ALASKA. 



17 



Yukon district on the south and the Arctic Ocean on the north. 

 This division, situated ahiiost entirely above the Arctic Circle, is 

 known only from observations made on the seacoast. The vast 

 interior, consisting probably of frozen moors and low ranges of 

 hills, intersected here and there by shallow streams, remains almost 

 entirely unknown. The Meade, Ikpikpung, and Colville rivers 

 empty into the Arctic Ocean, and the Selawik (flowing through 

 Selawik Lake), the Noatak, and the Kowak empty into Kotze- 

 bue Sound. The natives report the existence of settlements on 

 all these rivers except the Colville, whose head waters no white 

 man has ever visited. The coast settlements between Cape 

 Prince of Wales and Point Barrow are visited annually by many 

 schooners and ships engaged in whaling, hunting, and trading, and 

 the inhabitants are better accustomed to white men than the 

 natives of any other regions of Alaska. They carry on an exten- 

 sive traffic with the natives of the Arctic coasts of Alaska and 

 Asia. Kotzebue Sound is by far the best harbor in this section 

 of the Arctic Ocean. 



RIVER SYSTEM. 



One of the characteristics of Alaska is the network of rivers 

 that covers its surface, and that serves as the most available means 

 of transportation. In the Sitkan district, says Mr. Petroff, land 

 travel is simply impracticable. Nobody goes on a road; savages 

 and whites all travel by water. In the more northern regions "the 

 country, outside of the mountains, is a great expanse of bog, 

 lakes, large and small, with thousands of channels between them." 

 By ascending Lynn Channel, the head waters of the Yukon can be 

 reached by the Chilkoot, the Chilkat, or the White passes; the 

 Copper and Tanana rivers, the Copper and Sushitna, the Tanana 

 and White, the Sushitna and Kuskokwim are connected by trails. 

 There is a trail of 6 miles between branches of the Yukon and Kus- 

 kokwim.^ In the Alaska peninsula, there is a route from Bristol 



1 According to the map in Nansen's " Farthest North." 

 No. 86 2 



