ICE-CLIFFS ON WHITE RIVER, YUKON TERRITORY 113 



lay upon the ground as closely packed as was possible without actually piling 

 the bodies upon one another. Mohammedans are buried and high-caste Hindoos 

 are burned, but the bodies sometimes accumulate so fast that they cannot be 

 disposed of by the usual methods. Major Windle stated that one day, a short 

 time before, he had burned twenty-four bodies in one heap. It is absolutely 

 impossible in Poona to employ occidental methods in the way of segregation or 

 disinfection. The natives prefer to die rather than submit to rules which are 

 obnoxious to them. It is no uncommon sight to see a widow, after uttering 

 the death wail, beating her face and breasts and throwing herself violently 

 upon the body.of her dead husband, kissing his face and lips. It is very strange 

 that no more than do contract the disease. One left Poona and Bombay thank- 

 ful that in America no sucli unftivorable religious and social conditions prevail." 



ICE-CLlFFS ON WHITE RIVER, YUKON TERRITORY 

 By Martin W. Gokman 



Daring the season of 1899 it was my good fortune to make two trips 

 across country from the Yukon to White River, the first a winter trip 

 with dogs and toboggans, the second a summer trip in which we had 

 to depend largely on back-packing, as we liad only one horse for a 

 party of four. On the first trip we left Fort Selkirk (lat. 62° 46' 42" 

 N., long. 187° 20' 22" W.), 176 miles south of Dawson, March 24, travel- 

 ing in a direction 20 degrees S. of W. and crossing White River about 

 200 miles above the mouth three weeks later. 



In the course of this trip, while traversing the headwaters of the 

 Klotassin River (the chief eastern tributary of the White), I observed 

 some tracts which, wliile composed of a fairly rich soil, were overgrown 

 with a small growth of alders, willows, and scrub birch (Belula ghin- 

 dalosii) and a decidedly sparse and dwarfed growth of black spruce 

 (Picea mnriand), ranging in diameter from three to eight inches and 

 in height from 15 to 40 feet, and the only tree found growing thereon. 

 Many of these trees were dying, or in a very unthrifty condition, while 

 others, already dead, showed great masses of their small persistent 

 cones still clinging to the tops, and thus gave the landscape a rather 

 weird and uncanny appearance, as there was no apparent cause for 

 their death. 



In close proximity to these tracts the same tree, fully 80 feet high, 

 and its near congener, the white spruce {Picen canadensis), more than 

 100 feet high, could l)e found growing on a much less fertile soil. In 



