38 TNTRODUOTION OF DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 



During eight months of each year St. Lawrence Island is an island 

 in the ice-bound sea, absolutely inaccessible from the outside world. 

 During the short season of open navigation in midsummer the only 

 visitors to the island are a few of the arctic whalers on their way to 

 and from the whaling grounds beyond the Arctic Circle, the revenue 

 cutter bringing the annual mail, and the schooner delivering the sup- 

 plies for the school and reindeer station. Doctor Campbell and Mrs. 

 Campbell had been for three years constantly on this desolate island. 



Captain Hamlet's invitation was eagerly accepted. While I in- 

 spected the school and Government property at the station Doctor 

 Campbell and Mrs. Campbell hastily made preparations for the sum- 

 mer's outing, and during the evening accompanied me back to the 

 Thetis. Tlu'ee of the native boys from St. Lawrence Island were also 

 taken on board and entered upon the ship's roster as berth-deck boys, 

 with a view to promotion if their services were satisfactory. Three 

 boys from Unalaska who were given similar employment on the 

 Thetis during the summer of 1903 were by this time good seamen. 

 The opportunity thus given to the natives to advance themselves is 

 most praiseworthy and can not fail to be an incentive to all the 

 Eskimo young men with whom they come in contact. 



At 9 p. m., July 31, the Thetis dropped anchor off Nome, and early 

 on the following morning we received on board several sacks of mail 

 for St. Lawrence Island and for the isolated settlements on the shores 

 of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, also many letters, magazines, 

 and newspapers for the ship's company. 



At noon of same day we were again underway, steaming southward 

 through Norton Sound en route for St. Michael, 60 miles north of the 

 delta of the Yukon River. In approaching St. Michael it is necessary 

 to give a wide berth to the mud flats making out from the delta of the 

 Yukon. The harbor is unsafe in bad weather, both from want of pro- 

 tection and shallow water, the depth at the usual anchorages, 2 or 3 

 miles from shore, ranging from 3 to 4 fathoms only. Wlien the sea 

 rises it is frequently necessary to shift anchor or head out into deep 

 water. The first ocean steamers from Seattle or San Francisco, 

 making their way through the ice fields of Bering Sea, usually arrive 

 at St. Michael about the end of June. From that time until the clos- 

 ing of the harbor by ice in October, St. Michael is the place of transfer 

 of passengers and freight from the ocean-going vessels to the light- 

 draft, stern- wheel steamers which ascend the mighty Yukon and its 

 tributaries to the mining settlements on theu- shores. Until the 

 completion of the White Pass and Yukon Railway, from White Horse, 

 at the head of river navigation, to Skagway, on Lynn Canal, St. Michael 

 was the only base of supply for the Yukon Valley and the outlet for 

 its trade. 



Wliile waiting for the departure of the river steamer, with the aid 



