About thirty villages are known in this region, their total population being a little over 3,000.
The Yukon division is the largest and in many respects most important of all. As this volume is so largely devoted to a description of the great river and the country it traverses little need be said regarding it here. Numerous trading posts have been established and the waters of the river are plied by steamboats. No mineral deposits in large paying quantities have yet been discovered, but it is believed that important gold mines will yet be found. The river abounds in fish and the forests which border it in game. High as the latitude is the summers are very warm and the vegetable growths of the country are luxuriant. The coast line of this division is particularly dreary. It is inhabited by a hardy race of seal and walrus hunters, who occupy numerous small villages. At Port Clarence, just south of Cape Prince of Wales, three or four villages are clustered around a fine harbor. King's Island or Oukivok is a small, high island, surrounded by almost perpendicular cliffs of basalt. On it is a village composed of about forty houses, which are simple excavations in the side of the cliffs. The inhabitants live almost entirely by walrus and seal hunting. On the shores of Golovin Sound small deposits of lead and silver have been found. The most important point on the coast is St. Michael, where there are several trading agencies. The Island of St. Lawrence belongs properly to this division. It had originally a population of about 1,000, but famine and disease have diminished it to one-half that number. The people are Asiatic Esquimaux. There are in all this division of Alaska about seventy-five known settlements, with a total population of nearly 7,000, of whom perhaps about twenty-five are white, 2,500 Athabaskan and the rest Esquimaux.
The Kuskokvim division is, on the whole, poor in such natural products as white men desire, and it has therefore been little visited. It contains a few mineral deposits, however, including cinnabar, antimony and silver. Game and fur bearing animals are not as numerous as in other parts of Alaska, but there are many seals in the sea and river, and minks and foxes are quite numerous. Many salmon are also found in the river and they form a leading article of food for the natives. There are nearly a hundred villages in this division with about 9,000 inhabitants, nearly all of them being Esquimaux.