BLOGUE 106
BOBILLIER, MARCEL (2A)
As the day progressed, we stopped close to
an hour at Tanana Reef to load cords of wood found along the shore. I took advantage of the stop to talk with the
first Indian I had met in my new district.
We were only six passengers on board and
only two would go into Dawson. We
stopped and talked on the bridge as we admired the scenery: neither high nor low
hills, a rather limited horizon. The
Yukon Valley seemed to have been dug across a large plateau where rocky knobs
emerged here and there.
At noon we reached the Hootalinga River
which ran into Teslin Lake. The river
widened and navigation became easier.
According to the maps, the Yukon River did
not begin before Fort Selkirk where it joined the Pelly River. The river we were following was the Lewis and
in the local area it was called the Twenty-Mile River which is the distance
between Whitehorse and Lake Laberge, while the river that unites Lake Laberge to
the Hootalinga was called the Thirty-Mile River. All of this, a few years later would be designated by cartographers as being part of the Yukon
from its source in Lake Marsh, above
Whitehorse even though the principal or main river comes from Lake
Teslin.
Around 2 o’clock we arrived at the village
of Big Salmon having cruised along a series of rather high hillocks called
Seminoff where there was still snow on the north face. There was no one in this village. The Indians were in their camping grounds
scattered all along the shore. In the afternoon we stopped again near a long
pile of wood. The steamboat burned about
100 cords per trip.
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. (106)
ref: Marcel Bobillier, o.m.i.
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