SHORT SUMMER—HEAT AND COLD CONTRASTS.

There is a short, hot Summer of less than four months, with practically no Spring or Autumn. The ice begins to break up in the rivers about May 25, and navigation commences on the Yukon about the first week in June. It begins to get very cool by the latter part of September, and is almost Winter weather by the 1st of October. The winter is very cold and dry, with not more than three feet of snow. There is only about three inches of rainfall during the winter and not more than a foot or ten inches the whole year around.

It is a country in which it is very hard to find food, as there is practically no game. Before the whites went into the region there were not more than 300 natives. They had hard work to support themselves on account of the scarcity of game.

The thermometer sometimes goes down to 68 degrees below zero in January and February. The cold, however, is not so intense as may be imagined, and 68 degrees there could not be compared with the same here. The dress is mostly of furs in the Winter, that used by the natives, and unless there is a sharp wind blowing one may keep fairly comfortable.

After this there is scarcely a let up before the middle of the following March. Just before reaching Lake Linderman the famous Chilcoot Pass is encountered, and woe to the traveller who is caught in one of the snow storms, which spring up with the suddenness of an April shower and rage for days. They are frozen simoons. Nature has provided at the pass a protection against these terrific outbreaks in the shape of an immense overhanging rock. At the top of the pass it was the custom in former years for the Indians to corral the wild sheep and goats, which were to be found in large numbers in all the surrounding mountains. The species now is practically extinct.

This route, by the way of Juneau, is a fine trip of 1,000 miles or so. For an individual it is more costly, but for a party it is cheaper.

At the head of Lake Linderman is a saw mill, where prospectors are permitted to prepare the lumber for the boats necessary to complete the journey to the camp.

This work generally consumes five or six days, but if the prospector is in a hurry he can purchase a boat, the average price being $80. Then he floats on and on for hundreds of miles and finally reaches the gold and the miners and the Arctic circle.