"Travels in Alaska 



the clouds showed beautiful bits of yellow-green sky. 

 The limit of tree growth is about five thousand feet. 



Throughout all this region from Glenora to Cassiar 

 the grasses grow luxuriantly in openings in the woods 

 and on dry hillsides where the trees seem to have been 

 destroyed by fire, and over all the broad prairies 

 above the timber-line. A kind of bunch-grass in partic- 

 ular is often four or five feet high, and close enough to 

 be mowed for hay. I never anywhere saw finer or 

 more bountiful wild pasture. Here the caribou feed 

 and grow fat, braving the intense winter cold, often 

 forty to sixty degrees below zero. Winter and summer 

 seem to be the only seasons here. What may fairly 

 be called summer lasts only two or three months, 

 winter nine or ten, for of pure well-defined spring or 

 autumn there is scarcely a trace. Were it not for the 

 long severe winters, this would be a capital stock 

 country, equaling Texas and the prairies of the old 

 West. From my outlook on the Defot ridge I saw 

 thousands of square miles of this prairie-like region 

 drained by tributaries of the Stickeen, Taku, Yukon, 

 and Mackenzie Rivers. 



Le Claire told me that the caribou, or reindeer, 

 were very abundant on this high ground. A flock of 

 fifty or more was seen a short time before at the head 

 of Defot Creek, — fine, hardy, able animals like their 

 near relatives the reindeer of the Arctic tundras. The 

 Indians hereabouts, he said, hunted them with dogs, 

 mostly in the fall and winter. On my return trip I 

 met several bands of these Indians on the march, go- 

 ing north to hunt. Some of the men and women were 



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