and wanders among hundreds of islets. Fifty-five miles by the river below Rink Rapids, the confluence of the Lewes and Pelly is reached, and the first sign. of civilization in the ruins of old Fort Selkirk, with such recent and probably temporary occupation as circumstances may cause. Before long, undoubtedly, a flourishing permanent settlement will grow up in this favorable situation.

The confluence here of the Lewes and Pelly rivers forms the Yukon, which thenceforth pursues an uninterrupted course of 1,650 miles to Behring Sea. The country about the confluence is low, with extensive terrace flats running back to the bases of rounded hills and ridges. The Yukon below the junction averages about one-quarter of a mile in width, and has an average depth of about 10 feet, with a surface velocity of 44 miles an hour. A good many gravel bars occur, but no shifting sand. The general course nearly to White River, 96 miles, is a little north of west, and many islands are seen; then the river turns to a nearly due north course, maintained at Fort Reliance. The White River is a powerful stream, plunging down loaded with silt, over ever shifting sand bars. Its upper source is problematical, but is probably in the Alaskan Mountains near the head of the Tenana and Fortymile Creek.

For the next ten miles the river spreads out to more than a mile wide and becomes a maze of islands and bars, the main channel being along the western shore, where there is plenty of water. This brings one to Stewart river, which is the most important right-hand tributary between the Pelly and the Porcupine. It enters from the east in the middle of a wide valley, and half a mile above its mouth is 200 yards in width; the current is slow and the water dark colored. It has been followed to its headquarters in the main range of the Rockies, and several large branches, on some of which there are remarkable falls, have been traced to their sources through the forested and snowy hills where they rise. These sources are perhaps 200 miles from the mouth, but as none of the wanderers were equipped with either geographical knowledge or instruments nothing. definite is known. Reports of traces of precious metals have been brought back from many points. in the Stewart valley, but this information is as vague as the other thus far. All reports agree that a light draught steamboat could go to the head of the Stewart and bar up its feeders. There is a trading post at its mouth.

The succeeding 125 miles holds what is at present the most interesting and populous part of the Yukon valley. The river varies from half to three

quarters of a mile wide and is full of islands. About 23 miles below Stewart River a large stream enters from the west called Sixty-mile Creek by the miners, who have had a small winter camp and trading store there for some years, and have explored its course for gold to its rise in the mountains west of the international boundary. Every little tributary has been named, among them (going up), Charley's Fork, Edwards Creek and Hawley Creek, in Canada, and then, on the American side of the line, Gold Creek, Miller Creek and Bed Rock Creek. The sand and gravel of all these have yielded fine gold and some of them, as Miller Creek, have become noted for their richness. Forty-four miles below Sixty-mile takes one to Dawson City, at the mouth of Klondike River, -the center of the highest productiveness and greatest excitement during 1897, when the gold fields of the interior of Alaska first attracted the attention of the world. Leaving to another special chapter an account of them, the itinerary may be completed by saying that 6 miles below the mouth of the Klondike is Fort Reliance, an old private trading post of no present importance. Twelve and a half miles. farther the Chan-din-du River enters from the east, and 33 below that in the mouth of Forty-mile Creek, or Cone Hill River, which until the past year was the most important mining region of the inte