n it freezes it is time
to remain inside." We should rather think so. Albeit, the climate is dry
and healthy when people are prepared for it and are not found fasting
after prolonged exposure.

It was in the hot weather that Strickland and his picked men went up the
Yukon amid the heat and flies, cut down the logs and floated them to
where Fort Constantine was built before the extreme cold struck the
region. The men who stayed with Constantine had cleared the ground of
moss and brush with great effort. The moss varied from one to three feet
in depth. Below it was ice, so that the report says the men worked a
good part of the time up to their knees in water. "If it was not 90
degrees in the shade it was pouring rain." Up the river Strickland and
his men were getting out the logs as stated, but without any appliances
except their own physical strength and energy. Only men of the finest
type could have stood it, and the Inspector gives them unstinted praise.

The buildings were rushed up as stated before the winter. They were
chinked with moss and the roof covered with earth, there being no time
to saw boards to cover. All this was not so bad for the winter, but when
the spring came the men who had fought the intense cold were subjected
to another kind of hardship. Constantine says in a later report, "During
the heavy rains the roofs leaked so badly that oil sheets and tarpaulins
had to be put up over all the beds to keep them dry. The earth roofs of
this country will only absorb a certain amount of moisture and when the
limit is reached, a deluge of very dirty water is the result." Evidently
the men were not having a picnic.

However, Constantine and his detachment keep the country in order,
administer justice, collect customs due to the Dominion and generally
make conditions civilized and British. There was a time when it was
generally believed that most of the gold-bearing creeks were on the
American side of the line, but a survey made under direction of the
Police revealed the opposite to be the case and Constantine notified the
miners on Miller, Glacier and other creeks that they were on Canadian
territory, subject to British law and amenable to regulations as to
mining fees, Constantine's modesty and determination are illustrated in
one quiet paragraph, which some of us who knew him will find luminous
between the lines. He says, "A few miners denied Canada's jurisdiction
and right to collect fees on the ground that