would write about the timber resources of the interior—in certain shrill journals the man who does not confidently expect to see the Yukon Flats waving with golden grain and "the lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea" of the Koyukuk and the Chandalar is regarded as a traitor to his country and his God. But it must be remembered that there are a number of journalists in Alaska who know nothing of the country outside their respective towns, and that "boosting" grows shriller, as Eugene Field found red paint grow redder, "the further out West one goes." When they get a newspaper at Cape Prince of Wales what a clarion it will be!
Truth, however, is not more wont than of old to be found in extremes, and the author of this book believes that those who desire a sober view of the country it deals with will find it herein. He claims no more than that he has had adequate opportunity of forming his opinions and that he has a right to their expression. It is now twelve years since he began almost constant travelling, winter and summer, in the interior of Alaska. He has described nothing that he has not seen; ventured no judgment that he has not well digested, and has nothing to retract or even modify; but he would repeat and emphasise a caution of the original preface. Alaska is not one country but many countries, and so widely do they differ from one another in almost every respect that no general statements about Alaska can be true. The present author's knowledge of the territory is confined in the main to the interior—to the valley of the Yukon and its tributary rivers, which make up one of the world's great waterways—and nothing of his writing applies, with his authority, to other parts.
The matter of the preservation of the native peoples still presses, and is nearer to the author's heart than any other matter whatever. The United States Congress, which voted thirty-five millions of dollars for the government railroad, strikes out year by year the modest additional score or two of thousands that year by year the Bureau of Education asks for the establishment of hospital work amongst the Indians of the interior, and the preventable mortality continues to be very great.
In the last two years, largely as the result of the untiring efforts of Bishop Rowe on behalf of the natives, two modern, well-equipped hospitals have been built, with money that he and his clergy have gathered, on the Yukon River, one at Fort Yukon and one at Tanana; and these are the only places of any kind, on nearly a thousand miles of the river, where sick or injured Indians may be received and cared for.
Amongst men of thought and feeling there is noticeable revulsion from the supercilious attitude that used not to be uncommon toward the little peoples of the world. It begins to be recognised that it is quite possible that even the smallest of the little peoples may have some contribution to make to the welfare and progress of the human race. What is the Boy Scout movement that is sweeping the country, to the enormous benefit of the rising generation, but the incorporating into the nurture of our youth of the things that were the nurture of the Indian youth; that are a large part of the nurture of the Alaskan Indian youth to-day? And the camp-fire clubs and woodcraft associations and the whole trend to the life of the open recognise that the Indian had developed a technique of wilderness life deserving of preservation for its value to the white man. While as for the Esquimaux, the author never sees the extraordinary prevalence amongst them of the art of graphic delineation displayed in bold etchings of incidents of the chase upon their implements and weapons (though not upon the articles made by the dozen for the curio-venders at Nome and Saint Michael) without dreaming that some day an artist will come from out that singular and most interesting people who shall teach the world something new about art.
Whatever the future may hold for the interior of Alaska, the author is convinced that its population will derive very largely from the present native stocks, and this alone would justify any efforts to prevent further inroads upon their health and vitality.
April, 1916.
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Hudson Stuck (photogravure) | Frontispiece |
| Facing Page | |
| Sunrise on the Chandalar-Koyukuk portage | 36 |
| Coldfoot on the Koyukuk | 37 |
| The upper Koyukuk | 50 |
| The barren shores of Kotzebue Sound | 51 |
| Gold-mining at Nome | 122 |
| Pulling the Pelican out with a "Spanish windlass" | 123 |
| The start over the "first ice" | 164 |
| "Rough going" | 165 |
| Arthur and Doctor Burke | 178 |
| Saint John's-in-the-Wilderness, Allakaket, Koyukuk River | 179 |
| The double interpretation at the Allakaket | 186 |
| The wind-swept Yukon within the ramparts | 187 |
| A pleasant woodland trail | 256 |
| An Alaskan chief and his henchman | 257 |
| The Tanana crossing | 270 |
| Good going on the Yukon | 271 |
| "A portage that comes so finely down to the Yukon that there is pleasure in anticipating the view it affords" | 290 |
| Fort Yukon | 291 |
| The rough breaking in of Doctor Loomis, camped on the mail trail at 50° below zero, unable to reach a road-house for the deep snow | 296 |
| Esquimaux of the upper Kuskokwim | 297 |
| "The 'summit' is high above timber-line and the trail pursues a hogback ridge for a mile and a half at the summit level" |