There is no doubt that potatoes can be raised in most parts of Alaska and the Yukon. When Luther Burbank was in Dawson he said that these regions may some day be among the chief potato lands of the world and that by selective breeding a potato can be developed that will mature here to perfection. Even now the country is raising nearly all that it needs, and the potato imports are decreasing. This year the crop is especially good, and the potatoes are equal in quality to any brought in from outside. Plants live upon sunshine, and as the Yukon Territory has about one third more sunlight than the United States in the same period of summer, Nature puts on its seven-league boots and makes things grow during our nights. Growth begins in April, when the crocuses come up through the snow. Gardens are planted by the middle of May, and by the latter part of June there are vegetables to eat. The chief summer month is July, although the frosts do not come until the middle of September. After that follows Indian summer, when the hills are ablaze with gold. The country about Dawson is virgin land covered with trees, which are usually stunted except in the river bottoms. There are meadows in the south and the southwest, and also great areas that can be used for grazing. Doctor Dawson, the man who first surveyed the territory, says that there are thirty-eight million acres that can be utilized either for crops or for grazing. He compares the Yukon with some of the inland provinces of Russia where oats, rye, barley, flax, and hemp are raised successfully. Most of the farming is in small patches. There are gardens about the miners’ cabins where potatoes and turnips, green peas and beets, and carrots and celery are raised. Last year one man grew forty tons of turnips upon a single acre, and from another acre the same man raised five hundred and sixty-one bushels of potatoes. Another farmer brought in to Dawson a cauliflower measuring ten inches in diameter, a turnip weighing fourteen pounds, and six heads of cabbage that tipped the scales at one hundred and thirty pounds. Already a number of homesteads have been taken up in the territory, and there are little farms here and there on the banks of the Yukon and on the islands with which it is dotted. The soil is a sandy loam made up of silt brought down by the river. The land is so thickly covered with bushes and trees that it costs one hundred dollars and upward an acre to clear it. Farm wages are high, although the demand for labour is limited, and the market for potatoes and other vegetables is confined to the small population in the mines and in Dawson. If the farms are increased by many new homesteaders there may be a glut in the market and the prices will fall. CHAPTER XXXV MINING WONDERS OF THE FAR NORTH