DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 19 



Monograph on the caribou. — Last year it was my privilege to furnish 

 a valuable monograph by the Hon. Rasmus B. Anderson upon the 

 domestic reindeer of the world. This year I am equally fortunate in 

 securing a monograph on the wild reindeer or caribou, from the pen of 

 Mr. Charles Hallock, M. A., M. B. S., ex-editor of Forest and Stream. 

 (Appendix, p. 80.) 



ITINERARY. 



Leaving Washington City on the 16th of April, I reached San Fran- 

 cisco on the 24th. After arranging for the transportation of the Lapp 

 colony to the reindeer station in Alaska, and also of the supplies for 

 that station, I left San Francisco on the evening of the 25th and joined 

 the United States revenue cutter Bear at Seattle, Wash., on the 28th # 

 Under instructions from Washington, the Bear got underway for Sitka 

 on the 5th of May. The trip up the coast was a rough and stormy one; 

 snow squalls were encountered almost every day. On the morning of 

 May 10, off Dixon's Entrance, in a driving snowstorm, the gale became 

 so severe as to split the fore-staysail, carry away the grips of the third 

 cutter, and deluge the galley with water. At the same time the wheel 

 ropes parted and the ship had to lay to; the sea was so rough that no 

 attempt was made to set the table in the captain's cabin, but we took 

 our meals in our hands in the pilot house as best we could. 



Dixon's Entrance was named for Capt. George Dixon, commanding 

 the English ship Queen Charlotte, which visited this region between 

 1775-76. The straits, however, had been discovered by Capt. Juan 

 Perez, of the Spanish expedition of 1774. The first white man to nav- 

 igate these waters was Captain Douglass, in the Iphigenia, in 1789. 

 These waters mark the boundary line between British Columbia and 

 Alaska. Crossing the mouth of Dixon's Entrance we were again in 

 American waters — in Alaska, the region of the celebrated exploring 

 expeditions of a century ago. 



In 1741 Vitus Bering, in the St. Peter, reached as far eastward along 

 the coast of Alaska as Kayak Island, and looked upon the glories of 

 Mount St. Elias. The same season, his second in command, Alexei 

 Chirikof, in the St. Paul, reached the region of Sitka and Cape Prince 

 of Wales Island. The discoveries of Bering and Chirikof, together with 

 their report of the abundance of furs, set the merchants of Siberia wild 

 with excitement. As in later days there was a rush to the newly-dis- 

 covered gold fields of California, so in Siberia more than sixty com- 

 panies were organized to gather in the harvest of furs. Unwilling to 

 await the proper construction of seagoing vessels, flatboats and small 

 schooners were hastily constructed of hewn planks lashed together with 

 rawhide thongs — vessels that would float in fair weather, but were 

 unable to hold together in storms. In these frail crafts expedition after 

 expedition followed one another in rapid succession, and the half of 

 them were lost, but those that did return in safety with a fair cargo 

 divided profits of from $1,500 to $3,000 per man. 



