This stream resembles a river of liquid mud of an almost white hue, from which characteristic it is said to have derived its name from the old Hudson Bay traders--and no better illustration of its extreme muddiness can be given than the following: One of our party mistook a mass of timber that had lodged on the up-stream side of a low, flat mud-bar, for floating wood, and regarded it as evidence of a freshet, a theory which seemed corroborated by the muddy condition of the water, until the actual character of the object was established by closer observation as we drifted nearer. The mud-bar and adjacent waters were so entirely of the same color that the line of demarcation was not readily apparent, and had it not been for the drift rubbish around the former it might have escaped our scrutiny even at our short distance from it. The Indians say that the White River rises in glacier-bearing lands, and that it is very swift, and full of rapids along its whole course. So swift is it at its mouth, that as it pours its muddy waters into the rapid Yukon it carries them nearly across that clear blue stream; the waters of the two rivers mingling almost at once, and not running distinct for miles side by side, as is stated in one book on Alaska. From the mouth of the White or Yu'-ko-kon to Bering Sea, nearly 1,500 miles, the Yukon is so muddy as to be noticeable even when its water is taken up in the palm of the hand; and all fishing with hook and line ceases.
About four in the afternoon the mouth of the Stewart River was passed, and, being covered with islands, might not have been noticed except for its valley, which is very noticeable--a broad valley fenced in by high hills. A visit to the shore in our canoe showed its mouth to be deltoid in character, three mouths being observed, and others probably existing. Islands were very numerous in this portion of the Yukon, much more so than in any part of the river we had yet visited, and as the raft had drifted on while I went ashore in the canoe, I had a very hard task to find it again and came within a scratch of losing it, having passed beyond the camp, and being compelled to return. It was about nine o'clock in the evening and the low north-western sun shone squarely in our faces, as we descended the river, eagerly looking for the ascending smoke of the camp-fire, which had been agreed upon, before separation, as the signal to be kept going until we returned. The setting sun throwing its slanting rays upon each point of woods that ran from the hillsides down to the water's edge, illumined the top of them with a whitish light until each one exactly resembled a camp-fire on the river bank with the feathery smoke floating off along the tree tops. Even my Indian canoeman was deceived at first, until half a dozen appearing together in sight convinced him of his error. All these islands were densely covered with spruce and poplar, and the swift current cutting into their alluvial banks, though the latter were frozen six or eight feet thick, kept their edges bristling with freshly-fallen timber; and it was almost courting destruction to get under this _abatis_ of trees with the raft, in the powerful current, to avoid which some of our hardest work was necessary. The preservative power of this constantly frozen ground must be very great, as in many places we saw protruding from the high banks great accumulations of driftwood and logs over which there was soil two and three feet thick, which had been formerly carried by the river, and from which sprung forests of spruce timber, as high as any in sight, at whose feet were rotting trunks that must have been saplings centuries ago. Yet wherever this ancient driftwood had been undermined and washed of its dirt and thrown upon the beach along with the tree but just fallen, the difference between the two was only that the latter still retained its green bark, and its broken limbs were not so abraded and worn; but there seemed to be no essential difference in the fiber of the timber.