Yukon district on the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north. This division, situated almost entirely above the Arctic Circle, is known only from observations made on the seacoast. The vast interior, consisting probably of frozen moors and low ranges of hills, intersected here and there by shallow streams, remains almost entirely unknown. The Meade, Ikpikpung, and Colville rivers empty into the Arctic Ocean, and the Selawik (flowing through Selawik Lake), the Noatak, and the Kowak empty into Kotzebue Sound. The natives report the existence of settlements on all these rivers except the Colville, whose head waters no white man has ever visited. The coast settlements between Cape Prince of Wales and Point Barrow are visited annually by many schooners and ships engaged in whaling, hunting, and trading, and the inhabitants are better accustomed to white men than the natives of any other regions of Alaska. They carry on an extensive traffic with the natives of the Arctic coasts of Alaska and Asia. Kotzebue Sound is by far the best harbor in this section of the Arctic Ocean.

RIVER SYSTEM.

One of the characteristics of Alaska is the network of rivers that covers its surface, and that serves as the most available means of transportation. In the Sitkan district, says Mr. Petroff, land travel is simply impracticable. Nobody goes on a road; savages and whites all travel by water. In the more northern regions "the country, outside of the mountains, is a great expanse of bog, lakes, large and small, with thousands of channels between them.” By ascending Lynn Channel, the head waters of the Yukon can be reached by the Chilkoot, the Chilkat, or the White passes; the Copper and Tanana rivers, the Copper and Sushitna, the Tanana and White, the Sushitna and Kuskokwim are connected by trails. There is a trail of 6 miles between branches of the Yukon and Kuskokwim.1 In the Alaska peninsula, there is a route from Bristol 1 According to the map in Nansen's "Farthest North." No. 86

2

Bay to Shelikof Strait, via Walker Lake and the Naknek River. Speaking of this region, Mr. Dall (Alaska and its Resources, 1870, p. 273) says: "The country between and at the bases of the high mountains, which form the prolongation of the Alaskan range in the peninsula, is very low and marshy. In many places, large lakes are found, emptying into the sea by rivers on either side, and it is said that in some places a passage can be made in canoes from one shore to the other, hardly lifting the canoe out of water during the journey."

The Yukon can be reached from Norton Sound via the Unalaklik and Autokakat rivers (or via the Kaltag), the usual route of travelers from St. Michaels. The Yukon also connects,. via the Koyukuk, with Kotzebue Sound. The statement is made by natives that there are routes of travel between the northern tributaries of the Yukon or the Noatak and the rivers that empty direct into the Arctic Ocean.

Beginning on the south, the Stikine is the first river of large size, although it lies within Alaskan territory, only 30 miles in an air line from its mouth. It empties into Dry Strait, near Wrangell Island. The river has become well known on account of the gold diggings on its banks, all of which are in British territory. It is over 250 miles in length, and is navigable only by boats, except during the spring freshets. The North Fork (about 40 miles long) rises on the east side of the Bald Mountains, near the headwaters of the Yukon. A small stream called the Taku flows into Glacier Arm of St. Stephens Strait. The Chilkat, a much larger river, enters the northern extremity of Lynn Channel. The general direction of this river is from the north. The Indians ascend it against a rapid current in twenty days, when they make a portage by several lakes to the Lewis River, a tributary of the Yukon.

The mouth of the Copper River lies in latitude 60° 17′ and longitude 145° 20'. The delta is 30 miles long by 4 or 5 wide,

and the principal mouth is at the northwest. This river, with its tributary the Chittyna, was explored in 1885 by Lieutenant Allen (Reconnoissance in Alaska, Senate Ex. Doc. 125, Forty-ninth Congress, second session). He followed the Copper River for some 389 miles, and says that it drains, approximately, 25,000 square miles. By way of the Slana River and Lake Suslota, the Tanana, a tributary of the Yukon, can be reached. Lieutenant Allen says (pp. 69–71):

To find two rivers of the magnitude of the Tanana and Copper heading so near each other as almost to have intersecting tributaries, and to be so entirely different in their characteristics, I consider one of the most interesting discov eries of the expedition. . . . The pass over the Alaskan range, Lake Suslota, is probably the best locality that will permit communication between the Yukon Basin and the Copper River country, and would doubtless be used should the minerals of the latter region prove of sufficient importance. The possibility of the ascent of the Copper with provisions can hardly be entertained, unless it be made with sleds during the winter.

The Sushitna River empties into Cook Inlet. This river is said to connect both with the Tanana and the Kuskokwim by trails. West of Augustin Island is a small stream by which, through the mountain gorges, portage is made to Lake Iliamna. This lake, says Mr. Dall, is supposed to be rather shallow, and is known to be over 80 miles long and about 24 broad—fully half as large as Lake Ontario. At Fort Alexandra is the mouth of the Nushagak, said to be 150 miles in length, and to connect by means of lakes and rivers with the Kuskokwim. This is the second largest river in Alaska. In his report on the Territory, Mr. Petroff says:

The length of the main artery of this division is not known, the head waters of the Kuskokwim having thus far been untouched by the explorer or trader. We have the statements of natives to the effect that the upper Kuskokwim River flows sluggishly through a vast plateau or valley, the current acquiring its impetus only a short distance above the village of Napaimute. From this point down to the trading station of Kalmakovsky and to the southern end of the portage route between this river and the Yukon, the banks are high and gravelly

and chains of mountains seem to run parallel with its course on either side. This section of the Kuskokwim Valley is but thinly populated, though apparently the natural advantages are far greater than on the corresponding section of the Yukon. The soil is of better quality and is sufficiently drained to permit of a more luxuriant growth of forest trees, shrubs, and herbs.

Such indications of minerals as have been found here are the most promising of those in any portion of western Alaska, consisting of well-defined veins of cinnabar, antimony, and silver-bearing quartz.

Game and fur-bearing animals do not abound in this section of the river valley, as it is an old hunting ground, and has been drained by constant traffic for more than half a century. The principal business of the traders at Kalmakovsky is derived from the almost unknown head waters of the river, where the beaver, marten, and fox are still plentiful.

The people of the lower Kuskokwim, adds Mr. Petroff, live from the abundant supply of salmon. Over 4,000 people lay in the winter supply for themselves and for their dogs during a few months of summer. The fish is dried in a wasteful manner, and with better methods four times the number could be provided for. This section of the country teems with population. The estuary of the river is capacious, and the tides have a surprising velocity and an enormous rise and fall.

THE YUKON REGION.

The following descriptions are also taken from Mr. Petroff's report:

The people of the United States will not be quick to realize that the volume of water in an Alaskan river is greater than that discharged by the mighty Mississippi; but it is entirely within the bounds of honest statement to say that the Yukon River, the vast deltoid mouth of which opens into Norton Sound of Bering Sea, discharges every hour one-third more water than the "Father of Waters." There is room for some very important measurements in this connection, which I hope will soon be made. Entering the mouth, or rather any one of the mouths, of this large river, we are impressed first by the exceeding shallowness of the sea 50 miles out from it, varying in depth from 2 to 3 fathoms; and, second, by the mournful, desolate appearance of the country itself, which is scarcely above the level of the tide, and which is covered with a monotonous

cloak of scrubby willows and rank grasses. The banks, wherever they are lifted above the reddish current, are continually undermined and washed away by the flood, and so sudden and precipitate are these landslides at times that traders and natives have barely escaped with their lives. For 100 miles up, through an intricate labyrinth of tides, blind and misleading channels, sloughs, and swamps, we pass through the same dreary, desolate region, until the higher ground is first reached at Kusilvak, and until the bluffs at Andreievsky and at Chatinakh give evidence of the fact that all the land in Alaska is not under water. It is watered, however, here, there, and everywhere, and impresses one with the idea of a vast inland sea, which impression holds good even as far up the river as 700 or 800 miles, where there are many points, even far in the interior, at which this river spans a breadth of 20 miles from shore to shore. As we advance toward its source we are not surprised, when we view the character of the country through which it rolls, at the vast quantity of water in its channel. It would seem as though the land itself, drained by the river on either side within Alaska, were a sponge, into which all rain and moisture from the heavens and melting snow are absorbed, never finding their release by evaporation, but conserved to drain, by myriads and myriads of rivulets, the great watery highway of the Yukon. I noticed a striking evidence of the peculiar nonconductive properties of the tundra mosses, or swale, last summer in passing through many of the thousand and one lakes and lakelets peculiar to that region, where the ice had bound up the moss and overhanging water growth at the edges of the lakes. In the breaking up and thawing out of summer that ice failed to melt, and the renewed growth of the season of vegetation, reaching out in turn from this icy border, will again prevent thawing, and so on until shallow pools and flats are changed into fixed masses of ice hidden from view.

The Yukon is formed by the junction of the Lewis and Pelly rivers. Mr. Wilson, in his "Guide to the Yukon Gold Fields,' published at Seattle, 1895, gives the length of the Yukon as 2,044 miles, and says that it is navigable the entire distance for flatbottom boats with a capacity of from 400 to 500 tons.

The White River, a portion of whose waters flows through Alaskan territory, empties into the Yukon on British territory. Forty Mile Creek, Birch and Beaver creeks join the river between Fort Yukon and Dawson, a British town. The following description of the topography of the Yukon River below Fort Yukon (966 miles from mouth) is quoted by Mr. Petroff from the