of hours' run took us to Fort Yukon, and so
ended the winter journey of 1910-11, on the 23d of April, having been
started on the 17th of November. We were back none too soon. Every day
we should have found travelling decidedly worse. In a few more days the
river would have begun to open in places, and only the middle would be
safe for travel, with streams of water against either bank and no way of
getting ashore. Seventeen days later the ice was gone out and the Yukon
flowing bank full.

FOOTNOTE:

[G] The "claim" on a creek on which gold is first found is called
"Discovery"; the claims above are numbered one, two, three, etc.,
"above" and the claims below, one, two, three, etc., "below."

CHAPTER XI

THE NATIVES OF ALASKA

WHEN one contemplates the native people of the interior of Alaska in the
mass, when, with the stories told by the old men and old women of the
days before they saw the white man in mind, one reconstructs that
primitive life, lacking any of the implements, the conveniences, the
alleviations of civilisation, the chief feeling that arises is a feeling
of admiration and respect.

What a hardy people they must have been! How successfully for untold
generations did they pit themselves against the rigour of this most
inhospitable climate! With no tool but the stone-axe and the flint
knife, with no weapon but the bow and arrow and spear, with no material
for fish nets but root fibres, or for fish-hooks or needles but bone,
and with no means of fire making save two dry sticks--one wonders at the
skill and patient endurance that rendered subsistence possible at all.
And there follows quickly upon such wonder a hot flush of indignation
that, after so conquering their savage environment or accommodating
themselves to it, that they not only held their own but increased
throughout the land, they should be threatened with a wanton
extermination now that the resources of civilisation are opened to them,
now that tools and weapons and the knowledge of easier and more
comfortable ways of life are available.

The natives of the interior are of two races, the Indian and the
Esquimau. The Indian inhabits the valley of the Yukon down to within
three or four hundred miles of its mouth; the Esquimau occupies the
lower reaches of the Yukon and the Kuskokwim and the whole of the rivers
that drain into the Arctic Ocean west and north. These inland Esquimaux
are of the same race as the coast Esquimaux and const