part I would rather be a dead dog than an ordinary Indian's dog--so he

died.

There remained the seventy-five or eighty miles through the Yukon Flats to Fort Yukon--always the most dangerous stretch of the river, and at this season, when the winter's trail was beginning to break up, particularly so. It would be entirely practicable to cut a land trail that should not touch the river at all, or not at more than one point, between Circle and Fort Yukon, and such a portage besides removing all the danger would save perhaps twenty miles. In many places it was necessary for one of us to go ahead with an axe, constantly sounding and testing the ice. Here and there we made a circuit around open water into which the ice that bore the trail had collapsed bodily--one of them a particularly ugly place, with black water twenty feet deep running at six or seven miles an hour. I never pass this stretch of river without a feeling of gratitude that I am safely over it once more.

[Sidenote: CAPTAIN AMUNDSEN]

As we left the Halfway Island we passed an Indian from Fort Yukon going up the river with dogs and toboggan, and I chuckled, as I returned his very polite salutation and shook hands with him, at the success of the way he had been dealt with the previous fall, for he had been a particularly churlish fellow with an insolent manner. Six or seven years before he had been taken by Captain Amundsen, of the _Gjoa_, as guide along this stretch of the river. It will be remembered that when that skilful and fortunate navigator had reached Herschell Island from the east, he left his ship in winter quarters and made a rapid journey with Esquimaux across country to Fort Yukon expecting to find a telegraph station there from which he could send word of his success. But to his disappointment he found it necessary to go two hundred and thirty miles farther up the river to Eagle, before he could despatch his message. So he left his Esquimaux at Fort Yukon and took this Indian as guide. And in his modest and most interesting book he mentions the man's surliness and says he was glad to get rid of him at Circle.

Some new outbreak of insolence for which he had been flung out of a store decided that he must be dealt with, and I sent for him, for the chief, the native minister, and the interpreter. With these assessors beside me, and Captain Amundsen's book open on the table, I spoke to the man of his general conduct and reputation. I read the derogatory remark about him in the book "printed for all the world to read," and told him that of all the people, white and native, the captain had met on his journeys, only one was spoken of harshly and he was the one. It made a great impression on the man. The chief and the native minister followed it up with their harangues, and the net result was a thorough change in his whole attitude and demeanour. He told us he felt the shame of being held up to the world as rude and impudent and would try to amend. He has tried so successfully that he is now one of the politest and most courteous Indians in the village, for which, if this should ever chance to reach Captain Amundsen's eye, I trust he will accept our thanks.

Fort Yukon, where the headquarters of the archdeaconry of the Yukon are now fixed, grows in native population and importance. A new and sightly church, a new schoolhouse, a new two-story mission house, a medical missionary and a nurse in residence, as well as a native clergyman, mark the Indian metropolis of this region and perhaps of all interior Alaska. Self-government is fostered amongst the people by a village council elected annually, that settles native troubles and disputes and takes charge of movements for the general good, and of the relief of native poverty. The resident physician has been appointed justice of the peace and there is effort to enforce the law of the land at a place where every man has been a law unto himself. But it is a very slow and difficult matter to enforce law in this country at all, and more particularly at these remote points; and the class of white men who are to be found around native villages, many of whom "fear not God neither regard man," pursue their debauchery and deviltry long time unwhipped.

FOOTNOTE:

[F] I take pleasure in naming Mr. U. G. Myers as the United States commissioner in question and Mr. Jack Robinson as the deputy United States marshal, and I mention their names the more readily because Mr. Myers, after his long and excellent service, has just been removed for political reasons. (May, 1916.)