SPRINGTIME ON THE YUKON. 595 
more pleasant springtime, and gather what facts we may of 
interest and value during another day, spent on the great 
river of the northwest, and its shores. 
The spring, after the middle of March, comes on with 
eager steps in the Yukon Territory. The days lengthen so 
rapidly that the change is almost perceptible from one day to 
another. The great snow blanket, from six to eight feet 
thick, which covers the whole country, sinks and hardens 
from day to day. A tremulous mist, quivering like the hot 
air above a heated iron, hovers over the brilliant surface of 
the snow crust, and to this is due the painful inflammation 
of the eyes (conjunctivitis) which is only too familiar to the 
northern voyageur under the name of "snow blind." To 
avoid it, we don a. pair of dark green glass goggles, or the 
wooden goggles of the Eskimo, which admit tbe light only 
through a narrow slit in the blackened wood, warding off the 
reflected light; yet even through these the surface of a hill 
or river appears most dazzling, so intense is the snow glare. 
Early in April the long hot days and short nights are felt 
and their results indieated, by the water which covers and 
softens the ice sheets on lakes and rivers. Shirt sleeves are 
the rule, and open casements let in thé unaccustomed sun- 
light without stint, while the dark parchment windows of 
winter are laid aside. 
On the tenth of April, though the whole country was white 
with the half melted snow sheet, flies, to all appearance 
the familiar blue bottle and housefly, clustered in myriads 
. on the sunny side of the wall of the Nuláto trading post. 
The same day I found the velvety crimson catkin of the 
alder (how many of our readers have ever seen it?) side by 
side with the silvery one of the river willow, and search- 
ing among the poplars for new arrivals, brought down a 
white-winged crossbill, the first of the season. A day or 
two later, the turfed roof of my log dwelling was alive with 
small steel green beetles, redolent with a musky odor, and 
by carefully scanning the few spears of dry grass and green 
