, however, confined so far to the coast. The herds have
not thriven in the interior and have now all been withdrawn to the
coast. Beasts of prey killed them; a hoof disease destroyed many; others
are supposed to have died from eating some poisonous fungus. In five or
six years the herd at Tanana had not increased at all, but rather
diminished, and the same is true of the other herds on the Yukon. The
Indian, moreover, does not take to herding as the Esquimau does, and can
hardly be induced to the segregation of himself and his family from his
tribe which reindeer herding involves. The "apprentices" on the Yukon
were nearly all of them Esquimaux from the coast.

It may be that the salt of the coast region is essential to the
well-being of the reindeer; it is not so with the caribou--and the
reindeer is nothing but a domesticated caribou--many herds of which, in
the interior of Alaska, never visit the coast at all; but all caribou
herds have their salt-licks, and one wishes that the oft-recommended
plan of furnishing salt for the herds in the interior had been adopted
by the government for a season before their removal was determined upon.

Like most other "resources" of Alaska, the imported reindeer, at first
decried and ridiculed, has now become the slender foundation for
extravagant speculations of prosperity. The "millions of acres waiting
for the plough" in the interior have lately been supplemented in this
visionary treasury by the capitalisation of the vast tundras of the
coast, the golden wheat-fields of the one finding counterpart in the
multitudinous herds of the other. The growing dearth of cattle-range in
the United States offers, it seems, to Alaska the opportunity of
supplying the American market with meat, and the kindling fancy of the
enthusiastic "booster" sees trains loaded with frozen reindeer meat
rolling into Chicago.

While the reindeer will never supersede the dog as a draught animal
anywhere, the horse is rapidly superseding him on good trails in the
more settled and peopled regions. In the Fairbanks and Nome districts,
in the Circle and Koyukuk districts, in the Fortymile and in the
Iditarod--in all districts where any extensive mining is carried
on--heavy freights are moved by horses, and this tendency will doubtless
increase rather than diminish. The dog team cannot compete with the
horse team when it comes to moving heavy loads over good trails. The
grain that the horse eats is imported, and