LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 415 



a vast inland sea filled with thousands upon thousands of swale 

 islets scarcely peeping above its surface. Broader and narrower 

 spaces between low delta lands are where the whirl of its current 

 is strongly marked by a rippling rush and the drift-logs that it 

 carries upon its muddy bosom. These are the channels, the paths 

 through the maze that leads from the sea up to the river proper ; 

 and where they unite, at a point above Andrievsky and Chatinak, 

 the Yukon has a breadth of twenty miles ; and again, at many 

 places, away on and up this impressive stream as far as seven or 

 eight hundred miles beyond, this same great width will be observed, 

 but the depth is very much decreased. 



Myriads of breeding geese, ducks, and wading water-fowl resort 

 to this desolation of the deltoid mouth of the Yukon, where, in 

 countless pools and the thick covers of tall grass and sedge, they 

 are provided with a most lavish abundance of food and afforded 

 the happiest shelter from enemies ; but the stolid Innuit does not 

 affect the place. The howling wintry gales and frightful curse of 

 mosquitoes in the summer are too much even for him. His people 

 live in only six or seven small wretched hamlets below Andrievsky 

 and Chatinak less than five hundred souls in all, including the en- 

 tire population found right on the coast of the delta, between Pas- 

 tolik in the north and Cape Romiantzov on the south. Above 

 Anvik on the main river the Innuit does not like to go. He has no 

 love for those Indians who claim that region all to themselves and 

 resent his appearance on the scene. Whenever he does, however,* 

 he is always in company with the traders, and he never gets out of 

 their sight and protection, even when making that overland portage 

 from Si Michael's by the Oonalakleet trail. 



As we emerge from those dreary, low and watery wastes of the 

 delta at Chatinak, the bluffs there, though desolate enough them- 

 selves, with their rusty barren slopes, yet they give us cheerful as- 

 surance of the fact that all Alaska is not under water, and that the 

 borders of its big river are at last defined on both sides. High roll- 

 ing hills come down boldly on the left bank as we ascend ; but the 

 right shore is still low and but little removed from the flatness of a 

 swale. The channel of the river now zigzags from side to side (in 

 the usual way of running bodies of water which wash out and 

 undermine), building up bars and islets, and sweeping in its resist- 

 less flood an immense aggregate of soil and timber far into Bering 

 Sea. The alluvial banks, wherever they are lifted above this surging 



