From Lake Kluk-tas-si almost to old Fort Selkirk we observed along the steep banks of the river a most conspicuous white stripe some two or three inches in width. After our attention had been attracted to this phenomenon for two or three days, we proceeded to investigate it. It averaged about two or three feet below the surface, and seemed to separate the recent alluvial deposits from the older beds of clay and drift below, although occasionally it appeared to cut into both, especially the alluvium. Occasionally, although at very rare intervals, there were two stripes parallel to each other and separated by a few inches of black earth, while oftentimes the stripe was plain on one side of the river and wholly wanting on the other. A close inspection showed it to be volcanic ash, sufficiently consolidated to have the consistency of stiff earth, but nevertheless so friable that it could be reduced to powder by the thumb and fingers. It possibly represents the result of some exceptionally violent eruption in ancient times from one or more of the many volcanic cones, now probably extinct, with which the whole southern coast of Alaska is studded. The ashes were carried far and wide by the winds, and if the latter then, as now, blew almost persistently from the southward during the summer (and I understand the reverse is the case in the winter), we could reasonably fix the eruption at that time of the year.
[Illustration: INDIAN VILLAGE OF KITL-AH-GON IN THE VON WILCZEK VALLEY.]
The Yukon River as it widens also becomes very tortuous in many places, and oftentimes a score of miles is traversed along the axis of the stream while the dividers on the map hardly show half a dozen between the same points. In the region about the mouth of the Nordenskiöld River a conspicuous bald butte could be seen directly in front of our raft no less than seven times, on as many different stretches of the river. I called it Tantalus Butte, and was glad enough to see it disappear from sight.
The day we shot the Rink Rapids, and only a few hours afterward, we also saw our first moose plowing through the willow brush on the eastern bank of the stream like a hurricane in his frantic endeavors to escape, an undertaking in which he was completely successful. When first seen by one of the party on the raft, his great broad palmated horns rolling through the top of the willow brake, with an occasional glimpse of his brownish black sides showing, he was mistaken for an Indian running down a path in the brake and swaying his arms in the air to attract our attention. My Winchester express rifle was near me, and as the ungainly animal came into full sight at a place where a little creek put into the stream, up the valley of which it started, I had a fair shot at about a hundred yards; took good aim, pulled the trigger--and the cap snapped,--and I saved my reputation as a marksman by the gun's missing fire. This moose and another about four hundred miles further down the river were the only two we saw in the Yukon Valley, although in the winter they are quite numerous in some districts, when the mosquitoes have ceased their onslaughts.
