itute an
interesting people, of whom something has been said in the account of
journeys through their country.

[Sidenote: THE ATHABASCANS]

The Indians of the interior are of one general stock, the Athabascan, as
it is called, and of two main languages derived from a common root but
differing as much perhaps as Spanish and Portuguese. The language of the
upper Yukon (and by this term in these pages is meant the upper American
Yukon) is almost identical with the language of the lower Mackenzie,
from which region, doubtless, these people came, and with it have always
maintained intercourse. The theory of the Asiatic origin of the natives
of interior Alaska has always seemed fanciful and far-fetched to the
writer. The same translations of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer
serve for the lower Mackenzie and the upper Yukon and are in active use
to-day through all that wide region, despite minor dialectical
variations.

Near the lower ramparts of the Yukon, at Stephen's Village, the language
changes and the new tongue maintains itself, though with continually
increasing dialectical differences, until the Indians overlap the
Esquimaux, six hundred miles farther down.

Fort Yukon is the most populous place on the river, and the last place
on the river, where the upper language, or Takhud, is spoken. A stretch
of one hundred and fifty miles separates it from the next native
village, and the inhabitants of that village are not intelligible to the
Fort Yukon Indians--an unintelligibility which seems to speak of long
ages of little intercourse.

* * * * *

The history of the migrations of the Indians from the Athabascan or
Mackenzie region is impossible to trace now. It is highly probable that
the movement was by way of the Porcupine River. And it would seem that
there must have been two distinct migrations: one that passed down the
Yukon to the Tanana district and spread thence up the Tanana River and
up the Koyukuk; and long after, as one supposes, a migration that
peopled the upper Yukon. A portion of this last migration must have gone
across country to the Ketchumstock and the upper Tanana, for the
inhabitants of the upper Tanana do not speak the Tanana tongue, which is
the tongue of the Middle Yukon but a variant of the tongue of the upper
Yukon.

[Illustration: A DOCILE FOLK, EAGER FOR INSTRUCTION.]

[Illustration: THE MISSION TYPE.]

[Illustration: WILD AND SHY.]

How long