five miles wide at its broadest place, and at many points is much less than a mile, the air is forced over it between the high ridges of mountains at a tremendous rate. Some of the mountains reach a height of 8000 feet. The climate is dry, and what little rain falls consists of an occasional thunder shower. The air is cool and bracing from the snow-capped peal.s, which temper the warmth of a down-pouring sun.

Lake Bennett is connected with Lake Tagish by a very crooked and shallow channel with a slight current known as Caribou Crossing, from the fact that it was used by the bands of barren land caribou in their migrations in the fall and spring. Tagish Lake is an irregular body of water with two arms, known as Windy Arm and Taku Arm, stretching off to the south and southeast. Taku Arm is really a larger body of water than that particular portion known as Tagish Lake, but Tagish Lake acquires its importance from being directly in line of travel between Lake Lindeman and Lake Bennett on the south and Lake Marsh on the north. Tagish Lake is connected with Lake Marsh by a broad river with slow current, lined with wooded slopes and plenty of cottonwood and white spruce. The river is

about five miles long, and on it is situated the Tagish House, where yearly festivals and councils of war are held by the natives, the buildings being the only permanent structures in hundreds of miles above where the Pelly and Lewis Rivers join to make the Yukon.

Lake Marsh, which is next entered, stretches along at a width of two miles for a distance of twenty, the most notable feature of all these lakes being their narrowness as compared with their length. Lake Marsh is in the middle of a broad valley, from which high ranges of mountains stand out prominently at a considerable distance. Its banks, like the banks of the other lakes, are well wooded. From Lake Marsh the seeker for gold finds his way into Lewis River, which he follows for a distance of more than a hundred miles to the northwest until he reaches the gold fields around the Klondike Basin. This journey along Lewis River, with its canons and rapids, is one of the most picturesque and interesting that can possibly be imagined. One of the features of the trip is the high cut banks which stretch along for mile after mile and which are completely honeycombed by martins, which resort there to rear their young. Lake Marsh is the limit for

the migration of the salmon, which arrive there. in small numbers, although those who do brave the journey are said to be the finest to be found anywhere in the world, averaging forty pounds in weight. The swift waters of the Grand Canon are too powerful ever for the salmon whose hardihood brings them as far up the river as this.

The Grand Canon is a wonderfully beautiful bit of scenery. It is cut through a horizontal basalt bed, and the walls range in height from fifty to one hundred and twenty feet, being worn into all sorts of fantastic shapes. The average width of the canon is about one hundred feet, and as the average width of the river above it is over seven hundred feet, the force with which this great volume of water cuts through the steep ledges of rock may be imagined. Mr. Wilson, who made this trip in 1894 and who has described it at length in his "Guide to the Yukon Gold Field," says that he shot through the canon for a distance of three-quarters of a mile in two minutes and twenty seconds, and when his boat emerged from the chasm it was leaking badly and nearly every nail was started. Two miles beyond come the White Horse Rapids, which form a perilous passage even for the best of