this morning, because nobody is going anywhere. The sun is already high in a cloudless sky when the first risers tumble from their sleeping bags. The view from the bank where we prepare breakfast is breathtaking. Spread out before us in a huge semi-circle is the river; beyond it runs a continuous cliff of black basalt. Directly across from us, the Pelly cuts through the wall and mingles its muddy waters with the mainstream. Behind us, the empty village stretches for more than half a mile along the bank. Selkirk is the oldest settlement on the river. On an island, across from us, is the site of the old Hudson’s Bay post that Robert Campbell established in 1848 and fled four years later as the Chilkats from the coast burned it to the ground. Campbell then made a record-breaking snowshoe journey, three thousand miles from this point to the nearest railhead at Crow Wing, Minnesota–an incredible feat. His company did not return to the confluence of the Pelly and the Yukon but in 1898 the Yukon Field Force, two hundred and three soldiers from the Royal Canadian Rifles, the Royal Canadian Dragoons and the Royal Canadian Artillery, made their headquarters here.
