Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/135

Rh driftwood fibrous with grinding in the ice of the spring freshet and stranded by the falling waters. Here and there were small patches of herbage growing rankly in the day-long sunlight of the boreal springtime. Everywhere rose the harsh cries of water fowl, hovering over their shallow nests hollowed in the warm sand. Ducks, geese and all the smaller waders, with here and there a sand-hill crane or snowy swan, all busy in the brief domesticity of spring, thronged the flats, covered the pools, or rose in dark extended myriads, as far as the eye can see. Violent cries and flapping wings called attention to some disreputable looking fox, with the rags of his winter coat still hanging to him, prowling in search of eggs of nestlings, but valiantly faced by the mother birds with loud vociferation. Now and then the great Arctic hare, looking as big as a deer in the absence of objects of comparison, lopes silently and swiftly between the tufts of succulent herbage; or a great black raven croaks hoarsely overhead, watching his chance to snap up a downy duckling in the absence of its defenders. The sun, low in the heavens, sheds genial warmth over the noisy congregation, and rich green patches of Mertensia, or forget-me-not, open a profusion of blue petals, basking in the radiance. Dotted over the sands little yellow poppies stand singly, spreading silky corollas over their slender densely hispid stems. A profusion of Saxifrage, Potentilla, sedge and Claytonia is found on every hand, except where the latest freshets have been scouring. Steadily between its low steep banks flows the turbid river, dividing into many channels most of which, when the floods are over, become dry.

After days of laborious tracking or rowing the main river may be reached. This for hundreds of miles flows steadily, with its current mainly hugging the right bank. This, if there be any high land about, is high, facing the stream with bold bluffs, which are gradually eaten away at the base by the gnawing current. At intervals a vertical slice of the bluff cracks, quivers and plunges into the water, carrying with it undergrowth and trees, which may remain as dangers to navigation or join the fleet of arboreal derelicts steadily moving toward the sea.

The left bank is usually low, with perhaps a blue line of distant hills dimly visible. Islands in the lower river are not numerous, though many sand-bars come to light at stages of low water. The scour of the river in spate is not favorable to permanent islands.

Ascending the river to the very center of the Alaskan territory, its width is suddenly contracted, its rate of flow increased, while high on either hand the banks rise steep and mountainous. This canon received from the Hudson Bay men the picturesque name of 'the Ramparts.' Between the June water level and that of July, at the lower end of the cañon, there is a difference of seventy feet, and the maximum is even greater.