an error that a score of kind
correspondents pointed out, for it was conspicuous in the title of a
picture.

The tendency to which attention is drawn in the original preface, the
pendulum swing from the old notion that Alaska is a land of polar bears
and icebergs to the new notion that it is a "world's treasure-house of
mineral wealth and unbounded agricultural possibilities" is yet more
marked than it was two years ago. The beginning of the building of the
government railway has given new impetus to the "boosting" writers for
magazines and newspapers. Quite recently it was stated in one such
publication that we need not worry about the destruction of our
forests, for had we not the inexhaustible timber resources of the
interior of Alaska to draw upon?

And in the North itself--though no one there would write about the
timber resources of the interior--in certain shrill journals the man who
does not confidently expect to see the Yukon Flats waving with golden
grain and "the lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea" of the Koyukuk and
the Chandalar is regarded as a traitor to his country and his God. But
it must be remembered that there are a number of journalists in Alaska
who know nothing of the country outside their respective towns, and that
"boosting" grows shriller, as Eugene Field found red paint grow redder,
"the further out West one goes." When they get a newspaper at Cape
Prince of Wales what a clarion it will be!

Truth, however, is not more wont than of old to be found in extremes,
and the author of this book believes that those who desire a sober view
of the country it deals with will find it herein. He claims no more than
that he has had adequate opportunity of forming his opinions and that he
has a right to their expression. It is now twelve years since he began
almost constant travelling, winter and summer, in the interior of
Alaska. He has described nothing that he has not seen; ventured no
judgment that he has not well digested, and has nothing to retract or
even modify; but he would repeat and emphasise a caution of the original
preface. Alaska is not one country but many countries, and so widely do
they differ from one another in almost every respect that no general
statements about Alaska can be true. The present author's knowledge of
the territory is confined in the main to the interior--to the valley of
the Yukon and its tributary rivers, which make up one of the world's
great waterways--and nothing