We passed the rapids of the ramparts at 2:10 P.M., and the Indian village below ten minutes later. This is called Senati's (Senatee's) village upon previous maps, and at the date of our arrival was made up of two well-worn tents and four birch-bark houses, the whole containing from forty to fifty souls. Over half a dozen canoes put off from the village and were soon paddling around us, whereupon a lively competition ensued for supplying us with dried and smoked salmon. It was at this village that I first noticed the round-rimmed hand net spoken of in a former chapter as appearing on the lower river. Their handles of ten and twelve feet in length may appear to contradict my conjecture as to the unusual depth of the river here, or the Indians may go further down to fish, as we saw large numbers of their _caches_ perched along the right bank some distance below. Our camp was a forced one that evening,--the 5th--as we got stuck on a sandspit at the head of an island where we had to make "a rubber-boot camp" as the men designated any place where we grounded in shoal water so far from the shore that rubber-boots had to be put on in order to carry the cooking and camping effects to the selected spot. Cold and stormy as the day had been the mosquitoes sent a fair representation to inform us that we had not been deserted by them. From Camp 47 to Camp 48, Mr. Homan figured the day's run of nearly twelve hours' uninterrupted drift at but twenty-seven miles, and this in the narrowest portion of the ramparts, where we had hoped the current would increase. I was much inclined to think that our progress had been underestimated four or five miles, and that a desire to coincide with Captain Raymond's maps had marred an otherwise almost faultless reckoning.
Shortly after noon on the 6th--having started at half-past eight--we passed the mouth of the Tanana, having found one more island on this stretch of the river than is mapped by Raymond. A half-dozen more islands in many parts of the wide river or even half a hundred more or less at any point in the flat-lands might have escaped detection on any previous map, but here the shores are so bold and the islands so few and conspicuous that they can hardly escape casual observation, and an error of even one upon the map would attract notice.