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,