"We have described some of the beauties of the Yukon basin in the summer season, but this radiant picture has its obverse side.
"Horseflies, gnats and mosquitoes add to the joys of living throughout the entire length of the Yukon valley. The horsefly is larger and more poignantly assertive than the insect which we know by that name. In dressing or undressing, it has a pleasant habit of detecting any bare spot in the body and biting out a piece of flesh, leaving a wound which a few days later looks like an incipient boil. Schwatka reports that one of his party, so bitten was completely disabled for a week. 'At the moment of infliction.' he adds, 'it was hard to believe that one was not disabled for life.'
"The mosquitoes according to the same authority are equally distressing. They are especially fond of cattle, but without any reciprocity of affection. 'According to the general terms of the survival of the fittest and the growth of muscles most used to the detriment of others,' says the lieutenant in an unusual burst of humor, 'a band of cattle inhabiting this district, in the far future, would be all tail and no body, unless the mosquitoes should experience a change of numbers.'"
I am indebted to Wm. Ogilvie, Esq., for the following valuable information relative to The Yukon District.
"The Yukon District comprises, speaking generally, that part of the Northwest Territories lying west of the water shed of the Mackenzie River; most of it is drained by the Yukon River and its tributaries. It covers a distance of about 650 miles along the river from the coast range of mountains.
"In 1848 Campbell established Fort Selkirk at the confluence of the Pelly and Lewes Rivers; it was plundered and destroyed in 1852 by the Coast Indians, and only the ruins now exist of what was at one time the most important post of the Hudson's Bay Company to the west of the Rocky Mountains in the far north. In 1869 the Hudson's Bay Company's officer was expelled from Fort Yukon by the United States Government, they haying ascertained by astronomical observations that the post was not located in British territory. The officer thereupon ascended the Porcupine to a point which was supposed to be within British jurisdiction, where he established Rampart House; but in 1890 Mr. J.H. Turner of the United States Coast Survey found it to be 20 miles within the lines of the United States. Consequently in 1891 the post was moved 20 miles further up the river to be within British territory.