them to remain.
"The Lewes River, where it leaves Marsh Lake, is about 200 yards wide,
and averages this width as far as the cañon. I did not try to find
bottom anywhere as I went along, except where I had reason to think it
shallow, and there I always tried with my paddle. I did not anywhere
find bottom with this, which shows that there is no part of this stretch
of the river with less than six feet of water at medium height, at which
stage it appeared to me the river was at that time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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