NAME OF THE DENES AND THEIR HABITAT IN THE NORTH. 19

to be the native name of the latter, is merely a hybrid word invented by
his eastern companions. Desse means river in their dialect; ¢che (tSe) is
mouth of a stream with practically all the Dénés, and Jacou is evidently a
corruption of the Carrier Athakhoh.

Hundreds of miles to the east of either the Yukon or the Mackenzie
flows the Coppermine, which is famous for having been the highway which
led to the Arctic Ocean Samuel Hearne, the first representative of our race
who ever reached its inhospitable shores, as George Back was, long after,
to be for the desolate banks of the river, still further east, which now bears
his name, though it is also known by the translation of the Aue-tgo 1 Big-Fish
i. ec. Whale, of the Indians.

Sulphur was found by Franklin south of Lake Athabaska?, and a stream
called Salt River denotes by its name the nature of the product it yields.
West of the Rocky Mountains, the auriferous fields of the Klondike, Cassiar,
Omineca and Cariboo are known the world over.

Climate.

It is hardly necessary to remark that, in a region which is within or so
near the Arctic circle, the winters are uncommonly severe. As far south as
54° 30’, I have myself seen the spirits in my thermometer fall to 55° below
zero Fahrenheit, though Franklin reports being told that the lowest tempera-
ture experienced at Lake Athabaska was—45°%, His informants must cer-
tainly have been mistaken. In Alaska, the warm current from the coast of
Japan considerably mitigates the inclemency of the cold season. Yet Dall
records from personal observation as much as —69°4 which is, however,
almost mild weather in comparison with the —82° which, at this writing®,
the newspapers assure us was lately the thermometric reading in the vicinity
of Dawson City.

It would seem that, under such unfavourable conditions and in the
absence of all the comforts of civilization, life is hardly worth living.
However, there are few northerners who, after a visit-to the land of their
birth, the home of affluence if not of opulence, do not willingly return to
the scenes of their many privations and sufferings in the subarctics, or, if
definitely stationed under more favoured climes, do not pine after the long
winters with their unavoidable concomitants, snow and cold and frost-bites
which they have passed in the Land of Boreas.

Severe, indeed, are those seasons during which nature seems for seven,
eight or nine months dead or slumbering under her mantle of dazzling white.

‘ Which the English Captain G. Back converted into Thlew-ee-choh.
* “Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea’, vol. Il, p. 7.
* Id., ibid., p. 16.
* “Travels on the Yukon”, p. 105.
* January, 1906.
Q*