activity in the
prosecution of liquor cases, resulted in the conviction that what
should have been a matter of administrative righteousness only was a
political matter as well.

The threatened extinction of the Alaskan native was referred to as
wanton, and the term was used in the sense that there are no necessary
natural causes fighting against his survival.

Here is no economic pressure of white settlers determined to occupy the
land, such as drove the Indians of the plains farther and farther west
until there was no more west to be driven to. If such delusion possess
any mind as a result of foolish newspaper and magazine writings, let it
be dismissed at once. No man who has lived in the country and travelled
in the country will countenance such notion. The white men in Alaska are
miners and prospectors, trappers and traders, wood-choppers and
steamboat men. Around a mining camp will be found a few truck-farmers;
alongside road-houses and wood camps will often be found flourishing
vegetable gardens, but outside of such agriculture there are, speaking
broadly, no farmers at all in the interior of Alaska. Probably a
majority of all the homesteads that have been taken up have been located
that the trees on them might be cut down and hauled to town to be sold
for fire-wood. A few miles away from the towns there are no homesteads,
except perhaps on a well-travelled trail where a man has homesteaded a
road-house.

[Illustration: AN AGED COUPLE.]

[Illustration: FOOTBALL AT THE ALLAKAKET, EXPOSURE 1-1000 SECOND, APRIL,
AFTER A NEW LIGHT SNOWFALL.]

All the settlements in the country are on the rivers, save the purely
mining settlements that die and are abandoned as the placers play out.
Yet one will travel two hundred and fifty miles up the Porcupine--till
Canada is reached--and pass not more than three white men's cabins, all
of them trappers; one will travel three hundred and fifty miles up the
Koyukuk before the first white man's cabin is reached, and as many miles
up the Innoko and the Iditarod and find no white men save wood-choppers.
There are a few more white men on the Tanana than on any other tributary
of the Yukon, because Fairbanks is on that river and there is more
steamboat traffic, but they are mainly wood-choppers, while on the
lesser tributaries of the Yukon, it is safe to say, there are no settled
white men at all. As soon as one leaves the rivers and starts across
country one is in the uninhabited wil