BOBILLIER, MARCEL (3A) (108 ENG -- 107 fra)

 BOBILLIER, MARCEL  (3A) (108 ENG)

That evening in the mouth of the Little Salmon River, we met an important group of American surveyors who were harassed non-stop by mosquitoes. They were surveying for a future rail line towards Alaska.  Also there were a few Indians at this spot, and an old Anglican Church and an old abandoned store.

We reached Carmacks at 10:00 that night.  It was the largest agglomeration we'd seen so far.  We saw some white people, some Indians and of course, clouds of mosquitoes.

We remained there more than three hours awaiting the full light of day so we could cross the Five Fingers Rapids.

I was awakened at 3:00 am to admire this marvel.  The river was cut at this point by three rocky projections between which the water boiled and foamed.  It's at these high peaks that the engineers hoped to span their railroad

The pilot needed to have a lot of daring and a good eye at the same time as a lot of experience to be able to get the steamboat of 300 feet to pass through such a narrow channel.  I was told that on the previous trip the steamboat hit one of the rocks but luckily did not suffer too much damage.

I went back to bed although the sun was already up and I got up at Minto, a village made up of many cabins built up on a steep river back.  It was a nice corner of the land with hills spread out in elevated steps encircling and surrounding the horizon, while the high rocky cliffs prevented us from seeing the villages downstream.

The only white person in Minto was Finlay Beaton, who each year sold 300 cords of wood to the White Pass and Yukon, the company in charge of these steamboats.  Hbe brought me to his cabin while the men on board loaded  the wood unto the steamboat.  The captain and a few mechanics joined us there in order to hear the 8 o'clock news on the radio. Everyone was a bit on edge because the day previous the Japanese had twice bombed the outer ridges of the Aleutian Islands on the other end of the Alaskan peninsula.

From Minto there were only 23 miles to reach Fort Selkirk.  Here the river was very wide and flowed between very high and dry hills with their shaggy, rocky sides. Numerous green islands blocked the current and embellished the countryside.

The steamboat got closer and I would soon end my trip.  Soon it attained the mouth of the Pelly River, and, all of a sudden Fort Selkirk was in view..  On a high bank comc

Immediately I noticed my poor little church away at the extreme end of the row of houses: an old building used as a warehouse for the past 40 years.  How it looked miserable with its old roof of rotted boards, compared to the Anglican Church built only a few years ago.  It had a little  bell turret full of holes without a bell inside, so old  it went with the building.

By the end of this same month, the old house had a new look! A new roof of green tar-paper which would last at least thirty-five years, a new floor, some partitions  enabling me to settle in immediately.

In the meantime, when we left the Yukon, my confrère/colleague from Mayo had left me, a well-built boat /bark which he had constructed himself

REF: Father Marcel Bobillier, o.m.i.