282 BEGINS CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS 



Skagway and there I had to wait a few days for the train to take 

 me to White Horse. While stopping at Skagway, I collected some 

 flowers and got some information about the interior of the country, 

 as I believed that I was going to a frozen north, where the people 

 bragged of seeing the "midnight sun." I made large collections 

 on the way to White Horse and others on the way down from White 

 Horse to Dawson, and saw little appearance of cold. We were 

 thirty-six hours going from White Horse to Dawson and, in that 

 time, we passed down a beautiful river and I, being a tenderfoot, in- 

 quired of the passengers when we would come to the Snow Moun- 

 tains and an old man laughed and said: "My friend, there are 

 no Snow Mountains!" When we reached Dawson, I was com- 

 pletely upset as I saw no signs of cold or scant vegetation. At 

 this time, Mr. J. B. Tyrrell and his brother James W., were living 

 in a fine house with a brother of Mr. McConnell and I was invited 

 to lodge with them and take "pot luck." The understanding 

 was that I would turn in my five dollars a day and do no work, 

 while they ran the house and attended to the cooking. 



I found Dawson situated in 64 c 12". We went to bed before 

 it was dark for there was scarcely any night there at that time. 

 I found that the people were out playing croquet and lawn tennis 

 at eleven o'clock at night, the same as they would play at six 

 o'clock in Ottawa, in fact, the sun shone into the room I slept in 

 when I went to bed and it would be shining there when I awoke. 



I reached Dawson on the 10th of July and found vegetation 

 far advanced and James Tyrrell had dried specimens of a species 

 of rose that grew at Aylmer, near Ottawa, and he found this rose 

 coming in flower the very same day that I found the same species 

 coming into flower at Aylmer the very same year. That was the 

 first point I fixed. When I began to go around and climb the 

 mountain that rose at the back of Dawson, I found that, when I 

 was up a thousand feet, the climate seemed warmer than when I 

 was down on the level with the river. It was some time before 

 I understood this. I eventually saw that there was longer sun- 

 shine on the mountain than down in the valley. 



Nothing surprised me so much as the long, sunny days and 

 the low altitude of the sun. It was nothing for the sun to pass 



