been performed in such a manner as to elicit general commendation from the inhabitants. Under the law the army has unique and embarrassing duties devolved on it, as in Alaska (and nowhere else) it is subject to the call of the governor (or courts) as a posse comitatus; again, officers of the army are liable to jury duty, and have even been summoned to either pay or work out a road tax.

In season and out of season, the officers of the army have proclaimed the obligations of the United States toward the natives of Alaska: and, in default of an authorized system and in the absence of civil officials, have assumed the difficult task of conserving, as far as possible, the interests and rights of the natives.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Annual Reports Commanding General, Department of Columbia, 1869-1878, 1889-1908. Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska. Fifty-eighth Congress, 1st Session, Senate Report No. 1,023, 1900.

CHAPTER V

WATERWAYS

THE entire absence of roads in Alaska, until the past few years, has made river transportation practically the only method of extended travel in the Territory. Fortunately, the river systems of Alaska are such as to facilitate very greatly personal travel and the movement of freight during the four or five months of open season. Waterways in Alaska navigable by steamers approximate 4,000 miles, of which nearly 2,700 are in the Yukon watershed.

Navigable Rivers

The great artery of summer travel and freight is through that magnificent stream, the Yukon, which divides Alaska into two nearly equal parts in its course of about 1,200 miles, flowing in a bow-shaped course, in its general direction of east to west. Formed by the junction of the Pelley and Lewes, its length from the source of the Lewes to the Yukon delta, Norton Sound, is 1,865 miles, its length in Alaska being about 1,200 miles. Flowing in its upper reaches through cañon-like valleys, it debouches shortly after entering Alaska into a plateau tundra region, where its wide and winding channels divide and flow sluggishly-especially in the great flats near Fort Yukon; there the islands and cut-offs make the

river from ten to thirty miles wide-again to find precipitous, confining mountains in the so-called rampart region, near Fort Hamlin. From Fort Gibbon to Norton Sound the river valley grows steadily wider, until the vast, treeless delta region is reached, about one hundred miles inward from Norton Sound. The delta has an area of about 9,000 square miles, greater in extent than any one of the States of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Although one of the largest rivers of North America, exceeded in length or volume by only the Mississippi, Mackenzie, St. Lawrence, and Winnipeg, yet the usefulness of the Yukon, though navigable throughout its entire extent, is largely restricted by its very shallow mouths, which admit boats drawing not over three or four feet of water. In consequence all freight shipments for the Yukon watershed are transferred from the ocean steamships to river steamboats which run to St. Michael, ninety miles seaward from the Apoon mouth of the delta.

The Yukon navigation is divided into two sharply separated systems-the Canadian and the American -with Dawson, Yukon Territory, as the line of demarcation. This is caused by the customs and navigation laws, which practically necessitate the transshipment of everything in and out of Alaska via the upper Yukon, at Dawson; and again every boat coming into the Alaskan Yukon is obliged to stop and submit to customs examination at Eagle, about one hundred miles below Dawson.

The Canadian system is also affected by the spring and summer conditions of the chain of lakes which forms the extreme upper Yukon (or Lewes), through early autumn freezing and late break-ups in the spring. The more rapid, as well as the more northerly, river keeping open longer than the lake section, part of the steamers are wintered north of Lake Lebarge, near the mouth of the Hootalinqua, ninety miles north of White Horse-which is the terminus of the White Pass and Yukon Railway. In six years' consecutive record, the average period between the dates of the first [boat and the last boat from White Horse to Dawson was four months and nineteen days -from June 4 to October 23. The average date of the first boat from Hootalinqua to Dawson was May 13-thus lengthening the navigation period by twenty days. The earliest date that the first boat has reached Dawson was May 16 from Hootalinqua, but in two years it was delayed until May 26. The average date of the last boat arriving at White Horse from Dawson is October 28, although in 1902 a boat arrived as late as November 4.

At Fort Gibbon (Tanana P. O.), junction of the Yukon and Tanana, the two rivers are open on the average by May 13 and closed by November 1, an interval of five months and nineteen days. In eight years the opening of navigation ranged from May 7 to 24, and its closing from October 21 to November 9.

The period of navigation from Fort Gibbon up the Yukon River to Dawson is materially longer than it is down river toward Norton Sound; its mean

duration in three consecutive years being four months and fourteen days to Dawson, from May 21 to October 5. Toward St. Michael the time of navigation averages three months and fifteen days, from June 15 to September 30. The arrival of the first boat from Dawson has ranged from May 19 to 23, and from St. Michael from June 2 to 24.

Between Fort Gibbon and Fort Egbert (Eagle City), 575 miles up the Yukon, the boats usually run up river from June 1 to October 6, and down from May 16 to September 17. In general it takes twice as long to go up the Yukon by steamboat as it does to come down the same distance.

The most northerly important affluent of the Yukon, within Alaska, is the Porcupine, which joins it at Fort Yukon, just north of the Arctic Circle; it is navigable for light-draft steamboats for about one hundred miles. On this, as on other rivers, small poling boats are available for navigation to much greater distances, dependent largely on freshet-water conditions.

From its volume of water, length of course, and its commercial relations, the Tanana is far the most important tributary of the Yukon. First navigated in its lower reaches in 1893, it was opened to Chena in 1898, and regular summer navigation has been had since 1901 with Fairbanks, about 300 miles up the river. Occasional steamboats have carried supplies up the Tanana to Delta River, and one reached the junction of the Nabesna, about 700 miles from the mouth of the Tanana. If mineral developments