many binding cross-pieces on which tons of salmon
were being dried. The heads were strung on separate
poles and the roes packed in willow baskets, all being
well smoked from fires in the middle of the floor. The
largest of the booths near the bank of the river was
about forty feet square. Beds made of spruce and
pine boughs were spread all around the walls, on
which some of the Indians lay asleep; some were
braiding ropes, others sitting and lounging, gossiping
and courting, while a little baby was swinging in a
hammock. All seemed to be light-hearted and jolly,
with work enough and wit enough to maintain health
and comfort. In the winter they are said to dwell in
substantial huts in the woods, where game, especially
caribou, is abundant. They are pale copper-colored,
have small feet and hands, are not at all negroish in
lips or cheeks like some of the coast tribes, nor so
thickset, short-necked, or heavy-featured in general.

One of the most striking of the geological features
of this region are immense gravel deposits displayed
in sections on the walls of the river gorges. About two
miles above the North Fork confluence there is a
bluff of basalt three hundred and fifty feet high, and
above this a bed of gravel four hundred feet thick,
while beneath the basalt there is another bed at least
fifty feet thick.

From "Ward's," seventeen miles beyond Tele-
graph, and about fourteen hundred feet above sea-
level, the trail ascends a gravel ridge to a pine-and-
fir-covered plateau twenty-one hundred feet above
the sea. Thence for three miles the trail leads through

-77-