45 
some distance. The trees attain a height of some 30 or 40 feet 
and a diameter of 10 or 12 inches and furnish the best fuel to 
be found in the country. 
Dawson, built on a low flat, sometimes partly overflowed by 
the river, has an elevation of some 1,500 feet, I believe, and the 
mountains in the immediate ne rise 1,500 or 2,000 fee 
igher. Spruce grows nearly to the summit of these low ranges 
but usually becomes quite well fee near their tops. On the 
moister slopes are occasional thickets of alder and in dryer places, 
the trembling aspen, often in a stunted form, while on the dry 
exposed knolls, a small juniper is common, Looking eastward 
from one of these mountain tops near Dawson, the whole country 
to the main range of the Rocky mountains, sixty or seventy-five 
miles away, seems quite well covered with timber, much of it 
owever, is undoubtedly very small, only an inch or two in dia- 
meter, and nowhere, apparently, is the timber or brush so thick 
as to prevent traveling through it quite readily with pack horses. 
Of shrubby plants, outside of willows and small evergreen 
species of ee heath family, there does not seem a variety to 
be noted. Buffalo-berry is common almost everywhere but I did 
not observe it in either flower or fruit. A [7durniim is common 
inches high, was found in flower about the middle o 
Miles cafion and about two months later specimens were collected 
at Dawson bearing hard greenish berries that probably seldom or 
never ripen in that latitude. A dogwood four or five feet high is 
found occasionally along the river banks and the dwarf cornel is 
abundant. Rose bushes also are common and widely distributed, 
the stout stems attain a height of six or eigh imes. 
Of berries that grow in considerable abundance and are col- 
lected for food are a numb raspberries, a small huckleberry 
: e 
about Dawson is a dwarf species, each plant bearing but a single 
large berry, mostly bright red before.ripening, then turning to a 
pale yellowish and rapidly decaying. It is called soapberry from 
the fact that the ripe fruit can be beaten into a foam which is 
frequently done by the Indians for a drink. The berries have 
