growth of willow brush, alder and cottonwood. The first spruce timber is seen some fifty miles below the Russian mission, at Ikomiut, and from there up to its head the river is more or less belted with timber, spruce, fir, hemlock, birch, alder and cottonwood being the varieties most predominant.

On the low islands and flats the spruce attains a considerable size, but as lumber it is not adapted for any purpose beyond the needs of the miners and others in the country, being checked by frost and full of knots. The growth of timber seems to be entirely confined to the margins of the streams and rivers in many instances being merely a fringe on the banks.

There is a great variety of berries to be found all through the country; high and low bush cranberries, blueberries, salmon berries, red currants, and raspberries. The salmon or dewberries abound on the swampy lands of the Lower Yukon, and are gathered by the natives in quantities, who preserve them by burying them in the ground, using them as a delicacy in the winter, mixed with seal oil or deer fat and snow..

Game is said to be scarce, considering the im

mense stretches of uninhabited country. Numerous signs are to be seen on the banks of the main river, but so far few white men have proved successful hunters, owing to the difficulties of travel. An Indian traveling with no impediments can scour over the country, and, being acquainted with every game sign, can obtain some reward for his exertion, where a white man would starve.

Though some distance to the north of the entrance of the Yukon River, St. Michael has always been a controlling centre and basis of supplies for the great river of the far northwest. From here the hardy Muscovite pioneers pushed their advance slowly and laboriously with clumsy boats in skin-covered "bidars," and trudging over the frozen snow plains with their dog teams until the met the forerunners of the Hudson Bay Company on their way down the river, which English geographers of that time pictured as emptying into the Arctic.

As long as the Russians were in possession of this region all furs secured in the Kuskokwin Valley were transported over the Yukon portage to St. Michael, and thence shipped to Sitka, together with those obtained by barter from the natives of the shores and islands of Bering

Strait. The first American traders to engage in the Yukon trade were members of the Western Union Telegraph expedition, and foremost among these pioneers were Ketchum and Clark. Later came Mercier, a brother of the Canadian ex-minister, and a host of other French Canadians, together with three prospectors, McQueston, Mayo (Americans), and Harper (an Englishman), who still control the trade and much of the mining industry of the Upper Yukon and its tributaries from Fort Selkirk westward.

The basis of supplies for the whole district was early taken by the Alaska Commercial Company, who at first utilized a small stern-wheel steamer placed upon the river by the telegraph company, and later built other vessels for the purpose of towing loaded barges up the river. Later the firms who entered into competition with the company in other districts made a lodgment near St. Michael, and another steamer was placed upon the river.

In the year 1883 this opposition collapsed, but shortly after the bar diggings of Forty Mile Creek and other parts of the Upper Yukon were discovered, which caused a sudden revival of trade, chiefly in miners' supplies, and induced the

traders mentioned above to acquire small steamboats of their own.

It was not long before new competition appeared, and three years ago the concern known as the North American Transportation and Trading Company, was organized, with headquarters in Chicago, and its chief trading and distributing post at Fort Cudahy. This company dispatches ocean steamers from San Francisco to St. Michael, where the merchandise is transhipped into river steamers and carried to points inland.

CHAPTER X.

MINERAL RESOURCES.

Not until capital flows into the country in great streams will the real extent of the undeveloped mineral resources of Alaska begin to be revealed. When communication has opened up so that the gold bound up in the quartz of the interior can be separated with profit the true wealth of the country will appear. The quartz mines of southeastern Alaska are fully described

in the chapter on that subject, but the quartz of the interior according to all indications is far more rich in gold.

"I think it may with confidence be asserted," says Ogilvie, "that rich finds will yet be made of both coarse gold and gold-bearing quartz. It is not likely in the nature of things that such a vast extent of country should have all its fine gold deposited as sediment, brought from a distance. in past ages of the world's development. If this is not the case, the matrix from which all the gold on these streams has come, must still exist, in part at least, and will no doubt be discovered, and thus enrich this otherwise gloomy and desolate region."

Mr. Ogilvie, in his official reports to the Canadian government during 1895 and 1896, described discoveries of gold which have not perhaps attracted as much attention as they ought. On January 8, 1896, he writes: "Gold bearing quartz has been found in Cone Hill, which stands midway in the valley of the Forty-mile River, a couple of miles above the junction with the Yukon. The quantity in sight rivals that of the Treadwell mine on the coast, and the quality is better, so much so that it is thought it will pay