LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 413 



varying moods and endless shoals every turn in its flood, every 

 shelving bank of alluvium or rocky bluff that lines the margin of 

 its turbid current, has been minutely examined, named and renamed 

 to suit the occasion and character of a traveller. 



The Yukon Kiver is not reached by traders as any other stream 

 of size is in Alaska, by sailing into its mouth. No ocean-going 

 craft can get within sixty miles of its deltoid entrance. Were a 

 sailor foolhardy enough to attempt such a thing, he would be hard 

 aground, in soft silt or mud, a hundred miles from land in a 

 direct line from the point of his destination. Therefore it is the 

 habit of mariners to sail up as far north as Norton's Sound, and 

 then turn a little to the southward and anchor their schooners or 

 steamers under a lee of Stuart's and St. Michael's Islands, where 

 the old post of Michaelovsky is established on the latter. 



The " Kedoute Saint Michael " was founded here in 1835 by 

 Lieutenant Tebenkov, and has been ever since, and is to-day, the 

 most important post in the Alaskan North. This post is a ship- 

 ping point for the accumulated furs gathered by all traders from 

 the Lower and Upper Yukon, and the Tannanah, the annual yield 

 from such points being the largest and the most valuable catch of 

 land-furs taken in Alaska. A vessel coming into Si Michael's at any 

 time during the summer will find, encamped around its ware- 

 houses many bands of Innuits and Indians who have come in there, 

 over long distances of hundreds of miles, from the north, east, and 

 south. They are there as traders and middlemen. The fur-trad- 

 ing on the Yukon is very irregular as to its annual time and place 

 the traders constantly moving from settlement to settlement, be- 

 cause this year they may get only a thousand skins where they got 



band of promishlyniks, managed to overcome the hostility of the natives suf- 

 ficiently to get up as far as the present site of Nulato. This was in 1833. 

 Lieutenant Zagoskin, of the Russian Navy, made a thorough engineering ex- 

 amination of the river up as far as the " Ramparts," between the years 1842- 

 45, inclusive, locating its positions and courses by astronomical and magnetic 

 observations. After him, named in regular order of their priority in visiting 

 the river, came the following Americans, the first in 1865, the last in 1885 : 

 Kennicott, Pease, Adams, Ketchum, Dall, Whymper, Mercier, Raymond, Hill 

 and Shaw (two miners, from its very source), Nelson, Petroff, then Schwatka 

 and Everett (also from its source). All of these men have given to the world 

 more or less elaborate accounts of the Yukon through the medium of pub- 

 lished works, letters, and lectures. The literature on the single subject of the 

 Kvichpak is decidedly voluminous. 



