AND BIRTH-RATE]

Let these two mission stations, the Allakaket and Tanana, one hundred
and fifty miles or so apart by the winter trail, represent the two
conditions. In six years' time there has been manifest advance at the
one and decay at the other. The birth-rate is greatly in excess of the
death-rate at the Allakaket, the death-rate greatly in excess of the
birth-rate at Tanana. In the year in which this journey was made there
were thirty-four deaths and fourteen births at Tanana, and while the
difference was an unusually large one, yet in the six years referred to
there has not been one year in which the number of births exceeded the
number of deaths. One does not have to be a prophet to foresee the
inevitable result, if the process be not stopped.

A tribute should be paid to the zeal, now of one, now of another army
surgeon at Fort Gibbon in tending the native sick, three miles away,
when we have been unable to procure a physician of our own for the
place. The missionary nurse, for five years last past Miss Florence
Langdon, has been greatly helped in her almost desperate efforts here by
the willing co-operation of these medical officers of the army.

FOOTNOTE:

[B] See illustration, p. 374.

CHAPTER VIII

UP THE YUKON TO RAMPART AND ACROSS COUNTRY TO THE TANANA--ALASKAN
AGRICULTURE--THE GOOD DOG NANOOK--MISS FARTHING'S BOYS AT NENANA--CHENA
AND FAIRBANKS

OUR course from Tanana did not lie directly up the Tanana River, but up
the Yukon to Rampart and then across country to the Hot Springs on the
Tanana River. The seventy-five miles up the Yukon was through the Lower
Ramparts, one of the most picturesque portions of this great river. The
stream is confined in one deep channel by lofty mountains on both banks,
and the scenery at times is very bold and wild. But its topography makes
it the natural wind course of the country--a down-river wind in winter,
an up-river wind in summer blows almost continually. It was no colder
than 5 deg. below zero when we started on the trip, but the wind made the
travelling unpleasant. The second day it had increased to a gale, and
every mile we travelled it grew stronger. We travelled three hours, and
the last hour we made scarcely a mile. So thickly charged with flying
snow was the wind and so dead ahead that despite parkee hoods it blinded
us, and the dogs could hardly be forced to keep their heads towards it.
Their faces were so coated with crusted snow that they