our pistol-belts, and proceeded on our journey without any attempt at hindrance save by verbal demonstration.

Upon our arrival at the coastrange we were compelled to suffer delay owing to the backwardness of the season. The mountains were still deeply buried in snow; on the higher slopes the topmost tufts on the tall spruce and hemlock just

peered through their wintry mantling. During the daytime the thermometer rose to 54° above freezing-point, but each night the mercury

DRAWN BY MALCOLM FRASER.

CHIIKAT PILLAR RECORDING LEGEND OF RAVEN

FAMILY.

dropped a few degrees below. The rapidly increasing heat of the sun, heralding the approach of summer, was ousting winter from its frigid sway, and furnishing the land with a gentler cli

mate.

A short distance from the coast the snow lay deep, even in the valley lands. We found a fine patch of grass, however, around the village of Klokwan, twenty-five miles up the Chilkat River, which would maintain our horses in good condition till

the season opened sufficiently to permit a further advance. At this Indian settlement there are about twenty houses constructed of heavy planking, roofed with rudely hewn boards, each having an immense aperture for the escape of smoke. On all sides these dwellings are loopholed for muskets. Many a stubborn fight has been decided around this village, the planking being pitted with slugshot. Most of these huts are occupied by three or four families; some of greater dimensions, however, will shelter sixty Indians.

The Chilkat nation is divided into sections, each named after some living thing. There are the Ravens, Wolves, Eagles, Snails,

DRAWN BY MALCOLM FRASER.

DRAWN BY MALCOLM FRASER.

PLAITED FIBER DANCING-BONNETS.

Bears, etc., and the houses of the principal men are ornamented with large, grotesquely carved tablets, which signify by their particular design the legend or history of the respective family. These people have no written language. In former days every event of consequence was duly chronicled by some design, suggestive of the occurrence, chiseled upon a wooden pillar, such designs being placed in succession till an immense log was entirely

DRAWN BY MALCOLM FRASER.

WOODEN DANCING-MASKS, CROW NATION.

taken up with a strange medley of exaggerated figures. Most of these carvings are very old, and their legends and historical references have been distorted by constant repetition. Only the oldest men attempt to interpret the puzzling designs produced by their ancestors. Formerly powerful chieftains held court here with barbaric pomp, and terrorized the neighboring peo

ples. They were bucaneers and pirates. The chief, Klenta Koosh, has a strange collection of old firearms, and outside his house two iron cannons defend the approach with threatening array - all stolen from a Russian ship which stranded on the Alaskan shore in former days. Slavery was then in general practice; prisoners became the serfs of

their captors, and, as in central Africa to-day, constituted the principal source of wealth.

The old-time Chilkat, dressed in skins and furs obtained from the inland tribes, had his garments picturesquely fringed, and tasseled, and beaded, and woven in with stained swanquills. He wore bracelets of copper, and carried copper spears, knives, and arrows. He was a warrior, and lived but to perish in battle. In those days no ceremony was complete unless attended by human sacrifice; execution of slaves was of frequent occurrence, for superstitious belief deemed disaster and illness the do

ing of angry spirits, only to be appeased by the shedding of human blood. Tribal wars and hand-to-hand fights followed from the slightest disagreement.

It was the custom then for all the young men in the village to plunge each morning, winter and summer, into the chilly stream, stay in the icy waters till benumbed with cold, and then to thrash one another with stout-thonged whips till circulation and animation were thoroughly restored. This novel apprenticeship is said to have had the effect of creating unusual stamina, producing the ability to withstand cold and hunger, and deadening feeling. The Indians say that a warrior thus trained, though mortally wounded, would face his foe and cut and stab while life remained. In such duels they

protected their heads with wooden helmets, shaped in design according to their nation; they also wore buckskin shirts, and bound their arms with strips of leather. Gormandizing competitions used to be a popular form of entertainment; an immense trough, called KlookOok-Tsik, 14 feet long, 14 inches in width, and 15 in depth, was filled with meats, bear and mountain-goat, fish, berries, and oil. Then families vied with one another as to who could eat the most, and many serious fights have resulted from the jealousy of the losers.

The present generation of Chilkat Indians is fast relinquishing tribal customs and ceremonies, and is taking but little interest in the history of its ancestors. Dances are no longer held in which family head-dresses and costumes are worn. The great wooden banqueting-trough is now embedded in moss and in grass that grows between the floor-boards in the house where once old " Kay Tsoo" assembled his followers by drum-beat, despatched them on the trail for war or trade, declared the guilty and the innocent, and condemned to death as he willed. At the present day there are a few men in the villages known as "ankow," or chief, but they have only feeble power.

In character these Indians are a strange composition-unemotional, morose, unsympathetic, superstitious, indifferent to death,

without the slightest idea of gratitude, and having an astonishing respect for the property of others. When on a trading-journey, or out hunting, they will leave their belongings hanging on bushes all along the trail; and snow-shoes, sometimes a musket, blankets, a leg of smoked bear, a dried salmon, are frequently noticed along an Indian path. No one thinks of touching any of these things, and they have not the power of the police to enforce honesty by intimidation.

DRAWN BY W. TABER.

An incident happened to us which demonstrates their utter want of feeling for the interests of others. While at one of our camps a party of Indians returned from a journey to the interior which they had made on snow-shoes. I noticed that their chief, Klenta Koosh, was not with them on their return, and I asked of one of the Indians," Kusu Klenta Koosh" ("Where is Klenta Koosh")?" Klake sekoo,klake setteen" ("I don't know. I have not seen him"). Then he explained that he had not seen the chief for three days. While crossing the mountains they were caught in a dense fog; the party kept together for a time by calling constantly to one another, but finally the voice of the chief grew fainter and fainter, and then could no longer be heard. In the same breath with this explanation the Indian asked me, " Have the salmon started to run up our river?" I ignored his

"MARY" ON SNOWSHOES.

question, and asked again, "But where is Klenta Koosh?" As if disgusted at my interest in such a trivial matter, the man answered quite snappishly, "I don't know; either he has been killed by a bear or drowned crossing one of the swollen streams."

During our stay at the Indian village of Klokwan our horses remained in splendid condition. The natives themselves were too scared at the strange animals to annoy them. Their dogs at first made a noisy attack, but a few kicks from the horses warned them that it was more comfortable to howl at a distance.

Toward the end of May the summer warmth had rid the valleys of their winter snow; so we saddled up and moved on toward the interior. Our road from Klokwan lay along the course of the Kleeheenee, which heads away from a glacier, and, flowing from the westward, enters the Chilkat River just above the village. In crossing the parent river, now swollen by its

DRAWN BY DE COST SMITH,

THE APPROACH TO A CAÑON.

tribute from melting snows into a deep, swift stream, we towed each of our horses across with a canoe, with which we also carried our supplies as far as navigation permitted. We then harnessed up again, and, riding on the packsaddles, proceeded on our way along the stony valley of the Kleeheenee, which we had to swim several times on horseback, where the precipitous bluffs on one bank stopped our advance and compelled us to cross. At one place I had a bad fall. The horse I was riding sank into a small bed of quicksand, and, struggling to free himself, reared and fell backward. Fortunately I was thrown off a sufficient distance to be safe from his plunging and kicking, and finally Dalton and I helped him out. This stream, though at places not more than 100 yards in width, is a treacherous torrent. Only last year a man lost his life while attempting to descend it on a raft. After proceeding twenty miles from our last camp, another halt became necessary. The valleys were free from snow, but the mountain slopes seemed loath to discard their winter mantling,

We were compelled to pitch our tent again, and to wait till summer gained full power. At this camp both. we and our horses were tormented most unmercifully by mosquitos and a hideous assortment of teasing insects. A liberal daubing of bacon fat and

pitch around the eyes and ears of our animals kept those sensitive parts free from the pests, and when my head grew so bumpy I could not get my hat on I applied the remedy to my own anatomy with a good deal of success. When not feeding, our horses would leave the sheltered places and seek the open stone flats to avail themselves of whatever breeze was blowing; they would then stand in couples so that each had the benefit of the other's tail as a swish. We had three horses, and one little mare, who was the pet of the band; she would often stand behind two horses, and thus enjoy a monopoly of the fly-brushes.

Our Indian guide was most anxious to ride on horseback, and an opportunity presented itself to indulge him while we were shifting camp a few miles. We had loaded our horses very lightly and were riding on the packs, and while thus occupied our Indian suffered a sudden change in his usually uninteresting and phlegmatic course of life. He was riding the little mare. Close to our camp there was a broad, deep ditch, with steep banks on each side; we had always walked our horses down one side and up the other. The Indian had no reason to suppose that the mare would depart from that custom; but he had no time for any meditation on the subject, for upon arriving at the brink the little mare sprang over the ditch. The copper-colored rider was pitched into the air. He sat dazed until returning reason convinced him that it was too serious a mishap to be a dream.

Fearing that we might have a lot of soft snow to cross on the summit, we constructed sets of four snow-shoes for our horses. We trimmed

A ROUGH BIT OF CLIMBING.

some stout young spruce saplings, then lashed these into hoops fourteen inches in diameter, and filled them in with plaited rope, each, when finished, resembling the exaggerated head of a lawn-tennis racket. The horse's hoof was placed in a pad in the center of the shoe, and a series of loops drawn up and laced round the fetlock kept it in place. When first experimenting with these, a horse would snort and tremble upon lifting his feet. Then he would make the most vigorous efforts to shake them off. Standing on his hind-legs, he would savagely paw the air, then quickly tumble on to his fore-legs and kick frantically. We gave them daily instruction in this novel accomplishment till each horse was an

we found covered with a dense growth of brittle shrub and coarse grass, and, on the extreme heights, snow-fields and moss-covered rock. We had made several reconnoitering trips to select the best ways, and we reached the summit, 4750 feet elevation, by slow and careful ascent, without any serious mishap. On the extreme heights of the divide a giant table-land extends for several miles in all directions. The air was cold, and the view cheerless, all lower lands were out of sight, and a distant circle of snowy peaks penciled out the horizon with glistening ruggedness. Everywhere on the high levels we crossed over immense patches of snow, in most places packed so hard that

expert; but our precaution proved unnecessary, for all the snow we crossed during the season was packed hard.

At last we set forth in earnest. Gradually we had been following the receding snow, and had now reached the foot of the Rocky Mountains, forming the divide or coast-range. The dreaded wall of towering heights, which had kept the land so long unknown, was ahead of us. Thus far our march had been over stony valleys along the Chilkat and the Kleeheenee rivers. We now left the rivers and struck northward. On the lower slopes of the mountains we had to cut a trail through forests of spruce and hemlock. The steep hillsides of the higher levels

our horses' iron shoes made but little impression. Occasionally, however, the crisp surface would break through, and let us and our animals into deep, soft snow. While leading the little mare across one gulch, the hardened crust collapsed, and I and my horse tumbled out of sight into an icy stream coursing through its snowy tunnel beneath. By this time my mare had become quite philosophical in her acceptance of such incidents; she remained quiet, and looked at me as if inquiring what I meant to do under the circumstances. So I clambered out, and, giving her plenty of rope, urged and coaxed her to follow. The opposite bank of the gulch being only a few yards distant, by