ays with a practicable grade, and
must descend nigh a thousand feet in a couple of miles. At the mouth of
Steel Creek we are on the Fortymile River again, having saved a day's
journey by this traverse. And here, on the Fortymile, we passed several
men "sniping on the bars," as the very first Alaskan gold-miners did on
this same river, and probably on these same bars, twenty-five years ago.
One hand moved the "rocker" to and fro and the other poured water into
it with the "long Tom"; so was the gold washed out of the gravel taken
from just below the ice. It was interesting to see this primitive method
still in practice and to learn from the men that they were making
"better than wages."

The Fortymile is a very picturesque but most tortuous river. In one
place, called appropriately "The Kink," I was able to clamber over a
ridge of rocks and reach another bend of the river in six or seven
minutes, and then had to wait twenty-five minutes for the dog team,
going at a good clip, to come around to me. At length we reached the
spot where a vista cut through the timber that clothes both banks,
marked the 141st meridian, the international boundary, and passed out of
Alaska into British territory. A few miles more brought us to Moose
Creek, where a little Canadian custom-house is situated, and there we
spent the night.

The next day we reached the Yukon; passing gold dredges laid up for the
winter and other signs of still-persisting mining activity, going
through the narrow wild canon of the Fortymile, and so to the little
town at its mouth of the same name, where there is a mission of the
Church of England and a post of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. I
never come into contact with this admirable body of men without wishing
that we had a similar body charged with the enforcement of the law in
Alaska.

Sunday was spent there officiating for the layman in charge of the
mission and in interesting talk with the sergeant of police about the
annual winter journey from Dawson to Fort McPherson on the McKenzie,
from which he had just returned with a detail of men. The next winter he
and his detail lost their way and starved and froze to death on the same
journey.

Here at one time was a flourishing Indian mission and school, and here
Bishop Bompas, the true "Apostle of the North," lived for some time. The
story of this man's forty-five years' single-eyed devotion to the
Indians of the Yukon and McKenzie Rivers is one of the br