The principal sources of worry and suffering at an arctic station are to be found in the short, dark days of winter and the long, bright days of summer. Our first winter was made rather worse than usual because of the small amount of oil we had to carry us through. For twenty hours each day during the mouths of December and January no reading or writing could be done in quarters without the aid of artificial light, and as we only had enough oil on hand to allow us to keep a lamp going for four hours per day, we had many a dark hour to endure, and those two months appeared almost endless. The long day of the summer seems to affect some people even more than the long night of winter; they appear to become nervous, and on the whaling fleet it is not unusual for men to become insane, and some are driven to suicide. At camp Davidson we were not in�side the arctic circle, but nevertheless no stars were visible to the naked eye from about April 25 to August 15, and in June at midnight diamond print could be read by natural light out. of doors. Some members of the party suffered severly from insom�nia during the summer, and it did not seem to help them in any way when the heaviest cloths were used to curtain their cots. Although 1,400 miles in the interior and certain of a mail .only once a year, we could not. complain of loneliness while the Indians were near us, and very few indeed were the days that some of those social people omitted calling and breakfasting, dining or supping with us. Taken as a whole, the Indians in our vicinity were clean, honest, gentle and virtuous. Never have they occasioned the white men who came among them any trouble, and hitherto the mutual relations of the two races have been of the most cordial and pleasant character. The miners early recognized the necessity of seeing that none of their number should do the Indians injustice, and rigid laws have been adopted to enforce due consideration of Indian rights. Whatever work an Indian does for a miner or whatever he sells one is paid for, generally at a high price. Indians working in mining claims receive three to four dollars per day, which is relatively higher than the eight dollars paid to white men. What the outcome of Redmi will be is be�yond any one’s power to estimate now. The miners have pros�pected on nearly every stream in the country ; even the Arctic portions of the territory have not provcn inaccessible to those solitary searchers for the precious metal, and everywhere they have found ” color,” but up to the present time no place has paid steadily and well, except the small river called by the natives Chitandipeh, and by the whites Forty Mile creek. Here last season there were about 150 white men, and when we left camp Davidson in June, 1891, it was the only river below Pelly, except the Kuyukuk, on which mines were worked.
