It
Is About Twenty-Seven Miles Long, One To Two Miles Wide, And Its
Waters, Tributary To The Mackenzie, Flow
Into the Arctic Ocean by a
very long, roundabout, romantic way, the exploration of which in 1789
from Great Slave
Lake to the Arctic Ocean must have been a glorious
task for the heroic Scotchman, Alexander Mackenzie, whose name it
bears.
Dease Creek, a fine rushing stream about forty miles long and forty
or fifty feet wide, enters the lake from the west, drawing its
sources from grassy mountain-ridges. Thibert Creek, about the same
size, and McDames and Defot Creeks, with their many branches, head
together in the same general range of mountains or on moor-like
tablelands on the divide between the Mackenzie and Yukon and
Stickeen. All these Mackenzie streams had proved rich in gold. The
wing-dams, flumes, and sluice-boxes on the lower five or ten miles of
their courses showed wonderful industry, and the quantity of glacial
and perhaps pre-glacial gravel displayed was enormous. Some of the
beds were not unlike those of the so-called Dead Rivers of
California. Several ancient drift-filled channels on Thibert Creek,
blue at bed rock, were exposed and had been worked. A considerable
portion of the gold, though mostly coarse, had no doubt come from
considerable distances, as boulders included in some of the deposits
show. The deepest beds, though known to be rich, had not yet been
worked to any great depth on account of expense.
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