Because he needed more measurements

[sakibkhan22197]

After dozens of such stops, the ship arrived at Fort Yukon on July 31, 1869.

Raymond anticipated tension at the trading post. He instead found the hospitality he noted everywhere he visited in Alaska:

“Notwithstanding the somewhat unpleasant character of our errand, we were cordially welcomed by Mr. John Wilson, the agent of the Hudson Bay Company at the station,” Raymond wrote. “(We) were speedily established in one of the comfortable log buildings which compose the fort.”

He found his surveying job harder than he expected: “The nights were so light as to greatly embarrass astronomical observations.”

Impatiently watching the Yukon River’s water level drop as feeder creeks started to freeze, the captain of the Yukon announced he was heading back for St. Michael, with or without Raymond.

to be confident, one afternoon Raymond stood on shore and watched the steamship pull away from Fort Yukon. The captain had left him and his assistant behind.

Raymond soon thereafter — with the help of a solar country wise email marketing list eclipse — determined that Fort Yukon was indeed west of the 141st meridian and part of the United States.

Raymond informed John Wilson with some regret that he needed to take possession of the British trading post. He then hoisted the American flag on a spruce pole. As Raymond watched it flap in the breeze, he pondered his exit from Alaska.

On Aug. 28, 1869, Raymond shoved off from Fort Yukon for home with four others in a wooden skiff sealed with spruce pitch.

Their rations for the long trip downstream included 25 pounds of “moose pemmican” from John Wilson, the ousted Hudson Bay manager.

In a journey “too monotonous to require much description” Raymond and his party paddled the hundreds of miles of gentle river to the village of Anvik in two weeks.

There, his plan changed. Raymond’s boat had disintegrated beyond repair. The Natives in Anvik deemed it too late in the season to help the men descend the Yukon to its mouth, more than 300 river miles away.

Not wanting to overwinter in Alaska, Raymond heard from a village leader that the locals sometimes travelled upstream on the Anvik River to a portage that would lead them to the ocean at Norton Sound. It was a much shorter journey than boating to the mouth of the Yukon but promised more suffering.

“This being apparently the only avenue of escape, I did not hesitate long,” Raymond wrote.