inal population that arouses in many ways the respect and the
sympathy of all kindly people; and it has some of the hardiest and most
adventurous white men in the world. The reader will come into contact
with both in these pages.

So much for the book's scope; a word of its limitations. It is confined
to the interior of Alaska; confined in the main to the great valley of
the Yukon and its tributaries; being a record of sled journeys, it is
confined to the winter.

There is no man living who knows the whole of Alaska or who has any
right to speak about the whole of Alaska. Bishop Rowe knows more about
Alaska, in all probability, than any other living man, and there are
large areas of the country in which he has never set foot. There is
probably no man living, save Bishop Rowe, who has visited even the
localities of all the missions of the Episcopal Church in Alaska. If one
were to travel continuously for a whole year, using the most expeditious
means at his command, and not wasting a day anywhere, it is doubtful
whether, summer and winter, by sea and land, squeezing the last mile out
of the seasons, travelling on the "last ice" and the "first water," he
could even touch at all the mission stations. So, when a man from Nome
speaks of Alaska he means his part of Alaska, the Seward Peninsula. When
a man from Valdez or Cordova speaks of Alaska he means the Prince
William Sound country. When a man from Juneau speaks of Alaska he means
the southeastern coast. Alaska is not one country but many, with
different climates, different resources, different problems, different
populations, different interests; and what is true of one part of it is
often grotesquely untrue of other parts. This is the reason why so many
contradictory things have been written about the country. Not only do
these various parts of Alaska differ radically from one another, but
they are separated from one another by almost insuperable natural
obstacles, so that they are in reality different countries.

When Alaska is spoken of in this book the interior is meant, in which
the writer has travelled almost continuously for the past eight years.
The Seward Peninsula is the only other part of the country that the book
touches. And as regards summer travel and the summer aspect of the
country, there is material for another book should the reception of this
one warrant its preparation.

* * * * *

The problems of the civil governm