. Round about the North pole . thick. On the 7th of June they were two hundred andforty miles above Nulato, at the junction of theTanana, the furthest point reached by the Russians,and soon were in a part abounding with moose owingto their seeking refuge in the stream from the millionsof mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy,not wasting powder and shot, but manoeuvring roundthe swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until theytired the victim out; and then stealthily approaching,securing it with a stab from their knives. After twenty-six laborious days against the streamthey reached
. Round about the North pole . thick. On the 7th of June they were two hundred andforty miles above Nulato, at the junction of theTanana, the furthest point reached by the Russians,and soon were in a part abounding with moose owingto their seeking refuge in the stream from the millionsof mosquitoes. Here the Indian hunters were busy,not wasting powder and shot, but manoeuvring roundthe swimming deer in their birch-bark canoes until theytired the victim out; and then stealthily approaching,securing it with a stab from their knives. After twenty-six laborious days against the streamthey reached Fort Yukon, the then furthest outpostof the Hudsons Bay Company, six hundred milesfrom Nulato, and, of course, managed and victualledfrom the east. Here the amount of peltry wasastonishing, the fur-room of the fort containingthousands of marten skins, hanging from the beams,and huge piles of common furs lying around, togetherwith a considerable number of foxes, black and silver-grey, and many skins of the wolverine, thought so. rv FORT YUKON 145 much more of by the Indians than by any one elsethat they are used as a medium of exchange. Allthese furs were brought in from the surroundingdistricts, far and near, and traded for goods, as widelydistributed, among the native tribes whose repre-sentatives gathered at the fort in such a miscellaneouscrowd that perhaps half a dozen dialects were heard ina morning. In the crowd the busiest and most prominent werethe primitive Tananas, gay with feathers and paintedfaces, looking like survivals among the local Kutchinsand the Kutchins of the upper river, the Birch Rivermen, and the Rat River men by whom the skins werebrought from the natives of the northern coast, aswere the messages from the Franklin search were all of these, distinguishable by theirwearing the hyaqua or tooth-shell (Dentalium entails)through the septum of the nose, while the Mahlemutwears a bone on each side of the mouth, a practicecommon with all the Inn
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