PREVIOUS EXPLORATIONS. 27. 



eastward, connecting their explorations with those previously made by him near the 

 mouth of Coppermine River. 



In the meantime, the Russians, having obtained a foothold in Bering Sea and on 

 the coast to the south, pushed up the Kwikpak, or lower Yukon, which Malakoff, ° a 

 creole, explored in 1S3S as far north as Nulato, below the mouth of the Koyukuk, 

 where he built a small post for the purpose of trading with the natives. In 1842 

 Lieut. A. Zagoskin, of the Russian Imperial Navy, explored the Koyukuk for 50 

 miles or more above its mouth, but explorations on the upper Koyukuk were not 

 made until some time after much of Yukon River had been ascended and explored. 



While the above explorations were being conducted along the coast during the 

 first half of the century, in the interior the pioneers of the Hudson Bay Company, 

 representing the English, pushed still farther northwestward from their remote out- 

 posts on the Mackenzie into regions then unknown, in quest of new fields in 

 which to ply their fur trade. Liard and Dease rivers were explored, and in 

 1842 Robert Campbell descended the Pelly to its confluence with the Lewes, where 

 Fort Selkirk was subsequently established in 1849. Also in 1842 J. Bell 6 crossed 

 the divide from the Peel River drainage into that of the Porcupine, and in 1847 

 McMurray descended the Porcupine to its mouth and founded Fort Yukon, on the 

 banks of the river of this name, under the Arctic Circle, whence ti'ade was opened 

 with the natives. Not until two years later, however, when Campbell descended the 

 Yukon from Fort Selkirk, was it learned that the two posts were on the same stream. 

 The river was not ascended to this point from the western coast, however, until 1863, 

 when the trip was made b} T Ivan Simonson Lukeen, an employee of the Russian 

 American Company, and the Yukon of the English and the Kwikpak of the Russians 

 were found to be identical. Not until then was it fully realized that the Yukon 

 flowed into Bering Sea instead of northward into the Arctic Ocean by way of the 

 Colville, as had been supposed, and as was represented on the maps of our school 

 geographies until and even subsequent to that time. 



In 1849 Lieutenant Pullen, of H. M. S. Herald, made a boat voyage from Bering 

 Strait to the Mackenzie, and in 1850 the boats of the Plover, starting from Cape Lis- 

 burne, reached Bailey Island, in longitude 127°. In 1850-1854 Commander Captain 

 McClure, of H. M. S. Investigator, proceeded from Bering Strait to Banks Island 

 and Lancaster Strait, where the crew finally abandoned the ship in the ice, and by 

 walking over the ice to Beechey Island discovered and made the northwest passage. 

 Also, in 1850 and 1855, Capt. R. Collinson, of the Enterprise, sailed from Bering 

 Strait to near King William Island, in Victoria Strait, whence, being short of coal, 

 he retraced his course to Bering Strait. In 1852-53 the Plover, in command of Cap- 



aDall, W. H., Alaska and its Resources, London and Boston, 1870, p. 48. 



ftSpurr, J. E., Geology of the Yukon gold district, Alaska: Eighteenth Ann. Kept. TJ. S. Geol. Survey, pt. 3, 1898, 

 p. 104. 



