flows into Elliot Bay, and the Coppermine River, which
enters Coronation Gulf. The other northward-flowing rivers (passing
through innumerable lakes and lakelets) enter Hudson's Bay.

West of the great Mackenzie River rises the northernmost extension of
the Rocky Mountains. All this easternmost part of Alaska, which is
under British control, is a region of great elevation, something like
parts of Central Asia. The streams which rise here unite in the great
Yukon River, and this has its outlet in Bering's Sea. Some points of
the great mountains within the limits of British territory in this
direction reach to nearly 20,000 feet (Mount Logan).

But the climate of the northern parts of the Canadian Dominion differs
very greatly in the west as compared to the east. For instance, the
northern parts of Labrador are cruelly Arctic, hopelessly frozen,
though they are in the same latitude as St. Petersburg (the capital of
European Russia) and as the splendidly forested northern parts of
British Columbia. Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have
frequently perished from cold and starvation. Although in the lofty
parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of
treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is
frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there
are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it
possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is
extremely abundant. On the other hand, a good deal of the territory
between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable,
except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the
bare rocky nature of the ground.

The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the
Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and
loose stones. Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen
("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with
the roots of the wishakapakka herb (_Ledum palustre_, from which
Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with
white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch. This last, in sheltered places
where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low
scrubby bush. As to the gooseberries--here and farther south--Hearne
describes them as "thriving best on the stony or rocky ground, open
and much expo