REINDEER PROGRESS IN ALASKA 155 



the same time of such strong resistance that they are not broken up 

 either during the process of manufacture or by swelling when wet. The 

 cells expand in water, and thus it happens that a person clad com- 

 pletely in garments made of reindeer wool does not sink when in water, 

 because he is buoyed up by the air contained in the hundreds of thou- 

 sands of hair cells. 



As a mineral industry continues to grow in Alaska the natives and 

 graduate apprentices can earn high wages as teamsters, hauling supplies 

 and furnishing fresh reindeer meat to mining camps in the interior, 

 at points remote from railway and steamboat transportation. Well- 

 trained sled deer have been used to carry the mail 650 miles from point 

 Barrow, south to Kotzebue. This is the most northern mail route in 

 the United States, and likewise the most perilous and desolate mail 

 trip in the world. Two trips are made a year and S750 is paid for each 

 journey. The average speed is about 40 to 50 miles per day, keeping 

 up a steady trot. 



One of the latest and quite remarkable feats showing the capacity 

 of the reindeer for sledge driving was that accomplished by Mr. W. T. 

 Lopp, the Superintendent of the Government Reindeer Service. Dur- 

 ing the recent winter's tour of inspection, Mr. Lopp travelled more 

 than 2,500 miles with a reindeer sled over the frozen tundra and ice- 

 bound rivers of the lower Bering Sea region from the middle Yukon to 

 the coast of the North Pacific. Part of this route for several hundred 

 miles lay through a country which had been so little traversed that not 

 even native trails had been made. The Alaska Reindeer Service is 

 under the direction of the United States Bureau of Education. 



