THE WHITE WORLD 



to reap an abundant harvest of rare and beautiful things. 

 Within the radius of this same region is the location of 

 the magnetic pole, and meteorolgical work finds the great- 

 est incentive in latitudes Jo° to 74 . 



A desire to know what this great unknown north con- 

 tains has for a long time appealed to me, and for seven 

 years I have traveled it almost constantly — traversing 

 its length and breadth, following all of its greatest rivers, 

 climbing its mountain ranges, skirting its most distant 

 shores, and penetrating its most inaccessible recesses, and 

 facing every climatic condition known to it, at every time 

 of the year, devoting myself to its animal life with a deter- 

 mination to make known its character and make possible 

 its classification. Just how well I have succeeded may be 

 best appreciated by the very complimentary tribute paid 

 me by Dr. J. A. Allen, of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, of New York City, in a recent talk before a 

 representative body of men interested in such work. Dr. 

 Allen said, " Mr. Stone undoubtedly has a better knowl- 

 edge of the large mammals of Arctic and sub-Arctic 

 America than any other man living." 



When I commenced this work I realized that I was set- 

 ting for myself a task so difficult that it was characterized 

 by most of those best informed as all but impossible. I 

 knew that I must suffer many deprivations, hunger, cold, 

 and fatigue, and besides all this if I were to succeed I 

 must work, work, work. There was no end of work, 

 and as I never had many white companions, and often 

 for months I did not have any one with me but the native 

 people, I can look back and appreciate that the sole sup- 

 port of my health and the one thing that kept my spirits 

 alive, was my work. All tfiese years of travel in such 

 wild and trackless regions were not lacking in adventure 

 and in situations that at times were really dramatic. 



Should I live for a thousand years, my experiences on 

 the Liard River, in the spring of 1898, would remain fresh 

 in my memory, to the slightest detail. To make my situa- 

 tion there best understood, I reached a point on the Liard 

 River October 20, 1897, at a point just below Cranberry 

 Rapids, a small fur-trading place, where I wintered. 

 Thence to a point below Hell Gate Canyon, on the Liard, 



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