ICE CLIFFS ON WHITE EIVER 199 



ment of the pupils, is made into the nearer and the more remote 

 causes and effects, especially causes. 



The results have been a quickening of interest on the part of the 

 pupils, the development of more thorough method on the part of 

 teachers, and the elimination of many features of work which had 

 hitherto tended to debase geograph}^ as a study and to blunt the in- 

 tellect of the pupil. Self-hel]) through a series of exercises logically 

 related and leading to an independent result is perhaps a good epit- 

 ome of the plan that we follow. 



ICE CLIFFS ON WHITE RIVER, YUKON TERRITORY 



By C. WiLLARD Hayes and Alfred H. Brooks, 

 U. S. Geological Surrey 



The article by Martin W. Gorman on Ice Cliffs on the White River, 

 Yukon Territory, published in the March number of the National 

 Geographic Magazine, contains several erroneous statements and 

 unwarranted conclusions on which we want to make some comments, 

 not in a controversial spirit, but entirely in the interest of correct 

 geographic information. It may be stated at the outset that one or 

 both of the writers have examined and mapped the White River from 

 its source to its mouth. 



In the first place Mr Gorman's distances are incorrect, the length of 

 the White River from where it emerges from the northern lobe of the 

 Russell Glacier to its confluence with the Y^ukon is approximately 

 200 miles, instead of " rather more than 300 miles." Instead of 

 "crossing White River about 200 miles above the mouth," the point 

 reached by Mr Gorman could not have been more than 100 miles 

 above the mouth. 



While* it is undeniably true that the maps of White River Ijasin 

 leave much to l)e desired, it seems equally true that Mr Gorman was 

 either unfamiliar with the maps which are available or unable to make 

 proper use of them. It appears likely that the Donjeck River was 

 mistaken for the main trunk of White River, and the latter for the 

 Katrina, an insignificant tributary which enters from the west 70 miles 



♦Compare maps .accompanying artich' intitiiMl "An IvKpfilitioii into the Yukon [>isti-iot," 

 by C. Willani Hayes, Nat. Geoo. .Mai;., vol. iv. Al.'^o u\:i\> 1" in " Kxploialions in Alaska, Ihks," 

 U. 8. Geol. Survey, isim. 



