CHAPTER XIII. 



LONELY NORTHERN WASTES. 



I Tiie- Mississippi of Alasiva : the Yukon River, and its Tliorongh Exploration. — 

 - " Its vast Deltoid Mouth. — Cannot be Entered by Sea-going Vessels. — Its 

 ■ Valley, and its Tributaries. — Dividing Line between the Eskimo and the 

 Indian on its Banks. — The Trader's Steamer ; its Whistle in this Lone 

 Waste of the Yukon. — Michaelovsky, the Trading Centre for this Exten- 

 .sive Circumpolar Area. — The Characteristic Beauties of an Arctic Land- 

 scape in Summer. — Thunder-storms on the Upper Yukon ; never Experi- 

 enced on the Coast and at its Mouth. — Gorgeous Arches of Auroral Light; 

 ■ Beautiful Spectacular Fires in the Heavens. — -Unhappy Climate. — Saint 

 Michael's to the Northward. — Zagoskin, the Intrepid Young Russian Ex- 

 plorer, 1842. — Snow Blizzards. — Golovin Bay; our People Prospecting 

 there for Lead and Silver. — Drift-wood from the Yukon Strews the 

 Beaches of Bering Sea. — Ookivok, and its Cliff-cave Houses. — Hardy 

 Walrus-hunters. — Grantley Harbor; a Reminder of a Costly American 

 Enterprise and its Failure.— Cape Prince of Wales — facing Asia, thirty-six 

 miles away. — Simeon Deschnev, the first White Man to see Alaska, 1048. 

 His Bold Journey. — The Diomede Islands ; Stepping-stones between Asia 

 and America in Bering Straits. — Kotzebue Sound ; the Rendezvous for 

 Arctic Traders ; the Last Northern Station Visited by Salmon. — Interest- 

 ing Features of the Place. 



Lo ! to the wintry winds the pilot yields, 

 His bark careering o'er unfathomed fields, 

 Now far he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles, 

 On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles. 



— Campbell. 



Is it not a little singular that the lonely and monotonous course of 

 the Yukon River, reaching as it does to the very limits of the path- 

 less interior of a vast, unexplored region on either side, should be 

 that one section of all others in Alaska the best known to us ? An 

 almost uninterrupted annual march has been made uj) and down 

 its dreary banks since 1865, by men * Avell qualified to describe its 



* The first white man to enter the Yukon and behold its immense volume 

 was Glazoonov, a Russian post-trader of the old Company, who, with a small 



