ly land:

"All the world am sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam!"

But, fortunately for us, the Yukon, like the Suwanee River, must have an
ending, and I am awakened early next morning to find the _Hannah_ moored
alongside a busy wharf at Dawson City.

CHAPTER XVII

DAWSON

"The Yukon district is a vast tract of country which forms the extreme
north-westerly portion of the north-west territories of Canada. It is
bounded to the south by the northern line of British Columbia, to the
west by the eastern line of the United States territory of Alaska, to
the east by the Rocky Mountains, and to the north by the Arctic Ocean.
The district has an area of 192,000 square miles, or about the size of
France. The region, as a whole, is mountainous in character, but it
comprises as well an area of merely hilly or gently undulating country,
besides many wide and flat bottomed valleys. It is more mountainous in
the south-east and subsides generally and uniformly to the
north-westward, the mountains becoming more isolated and separated by
broader tracts of low land. The Yukon or Pelly River provides the main
drainage of this region, passing from Canadian into American territory
at a point in its course 1600 miles from the sea. The two hundred miles
of its course in Canada receives the waters of all the most important of
its tributaries--the Stewart, Macmillan, Upper Pelly, Lewes, White
River, &c., each with an extensive subsidiary river system, which
spreading out like a fan towards the north-east, east, and south-east
facilitate access into the interior." So writes my friend Mr. Ogilvie,
the Dominion Surveyor, who has an experience of over twenty years of
this country and who is probably better acquainted with its natural
characteristics and resources than any other living white man.

On the occasion of my last attempt to travel overland from New York to
Paris the spot upon which Dawson City now stands was occupied by perhaps
a dozen Indian wigwams.[76] The current was so strong that we only
landed from our skiff with difficulty and the timely assistance of some
natives in birch bark canoes, the first of these graceful but rickety
craft we had yet encountered. Just below the village a small river flows
into the Yukon from the east, and the water looked so clear and pure
that we filled our barrels, little dreaming that in a few months this
apparently insignificant stream would be the talk of the civilised
world. For