COURSE OF THE YUKON. 207 



district north of Pelly Banks, the course of the Yukon is, 

 according to the Indians, to the westward of north ; and 

 in one place where it cuts a spur of the Big Beaver 

 Mountains, it passes between high limestone cliffs re- 

 sembling the " ramparts " on the Mackenzie. Its current 

 is every where more rapid than that of the river just 

 named. The first important tributary which it receives is 

 the Red Island River, that flows in from the mountains 

 on its eastern bank, and is divided at its source from the 

 head of the Peel by a single ridge of land. Between it 

 and the Lewis there is a barren plateau, which the In- 

 dians cross in four days, but on which they find no water.* 

 Another tributary from the east comes in lower down, and 

 below that Deep River enters from the west. The Rus- 

 sians appeared on this stream with a skin boat (baidar), 

 coming overland, it was supposed, from the Copper River 

 or Atna, which joins the Pacific in Comptroller's Bay. 

 From below the " ramparts," which are reckoned to be 

 about seventy miles above the influx of the Porcupine, 

 the Yukon flows to the north-west through a flat country ; 

 but twenty or thirty miles below the mouth of that tri- 

 butary it again cuts a spur of the Beaver Mountains, trend- 

 ing at the same time to the south-westward and westward, 

 and finally issuing in Beering's Sea, under the Eskimo ap- 

 pellation of Kwichpack, as has been mentioned above. 

 Below the Big Beaver Mountains it receives from the 

 south the " River of the Mountain Men," which runs 

 parallel to the main stream for some distance before en- 

 tering it. From thence to the sea the Kwichpack flows, 



* There is a district in Siberia on which neither snow nor rain is 

 said to fall. This may be a similar one ; for it can scarcely be, in so 

 rigorous a climate, that melting snow, if it exists, should not leave 

 pools of water all the summer. 



