In addition to the boat itself we have a great barge to care for. Most of the freight that goes down the Yukon is carried on barges pushed along in front of the steamers. The load of to-day consists largely of cattle. The barge is enclosed in a high board fence, within which are eight cow pens, with a double-deck sheep-fold at the back. There are one hundred and fifty beef cattle in the pens and two hundred live sheep in the fold. The animals were brought by rail from Calgary to Vancouver. There they were loaded on a Canadian Pacific steamer and carried through the thousand miles of inland waterways that border the west coast of the continent to Skagway. They were then taken over the mountains on the White Pass Railway, and are now on their way to Dawson, where they will be transferred to another steamer that will push them a thousand or fifteen hundred miles more down the Yukon. The freight charges are so heavy that the animals selected must be of a high grade. The steers average three fourths of a ton and several of them weigh close to two thousand pounds each. They were raised on grass and are now fed on the bales of alfalfa piled around the edge of the barge. [Illustration: From White Horse, at the head of navigation on the Yukon, during the open season from June to October one can travel by steamer down that river for two thousand miles to Nome on Bering Sea.] [Illustration: A wood-burning heating stove common throughout Alaska and the Yukon is made from a gasoline tank turned on its side and fitted with legs of iron pipe.] We have other live stock on board. Down in the hold are eight hundred chickens bound for the hen fanciers of interior Alaska. They crow night and morning, and with the baaing of the sheep and the mooing of the cattle we seem to be in a floating barnyard. The barge is swung this way and that, and whenever it touches the bank, the sheep pile up one over the other, some of the cattle are thrown from their feet, and the chickens cackle in protest. The _Selkirk_ burns wood, and we stop several times a day to take on fuel, which is wheeled to the steamer in barrows over a gangplank from the piles of cord wood stacked up on the banks. At many of the stops the only dwelling we see is the cabin of the wood chopper, who supplies fuel for a few dollars a cord. The purser measures with a ten-foot pole the amount in each pile loaded on board. Going down stream the _Selkirk_ burns about one cord an hour, and in coming back against the current the consumption is often four times as much. The wood is largely from spruce trees from three to six inches in diameter. Many of the little islands we pass are covered with the stumps of trees cut for the steamers, but most of the wood stations are on the mainland, the cutting having been done along the banks or in the valleys back from the river.