LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 



419 



There is some difference of opinion as to whether the Yukon or 

 the Mississippi is the larger river, with respect to the volume of 

 their currents. The variation in this regard can hardly be very 

 great, either one way or the other. The Tannanah is the Missouri 

 of the Kvichpak, and swells the flood of that river very perceptibly 

 below its junction. 



Michaelovsky has been, and will continue to be, the chief ren- 

 dezvous of a small white residency of the Alaskan North. It is 

 an irregularly built omnium of old Russian dwellings, warehouses, 

 and a few of our own structure. The stockade which once encir- 

 cled it has long ago been dispensed with, though the antique bas- 



Michaelovsky. 

 [Extreme northern settlement of white Americans.] 



tions and old brass cannon still stand at one or two corners as they 

 stood in early times, well placed to overawe and intimidate a bold 

 and hostile savage people then surrounding them. The buildings are 

 clustered together on a small peninsula of an island, about twenty- 

 five or thirty feet above high- water mark ; littered all around them 

 are the small outbuildings and the summer tents of Innuit and 

 Indian tourists who are loitering about for the double purpose of 

 gratifying a little curiosity, and of trading. An abundance of drift- 

 wood from the Yukon lies stranded on the beaches, and a large pile 

 of picked, straight logs have been hauled from the water and stacked 

 upon one side of a slope. The whole country, hill and plain, in 

 every direction from this post is a flat and alternately rolling moor- 

 land, or tundra, the covering of which is composed principally of 



