FOREST CONDITIONS IN THE KLONDIKE. 
The divide between the headwaters of the Yukon River and 
those flowing into Lynn Canal, known as the Chilcoot Pass, has 
an altitude of 3,500 feet. Lake Lindeman, one of the sources 
f the Yukon, situated 814 miles from the Pass, is stated to 
have an altitude of 2,170 feet. At about one-third way down 
between the two, at about 3,000 feet, a forest vegetation first begins 
with a low, scrubby evergreen, growing in clumps here and 
there along the trail. Some small fir trees appear at the heads of 
the cafions and before Lindeman is reached trees up to 18 inches 
in diameter are found, although not abundantly. Rarely a spruce 
or two grows mixed in with the fir, and at Lindeman, pines, 
mostly in small groves without intermixture of other trees, are next 
in abundance to the fir. ne or two small birches and alders, 
nd i 
and many willows are common in the swamps and wet ground 
about the lake. As one goes down stream the fir mostly dis- 
size of more than 12 inches in diameter and a height of perhaps 
50 feet. Below Five-finger rapids, a distance of some 300 miles 
from Lindeman, no more pine was noticed. From there on 
siderable ee of paper birch. ome cottonwood grows 
in the bottom land along streams. Scattering trees are found 
along the lower Klondike up to 15 or 18 inches in diameter and 
50 or 60 feet high 
The finest spruce timber occurs on the islands of the Yukon 
where saw logs up to 20 inches in diameter and 30 or 40 feet 
long can be obtained. The 8 or 10 sawmills, however, pa 
along the river and at Dawson are rapidly diminis = the sup- 
ly. During dry periods, also, which are apt to occur at any 
time between May and September, forest fires ee destroyed 
many thousand acres of fine timber. Of paper birch, one of 
the finest growths observed is in the Klondike river bottom just 
at the mouth of Bonanza creek, also extending up the latter 
