about five miles long, and on it is situated the Tagish House, where yearly festivals and councils of war are held by the natives, the buildings being the only permanent structures in hundreds of miles above where the Pelly and Lewis Rivers join to make the Yukon.

Lake Marsh, which is next entered, stretches along at a width of two miles for a distance of twenty, the most notable feature of all these lakes being their narrowness as compared with their length. Lake Marsh is in the middle of a broad. valley, from which high ranges of mountains stand out prominently at a considerable distance. Its banks, like the banks of the other lakes, are well wooded. From Lake Marsh the seeker for gold finds his way into Lewis River, which he follows for a distance of nearly five hundred miles to the northwest until he reaches the gold fields around the Klondike Basin. This journey along Lewis River, with its canons and rapids, is one of the most picturesque and interesting that can possibly be imagined. One of the features of the trip is the high cut banks which stretch along for mile after mile and which are completely honeycombed by martins, which resort there to rear their young. Lake Marsh is the limit for

the migration of the salmon, which arrive there in small numbers, although those who do brave the journey are said to be the finest to be found anywhere in the world, averaging forty pounds in weight. The swift waters of the Grand Canon are too powerful ever for the salmon whose hardihood brings them as far up the river as this.

The Grand Canyon, or "Miles" Canyon is marvelously beautiful. It is cut through a horizontal basalt bed, and the walls range in height from fifty to one hundred and twenty feet, being worn into all sorts of fantastic shapes. The average width of the canon is about one hundred feet, and as the average width of the river above it is over seven hundred feet, the force with which this great volume of water cuts through the steep ledges of rock may be imagined. Mr. Wilson, who made this trip in 1894 and who has described it at length in his "Guide to the Yukon Gold Field," says that he shot through the canon for a distance of three-quarters of a mile in two minutes and twenty seconds, and when his boat emerged from the chasm it was leaking badly and nearly every nail was started. Two miles beyond come the White Horse Rapids, which form a perilous passage even for the best of

boats, and farther down comes Lake Labarge, at a distance of about fifty miles from Lake Marsh. Lake Labarge is thirty-one miles long, with an average width of five miles, and is very windy. It is the last of the remarkable series of lakes beginning with Lake Lindeman in the south. And here attention should be drawn to the singular conformation of the country which makes the springs no farther distant than thirty miles from tidewater on the south find their outlet in the great system of rivers which pour their waters through the Yukon into Bering Sea thousands of miles away.

The Hootalinqua River enters the Lewis twenty-eight miles below Lake Labarge and has acquired an interest apart from its size owing to the fact that it was the limit of the journey of the earliest prospector for gold in this region. Thirty-one miles farther down is the Big Salmon, and thirty-five miles still farther comes the Little Salmon, both of which are great streams for fishing, many Indians spending the summer months on the larger river preparing their winter salmon. After proceeding eighty miles farther the argonauts come to old Fort Selkirk, at the junction of the Pelly and Lewis Rivers,