38 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 54. 



privation and isolation. His ardor was so 

 contagious that before returning to civili- 

 zation he had communicated it to almost 

 every one of the hard-headed fur traders in 

 that remote and inhospitable region, and 

 for years afterward bird skins, eggs, ethno- 

 logical specimens, and collections in every 

 branch of natural history, poured from the 

 frozen north into the Smithsonian Museum 

 by hundreds and thousands. 



When Kennicott, after traveling for 

 months on snow-shoes, sledges, or bateaux, 

 stood at last on the steep bluff at Fort 

 Yukon, he saw the yellow flood of the great 

 river surging by the most remote outpost of 

 civilization and disappearing to the west- 

 ward in a vast and unknown region. An 

 uninhabited gap of hundreds of miles lay 

 between him and the nearest known native 

 settlement to the west. Far in the north 

 the midnight sun lighted up the snowy 

 peaks of the Eomanzoff mountains, whose 

 further slope it was believed gave on the . 

 Polar sea. No one knew where the Yukon 

 met the ocean. On most maps of that day 

 a large river called the Colvile, found by 

 Simpson on the Arctic coast as he journeyed 

 toward Point Barrow, was indicated as the 

 outlet of the Yukon watershed. South of 

 the Romanzoff mountains for an unknown 

 distance vast tundras, scantily wooded 

 with larch and spruce, the breeding grounds 

 of multitudes of water fowl, intersected by 

 many streams, but level as a prairie, ex- 

 tended to the west. 



The native population of this region, as 

 far as known, had always been scanty, and 

 an epidemic of scarlet fever, introduced 

 some years before through contact with 

 other tribes trading to the coast, had swept 

 them absolutely out of existence. Not an 

 individual was left, and the nomadic na- 

 tives who reached Fort Yukon from the 

 east and southeast hesitated to approach 

 the hunting grounds, where the mysterious 

 pestilence might linger still. 



Obliged to terminate his explorations 

 here, Kennicott returned, after months of 

 weary travel, to the United States, but 

 cherished the hope of some day penetrating 

 the terra incognita on whose borders he had 

 been obliged to pause and turn away. The 

 dream of his life was thereafter the explora- 

 tion of Russian America, the discovery of 

 its fauna, and the determination of its rela- 

 tions to the fauna of Siberia and Japan. 

 The group of young zoologists which gath- 

 ered about him at the Chicago Academy of 

 Sciences, an institution of which Kennicott 

 was practically the creator, was frequently 

 roused to enthusiasm by impromptu lec- 

 tures on the problems to be solved, the 

 specimens to be collected, and the adven- 

 tures to be anticipated in that virgin terri- 

 tory. 



The need of the telegraph company for one 

 familiar with life and conditions in the 

 North brought him the long sought oppor- 

 tunity, and he undertook to lead the ex- 

 ploration, provided he was permitted to 

 utilize it for science to the fullest extent 

 commensura.te with the attainment of the 

 objects of the expedition. He stipulated 

 that he should be permitted to select a 

 party of six persons who should be qualified 

 to make scientific observations and collec- 

 tions in the intervals of other work, but who 

 should hold themselves ready to do any 

 work required by the promoters of the enter- 

 prise, even to digging post-holes for the 

 line if called upon. 



His terms were accepted, and the scien- 

 tific corps of the exposition organized and 

 started for San Francisco. Here two of the 

 members were detailed to join the party 

 engaged in exploring the route through 

 British Columbia ; the others, of whom the 

 speaker was one, accompanied Kennicott to 

 the north. 



In July, 1865, the exposition entered the 

 bay of Sitka and our acquaintance with 

 Russian America began. 



