TENTH LETTER.
DOG LORE OF THE NORTH.
White Horse, Sunday, September 20, 1903.
We arrived about nine o’clock this morning. The voyage up the Yukon from Dawson has taken us since Wednesday at 2:30, when we cast off and stemmed the swift waters—twenty-four hours longer than going down. During the week of our stay at Dawson the days grew perceptibly shorter and the nights colder. There is no autumn in this land. Two weeks ago the foliage had just begun to turn; a week ago the aspens and birches were showing a golden yellow, but the willows and alders were yet green. Now every leaf is saffron and golden—gamboge—and red. In a week or more they will have mostly fallen. As yet the waters of the Yukon and affluent rivers show no ice. In three weeks they are expected to be frozen stiff, and so remain until the ice goes out next June. The seasons of this land are said to be “Winter and June, July and August.” To me it seems inconceivable that the Arctic frosts should descend so precipitately. But on every hand there is evident preparation for the cold, the profound cold. Double windows and doors are being fastened on. Immense piles of sawed and cut firewood are being stored close at hand. Sleighs and especially sledges are being painted and put in order; the dogs which have run wild, and mostly foraged for themselves during the summer, are being discovered, captured and led off by strings and straps and wires about their necks. Men are buying new dogs, and the holiday of dogkind is evidently close at an end. Women are already wearing some of their furs. Ice half to a full inch forms every night, and yesterday we passed through our first snow storm, and all the mountains round about, and even the higher hills, are to-day glistening in mantles of new, fresh, soft-looking snow. The steamers of the White Pass and Yukon Railway Company will be laid up in three weeks now, they tell us, and already the sleighs and teams for the overland stage route are being gathered, the stage houses at twenty-four-mile intervals being set in order, and the “Government road” being prepared afresh for the transmission of mails and passengers.
APPROACHING SEATTLE.
WITH AND WITHOUT.