The big game of Alaska is not yet seriously diminished, though there was need for the legal protection that has of late years been given. It is probable that more caribou and young moose are killed every year by wolves than by hunters. Only in the neighbourhood of a considerable settlement is there danger of reckless and wasteful slaughter, and some attention is paid by game wardens to the markets of such places. The mountain-sheep stands in greater danger of extermination than either caribou or moose. Its meat, the most delicious mutton in the world, as it has been pronounced by epicures, brings a higher price than other wild meat, and it is easy to destroy a band completely. The sheep on the mountains of the Alaskan range nearest to Fairbanks have, it is said, been very greatly diminished, and that need not be wondered at when one sees sled load after sled load, aggregating several tons of meat, brought in at one shipment. The law protecting the sheep probably needs tightening up. The big game is a great resource to all the people of the country, white and native. It is no small advantage to be able to take one's gun in the fall and go out in the valleys and kill a moose that will suffice for one man's meat almost the whole winter, or go into the hills and kill four or five caribou that will stock his larder equally well. The fresh, clean meat of the wilds has to most palates far finer flavour than any cold-storage meat that can be brought into the country; and, save at one or two centres of population and distribution, cold-storage meat is not available at all. Without its big game Alaska would be virtually uninhabitable. Therefore most white men are content that the necessary measures be taken to prevent the wasteful slaughter of the game; for the rights of the prospector and trapper and traveller, and the rights of the natives to kill at any time what is necessary for food, are explicitly reserved. [Sidenote: THE KETCHUMSTOCK]