Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 188: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

178 would judge that the river is navigable for small boats 300 miles above the Bell and the'Bell is about. 500 or 600 miles from the mouth. The Old Crow which enters the Porcupine about 360 miles from the mouth has’been navigated by the Midnight Sun for about 300 miles. A MR. SOLOMONS states there is game a-plenty and it is one of the best fur countries in the world. Though I want to take exception to one thing he states and that is the temperatures are low. I have seen it a lot colder in the Tanana Valley than in the Porcupine. Though the season is short the Summers are as hot as ——; the Old Crow flats are the champion mosquito grounds of the north. ' A little placer has been worked on the Driftwood and Bluefish Rivers, but not enough to pay, though the country has been pretty well prospected. The formation is all wrong—lava and limestone. The Valley of the Old Crow was at one time the bed of a lake and in times gone by has broken through and formed what is called the Cajfion-of the Crow. This river is the crookedest river I have ever seen and on our first trip up, on relieving Walt Green at the wheel, I asked him how things were going. “See that mountain?” said Walt, pointing to a small round hill just head. ‘Well, we have been around it three times in the last two hours.” I said in the first part of this letter that the Old Crow had been navigated about three hundred miles and before any one gets a map of Alaska and scales off 300 miles and makes a har out of me I want to say that that 300 miles was by water and only about 80 miles air line.. Where the Crow cuts through high banks the remains of many fossils have been found and one year the Geological Survey sent a party to bring down some of the bones. The valley of the Upper Porcupine and its tribu- taries is well timbered, but the hills and flats are bare of all trees and only a few scattering willows are to be found. I KNOW of no more interesting trip than one from Fort Yukon to the head of the Porcupine and if I had the money, time and: were footloose, one that I would rather take. Leaving Fort ¥ukon, where all the supplies that man can wish for can: be had, the first hundred miles:is through a flat, very heavily timbered country. You pass the mouth of the Big Black, Salmon and Coleen Rivers and soon strike what is known as the Lower Ram- parts. Here the high limestone hills come to- gether and the river flows through a narrow channel. Above, the river widens out and flows through a flat country. Soon you hit the Upper Ramparts and from there to Rampart House, about 100 miles, you have swift water most of the way. You pass the famous “‘Klang Cree’ or Howling Dog Rocks and strike the mouth of the Salmon Trout River. All this time the main river is very muddy and the clear cold waters of the Salmon Trout,are a sight that you are glad to see. This is the,site of the Old Hudson’s Bay Post and if a mess: of fish are wanted just drop a hook in the water and the fish willi'do the rest. It is about 40 miles from the Sal-- mon Trout to.Rampart House and most of the way very swift water. When. we used to make this run on the Midnight Sun this part of the trip was the hardest, as.in this 40 miles we used to line the riffles Adventure 18 times and to drag about a thousand feet of wire cable over the rocks is no easy job. At Rampart House you can replenish your outfit but at a heavy price as everything is very high. Here you can pick up a man to take you to the Hot Springs. Leaving Rampart, the river is good to the mouth of the Crow and from there it is bad, bad, bad, for about twenty miles and then the river is like a slough, ‘“This is going up the Old Crow” to the boundary crossing. From there to the head of the Turner is a matter of dogs or back packing. If you don’t want to go up the Crow but want to keep on up the Porcupine, the river from the Crow to La Pier House at the mouth of the Bell is good and from there on you will have to ask some one else as my information plays out as well as my typewriter. The Porcupine from the mouth of the Crow up is clear. All of the mud that colors the Porcupine comes out of the Old Crow River. Sorry to make this so long, but this is a country that I know and love, so when I got started my fingers ran away. I will be only too glad to give any more information and put any one that wants information on the trail of some of the old-timers who I call my friends in this part of the world.— FrANcIS RorcuH, Jr. "THE critic in this case was perfectly de- cent in his criticism and therefore en- tirely in order and doing only what we want all our readers to do—point out mistakes when they see them or think they see them. That is our best safeguard against mistakes in the future and we need all the safeguards we can get, not being technical experts in all of the thousands of fields our stories touch on. But Id like to present this case just in general and by way of calling attention to the fact that writers are human beings like the rest of us. I’m still campaigning against the very few of you who do not seem to understand that they can make their points just as well in a kindly fashion as in an unkindly fashion. Nearly all— all, perhaps—of our writers are members of our Camp-Fire. Why not treat them as such—as comrades? ND do you never make mistakes your- selves? I know some of you do, for your very criticisms are often mistakes, often an attempt at wisdom in a field you think you know all about and don’t. In a still more general way, is there any- thing this world needs more than plain, ordinary, man-to-man human kindness and friendliness? And isn’t our Camp-Fire very particularly a place for it? Among other things, it’s the best way of having a good time. a COmMiclboo