Mr. William Ogilvie, of the Topographical Survey of Canada, estimates that there are more than 3,200 miles of fair navigation in the system of the Yukon River, of which Canada owns nearly forty-two per cent. A remarkable feature of the river, with its Lewes branch, is that it drains the Peninsula of Alaska and nearly cuts it in two, starting as it does less than fourteen miles, "as the crow flies," from the waters of the Pacific Ocean, at the extreme head of the Lewes branch, whence it flows 2,100 miles into the same ocean, or Bering Sea, which is a part of it. The drainage basin of the river occupies about 388,000 square miles, of which Canada owns 149,000 square miles, or nearly half, but that half is claimed to be the most important. As for the origin of the name Yukon, the Indians along the middle stretches of the river all speak the same language, and call the river the Yukonah; in English, "the great river" or "the river." The Canadian Indians in the vicinity of Forty Mile call it "Thetuh," a name of which Mr. Ogilvie could not learn the meaning. The correct Indian name of the Klondike is Troandik, meaning Hammer Creek, and refers to the barriers the Indians used to erect across the mouth of the stream to catch salmon, by hammering sticks into the ground.
[THE SEASON OF THE YEAR.]
By GRANT ALLEN.
A year is, roughly speaking, the period which it takes the earth to perform one complete revolution round the sun. I say "roughly speaking" with due humility, having the fear of the expert ever before my eyes, because I know that if I do not sing small, that inconvenient person, the astronomical critic, will come down upon me at once like a wolf on the fold, with minute distinctions about the mean, the tropical, and the sidereal year; matters of immense importance at Greenwich Observatory, no doubt, but elsewhere of very little interest indeed, seeing that they differ from one another by so many minutes only. Let us leave the astronomers their own problems. The year with which I am going to deal humbly here is a much more commonplace, ordinary, and comprehensible year—the visible year of vegetation, of plant and animal life, of the four seasons; the year as roughly known to children and savages, and to the weeds, the flowers, the bees, and the squirrels.
It has often struck me as curious that people took this complex concept of the year so much for granted—inquired so little into its origin and discovery. Yet it is by no means everywhere obvious. How did men first come to notice, in the tropics especially, that there was such a thing as the year at all? How did they first observe, save in our frozen north, any fixed sequence or order in the succession of Nature? How did they learn, even here, that spring would infallibly follow winter, and summer be succeeded in due course by autumn? And, to go a step farther back, how did the plants and animals, in all parts of the world alike, come originally to discover and adapt themselves to all these things? How did the bee know that she must "gather honey all the day from every opening flower," the summer through, in order to use it up as bodily fuel in winter? How did the plants learn when to blossom and produce seed? In one word, how did the seasons come to be automatically recognized?
That they are automatically recognized, even by plants, quite apart from the stimulus of heat or cold, drought or rain, a single fact (out of many like it) will sufficiently prove. Trees brought from Australia to England, where the seasons are reversed, try for two or three years to put forth leaves and flowers in October or November—the southern spring. It takes them several autumns before they learn that the year has been turned upside down—that June is now summer and December winter. This shows that life moves in regular cycles, adapted to the seasons, but not directly dependent upon them. The rhythm of the world has set up an organic rhythm which now spontaneously and automatically follows it.
At first sight, to the dweller in the temperate zone at the present day, the questions I have put above may seem needless, not to say childish. But that is perhaps because we have all too much the habit of taking it for granted that what is true here and now has also been true everywhere and always. A first visit to the tropics often enough rudely disturbs this uninquiring attitude of mind. For in the tropics, and especially in the equatorial region, there is no winter and no summer, no spring and no autumn. The world wags wearily through an unending display of monotonous greenery. As far as temperature goes, the year is pretty much alike in all its months. Yet not only do equatorial men recognize the existence of the year as a natural epoch quite as much as other men—not only do equatorial savages celebrate annual feasts, count ages by years, and perform certain rites in certain months only—but also animal and vegetable nature recognizes the year; trees have their month for blossoming and fruiting, birds their month for assuming the plumage of courtship, for nesting and hatching, almost as markedly as elsewhere. The recognition of the year both by man and by Nature is not therefore entirely dependent upon the difference of summer and winter, as such. We must go deeper, and I think, when we come to consider geological time, much deeper, if we wish to understand the true character of yearliness—a word which I venture here to coin to express this meaning.
Have you ever quite realized what the tropical year is like? Suppose you are living on or near the equator, then in December the sun is south of you and at its greatest distance away; you have, so to speak, a relative winter. But in March the sun is overhead; it is now full midsummer. By the end of June the sun has gone north, and is once more on a tropic; you have a second winter; not much of a winter, I admit, but still, a relative winter. By September he has returned overhead again, and you are enduring a second summer. In December he has once more retreated to the southern tropic (Capricorn), and it is comparative winter. Thus the equatorial year consists of four distinct seasons, in two of which the sun stands directly overhead, while in two he is at his northern or southern limit. I may add that the effect is always curious when, as you face the sun, you see that he is moving in his diurnal path, not from left to right ("the way of the sun," as we say), but from right to left (or "widdershins"). You are never till then aware how natural and inevitable has seemed the opposite direction: when you find it reversed the effect is surprising.