CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 3 



flat-bottomed steamboats of the Mississippi River 

 type. 



Naturally and inevitably the course of settlement 

 and development, following the lines of least resist- 

 ance, is found along this stream and its subarteries. 

 Indeed, without a single exception, unless it be a few 

 clustering mining camps, there is no settlement of 

 the dignity of a village within this northland, but is 

 found upon the river. Few indeed are the cities; 

 when we have mentioned White Horse, Caribou, 

 Selkirk, Teslin, Ogilvie, Fortymile, and Dawson, 

 we have mentioned them all and by courtesy have 

 included several that are questionable as being even 

 of village dignity. They are all on the Yukon or 

 its tributaries and there are none elsewhere. The 

 Yukon courses for most of its length through a 

 mighty sea of mountains, rising like a petrified ocean 

 on either side of the river with green and brown and 

 grey slopes merging into crests of eternal snows. 

 It is truly a mighty wilderness, a land of immense 

 silence and mystery, and of incomparable beauty. 

 It is pre-eminently a land of the hunter, whether the 

 hunt be the lure of the gold hidden within the moun- 

 tains, or the fur-bearing animals in the forests, or 

 the faunal life that calls to the sportsman seeker for 

 big game. It is the land of the Klondike ; it is the 

 specially favored home of the valuable black and 

 silver fox; it is the greatest hunting field for big 

 game on the North American Continent. Here 



