YUKON TERRITORY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22507, 15 September 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

YUKON TERRITORY

Extract from a letter to Jessie Mould, Banks Peninsula. I live on the Leslin or Hootalinqua river, which empties into the Yukon river. There is only my family living here, and our nearest town is Whitehouse, about 86 miles across country. We go_ there once a year to sell our furs in the spring. We stayed at a boarding-house in Dawson while attending school. I keep house and do the cooking for my brothers and dad, so I am kept fairly busy most of the time, but I can always find time for hikes In the woods and to fish and hunt in summer. In winter I snow-shoe and trap weasels, mink, and squirrels. Last winter I caught about 100 squirrels, a dozen weasels, and two mink. My brothers and dad caught 50 animal skins, which include fox, coyote, mink, lynx, and wolverine. Game is very plentiful here. The fauna embraces moose, caribou, mountain sheep, and goats, a few deer, brown, black, and grizzly bears, ptarmigan, grouse, partridges, water fowl, ducks, geese, crane, and swans. Our chief frees are white spruce, balsam fir, black pine; aspen, balsam poplar, scrub alder, and willow. Some of our wild flowers are roses, buttercups, skunk flowers, twin flowers, daisies (blue and white), dandelions, pinedrops. larkspur, ladyslipper, fairy slipper, bluebell, harebell, lupin.

shooting star, crocus, shepherd’s purse, and fire-weed, we also have many different kinds of wild hemes, most of which are edible—blueberries, high and low bush cranberries, black and red currants, raspberries, strawberries, black or moss berries, and gooseberries. Some not used for cooking or eating are bear or soap bemes, juniper, salmon and kinick-kinick berries. Most of the wild berries ripen in August and September, when I make jam and jelly for the winter. All we hear is the wind, the water running, and the trees sighing, and, oh yes, the wolves and coyotes howling. We raised seven coyote puppies a few summers ago. It was very interesting to watch them. We kept them in a pen and were going to use them to drive, but they were too wild, so we had to kill them. Once my sister and I raised two cub bears—a black and a brown. We got them when, they were as small as squirrels. They were real pets—just like puppies, only a lot cuter and more interesting, too. They grew too big, and we had someone kill them. Sometimes it gets severely cold here in Yukon. Last winter it was 60 and 70 below zero for a long time. Then we have to hug the heater stoves. We have quite a lot of snow, too; the first snowfall usually arrives round the beginning of November, and stays on until the end of April, and even until June on the mountains. The ice froze thick on our rivers last winter. It must have been six feet thick in some places, so you can imagine the work it is cutting a hole to get our water.