Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/141

Rh but there was an unwritten limit which might not be transgressed without condign punishment.

The stranger was welcomed without inquisitiveness, sheltered and fed without ostentation, and sent on his way without fee or reward. The dead were protected and remembered; their deeds of prowess handed down as examples for the young. Debauchery was unknown until taught by men of whiter skins.

They suffered from the dread of mysterious powers, and the shaman took his tithes of them. Their religion was vague and their politics mostly a minus quantity; but in practice they knew what was just and good, and in the main made it their rule of life.

Such were the Men of the Yukon, to whom civilization and the greed of gold brought drink, disease and death. The fittest has survived, but the fittest for what?

Time will restore their verdure to the Yukon placers, when the gold has been extracted and the prospector ceases from troubling. The graceful spruce will clothe her ravaged banks once more, and even the salmon exterminated by the canneries will replenish her waters in the fulness of time. The stern wheeler will pass away with the exhaustion of the mines, or at least become a rarity. The Arctic calm will rest once more upon her hillsides. But the Men of the Yukon trained to her ways by the experience of generations, wise in her capabilities, contented with her bounty, the true children of the river and its valley, these she shall know no more.