95 Northern search 



mere 18 miles across the tip of Richard's Island west of Kugmallit 

 Bay, on the Beaufort Sea. At Separation Point, where the delta 

 begins, the main channel forms three branches. These unite again 

 a little beyond and the main stream flows on as far as Reindeer 

 Station, then breaks off toward the west as Middle Channel, and 

 the main river goes on north, around the foot of the Caribou 

 Hills to Kugmallit Bay and the sea. Meanwhile, as the delta lands 

 flatten out, the onrushing stream breaks through its banks on 

 every hand to form a thousand small channels, a network of 

 rivulets, tortuous and intricate, but all ending eventually in the 

 sea. Throughout this pattern, there are thousands of tiny lakes 

 formed by the ever-changing whims of the delta, as channels shift 

 their courses and new banks are thrown up or old ones destroyed. 

 There are two main types of habitat, the wooded delta, which is 

 the upstream portion and covers some 3,600 square miles, and the 

 treeless delta near the coast, covering about 1,600 square miles. In 

 the wooded portion, spruce, fir, and willow grow along the banks, 

 while the treeless area has only a few small willows and is chiefly 

 a region of broad meadows and wide mud flats. 



The entire delta region except the north end, toward the open 

 sea, is enclosed by mountains or hills. To the west are the Richard- 

 son Mountains, rising to peaks of over 6,000 feet, while the eastern 

 boundary is formed by the Caribou Hills, 500 feet in height, and 

 the adjacent upland tundra, a high and gently rolling area of 

 formidable aspect. Our first view of this whole vast panorama from 

 the air had been bewildering, but that evening, in the police 

 boat, we saw the narrow, winding channels, the shallow, tree-lined 

 lakes, and the muddy banks at close range, and their character was 

 soon familiar to us. At one camp we went ashore. The men were 

 still off somewhere gathering pelts, but a fat and very jolly 

 Loucheux or Kutchin woman, known as Elizabeth, was hard at 

 work washing clothes, assisted by a couple of shy children. She 

 was dressed in a series of loose garments known as "summer 

 parkas," cut from light cotton material and worn one over another, 

 and she had caribou-hide mukluks on her feet. The washing 

 machine was a surprise. It was an old-fashioned manual affair 

 operated by hand and it probably had a long and interesting 



