A BEMABKABLE LETTEB. 
15 
sian traders who are angry at having their hunting-ground 
sold over their heads — or under their feet, rather ! — and 
the treachery of the native Innuits, as well as the reck- 
less behavior of our own troops, have kept my hands full 
and my head in a continual worry since the establishment 
of the post. Sometimes I wish the government had kept 
her seven millions in her pocket, and left this desolate 
country to take care of itself. It was an immense respon- 
sibility to shoulder. Have you any idea of the size of the 
^ Northwest Territory,' old fellow ? Are you aware that 
it contains something over five hundred thousand square 
miles, or about one-sixth of the entire extent of the 
United States and Territories ? This vast country is 
covered throughout its southern districts with jungles and 
forests, reaching far up the sides of its lofty mountains, 
which smoke night and day. The portions nearer the 
Arctic Sea consist mostly of dreary morass and mossy 
tundra,' as it is called, under which lies a deep layer 
of ice, never thawing, winter or summer. But in the rest 
of the territory are splendid forests, as I have said. 
There are mountain peaks reaching (in Mt. Wrangel) the 
enormous height of twenty thousand feet above the sea ; 
there is a river, the noble Yukon, over two thousand 
miles in length — a rival of the great Mississippi itself. 
Among the hills are winding streams and pleasant valleys, 
where brilliant wild-flowers blossom, insects hover over 
them in the sunshine, and birds dart to and fro as merrily 
as in our old New England orchards. The woods are full 
