bone, squaws, pappooses, and wolf-dogs, are very light colored, with smooth, copper-colored skin, and flowing hair, quite red. Few of the tribes ever molest the employés of the Hudson Bay Company, most of whom speak the language of the natives as their own, and are connected by marriage with some of the tribes; but with Americans and others they are unreliable, deceitful, and murderous.

About Victoria, Frazer river, and all parts of Puget sound, are found numbers of the Flathead Indians. The head is made flat while the child is young, by lashing it on a board on its back and lashing another board tight over the forehead, pressing the back of the head and the front above the eyebrows flat, running to a broad, sharp point at the top, so that, if they put on a hat, it must go on crosswise. The child remains on the board until the skull forms hard in its shape. they say, was Flathead.

God,

The condition upon which British Columbia entered the Canadian confederation was, that the latter would, not later than July, 1873, commence the construction of the Canada Pacific railway, connecting the lakes and the St. Lawrence river with the Pacific side of British Columbia; which road will be about 2,700 miles in length, commencing at Lake Nippung, near Georgiana bay, and must be completed within ten years after its commencement. The government of Canada and the government of British Columbia have donated to this international highway of the north large tracts of land, consisting of alternate blocks of twenty miles in depth, along the line of the road; besides this, the Dominion government makes an appropriation of twenty million dollars.

In addition to the main line, two branches will be built-one from the main line to Lake Superior, and one from Manitoba to the American boundary, where a road already connects with Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior. The Pacific terminus of this road must be on the narrow tongue of land between the Frazer river and the northern line of Washington Territory, at which point it will be connected with the Northern Pacific railroad, now building; and that Washington Territory must eventually receive more direct benefit from this Canadian road than British Columbia must be clear to all familiar with the geography of the two

sections.

The completion of the Northern Pacific and the Canadian Pacific railroads will open up the rich agricultural and mineral resources of the vast region from the great lakes to the Pacific ocean, and inaugurate new channels of commerce and new organized communities, soon to join in the union of States from the Arctic to the Rio Grande.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

ALASKA.

History-Geography-Area-Mountains-Forests-Rivers-Seas -Bays-Harbors-Islands-Climate-Seasons-Mines-Natives -Fish-Animals-Fur-seals-Commerce-Population-Towns -Progress-Religion-Future prospects.

ALASKA, formerly known as Russian America, embraces the extreme northwestern end of the continent of America; bounded on the north by the Arctic ocean and on the west by the Pacific ocean and Behring strait, which separates it from Siberia and Asiatic Russia, from which at the narrowest point in the strait it is distant but about twenty miles. On the Arctic side, the eastern line terminates at Demarkation Point in the line of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longitude from Greenwich, which course it follows south, dividing the Territory of Alaska from British Columbia on the east, until it reaches Mount St. Elias, about sixty miles from the Pacific ocean, where it turns southeast, and in an irregular line follows the course of the coast, leaving a belt of mountain chain of about an average width of one hundred miles and about five hundred miles in length, until it reaches the one hundred and thirtieth degree of west longitude, a little north of Simpson river, and enters the Pacific ocean north of Graham and Queen Charlotte islands, thus cutting a strip of about one hundred miles in breadth and five hundred miles long off the western shore of British Columbia. From this point, in a southwesterly direction, the coast line of Alaska on the