ter. But what a barrier a difference of language is! An
interpreter is like a mountain pass, a means of access but at the cost
of time and labour. He does not remove the obstruction. The Minchumina
people occupy a fine country that could amply support ten times the
Indian population that now inhabits it. We were, indeed, now entering a
country that has been almost depopulated by successive epidemics of
contagious diseases. The measles in 1900 slew most of them, and
diphtheria in 1906 destroyed all the children and many of the adults
that remained. The chief of this little band wore a hat proudly adorned
with ribbons and plumes, and flew a flag before his dwelling with the
initials of the North American Trading and Transportation Company on
it--a defunct Alaskan corporation. We could not learn the origin
thereof; the flag and the letters were plainly home-made. It was
probably a mere imitation of a flag he had seen years ago at Tanana,
copied without knowledge of the meaning of the letters, as the Esquimaux
often copy into the decoration of their clothing and equipment the
legends from canned foods.

Lake Minchumina drains by a fork of the Kantishna River into the Tanana
and so into the Yukon. Just beyond the southwestern edge of the lake
runs a deep gully for perhaps a mile that leads to another lake called
Tsormina, which drains into Minchumina. And just beyond Tsormina is a
little height of land, on the other side of which lies Lake Sishwoymina,
which drains into the Kuskokwim. So that little height of land is
another watershed between Alaska's two great rivers. Lakes Tsormina and
Sishwoymina are not on any maps; indeed, this region has never been
mapped save very crudely from the distant flanks of Denali upon one of
Alfred Brook's early bold journeys into the interior of Alaska on
behalf of the Geological Survey. Although the Russians had
establishments on the lower Kuskokwim seventy-five years ago, and the
river is the second largest in Alaska and easy of navigation, yet the
white man had penetrated very little into this country until the Innoko
and Iditarod "strikes" of 1908 and 1909 respectively.

It was our plan to follow the main valley of the Kuskokwim until the
confluence of the Takotna with that stream, just below the junction of
the main North and South Forks of the Kuskokwim, and then strike
northwestward across country to the Iditarod.

The snow had passed and the sun was bright and the thermometer aroun