280 YARNS OF THE SKEENA RIVER

tales of hunting and trapping and perilous climbs over
rugged mountains, tales of death from starvation and
drowning, tales of the days when all freight went up
stream by canoe, and of the hazardous voyages of the stern-
wheeled steamers that, at a later date, fought their way
up against its boiling current.

Nowadays the traveller can sit in one of the luxurious
ears of the Canadian National Railway and follow the
windings of the river for one hundred and fifty miles in
comfort. In such circumstances, what is seen of it
gives but a poor idea of what toil and dangers were in
store for early pioneers who ventured a journey up it by
canoe, or even the river steamers when they began to
make attempts to overcome its violence. Even on the
steamers there was considerable risk at times, and more
than one of them left her timbers to rot on its ever-
changing banks.

My first trip up the Skeena—somewhere about 1898—
was the most uneventful one of the many I made at
different times. On this occasion I boarded the old
Caledonia at Port Simpson. Captain Bonser was her
master; to assist him he had a mate of the typical hard-
fisted kind, called Jack—I presume he had some other
name, but nobody ever seemed to know it. He was a
thoroughly capable man, and for all his roughness, pleasant
enough except to unruly members of his crew. There
was also an Indian pilot called Charlie and an Indian
crew of six or seven. From Port Simpson we took the
inside passage past Metlakahtla—an historic Indian Mission
—to the mouth of the Skeena, and then on up to Essington,
where at that time old Tom Cunningham, a salmon canner
and trader, reigned supreme. We stayed at Essington
several days loading freight, and then proceeded up
stream, As it happened, the river was at a most unusually
favourable stage, so that within two days we reached
Kitselas Canyon, a distance of about a hundred miles,
where I was put ashore with my few belongings in torrents
of rain, and left to shift for myself. For the next five
years the greater part of my time was spent on the river,