Document 98: Account of Yukon River by Captain W. P. Richardson
Capt. W. P. Richardson, "The Mighty Yukon as Seen and Explored," in Compilation of Narratives of Explorations in Alaska
(Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1900).
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The Yukon River has its extreme source only a few miles from the salt water of the North Pacific and flows nearly 2,000 miles before emptying its flood into the Bering Sea. Its course is northwesterly about half the length, passing within the Arctic Circle a few miles at Fort Yukon, thence turning southwesterly to its mouth. It would seem to have been especially designed by nature as a great highway for this otherwise almost inaccessible country, bisecting it very nearly for many hundreds of miles.