ALASKA AS IT WAS AND IS. 
133 
alluded to extends to the site of Fort Yukon, near the British 
boundary on the Arctic circle. 
The noble stream I have described extends, including 
windings, about 1,600 miles from Fort Yukon to the sea. 
The valley' is sometimes wide' and low, sometimes narrow 
and contracted by low, wooded mountains. Everywhere 
until the delta is approached the banks are wooded. There 
are many tributaries, none of which were then explored, and 
on either side of the main artery the land stretched unex¬ 
plored for hundreds of miles. Not another person speaking 
, any European tongue except the Russian was resident in all 
this territory during the second year of my sojourn. Outside 
of the three trading posts, not a native had ever bought a 
pound of flour or an ounce of tea. The use of woolen cloth¬ 
ing had hardly begun,and soap was a rare and costly luxury. 
I made the first candles ever molded on the Yukon, and 
but for the lack of hardwood ashes to furnish alkali would 
have tried my hand at soap. People lived on game and 
fish. The caribou was plentiful in the absence of rifles; the 
moose was not yet exterminated; the warm days of spring 
brought incalculable multitudes of ducks and geese, to say 
nothing of other water fowl; the Arctic rabbit and the ptar¬ 
migan were a constant resource, and the rivers and lakes in 
many places teemed with fish. Clothing was made of deer¬ 
skin and sewed with sinew; the ornaments were fringes from 
the gray wolf or wolverine. Undergarments were occasion¬ 
ally made of cotton bought from the traders, but more 
usually from the skins of fawns. At one village during the 
season for taking them I saw 4300 fawn skins hanging up 
to dry. Such reckless destruction has since borne its natural 
fruit. It was only at certain localities even then that deer 
were plentiful. The main staple of subsistence was fish. 
During the summer the river was studded with traps for 
salmon; in winter the traps were set in the ice, and under 
favorable conditions furnished a steady supply of white-fish, 
burbot, pike, grayling, and the great red sucker. The salmon 
were cleaned, split into three parts connected at the tail, 
