  With the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma we made IJKs observations of
an area of about 40'x30' of the Local Group galaxy Draco. This allows us to
describe Draco's late-type stellar population across the whole galaxy at a
photometric level 2 mag deeper than the 2MASS survey. We detected the red giant
branch (RGB) and measured the magnitude of the tip of the RGB in the three
bands. From that in the I band we obtain a distance modulus of
(m-M)_0=19.49+/-0.06(stat)+/-0.15(sys), in excellent agreement with a
measurement from RR Lyrae stars. The peak of the (J-Ks)_0 histogram at
different M_Ks suggests that Draco has a mean [Fe/H]=-1.95+/-1.26 while
fiducial RGB tracks of Galactic globular clusters indicate a mean
[Fe/H]=-1.33+/-0.72 where the error corresponds to the spread around the mean
value. There are significant differences between the colour-magnitude diagrams
of stars in the inner, medium and outer areas of the galaxy. A metal poor
(Z=0.0004) intermediate-age population (about 1.6 Gyr old) is clearly present
and emerges in particular between 6' and 12' from the centre of the galaxy. A
few additional carbon star candidates have been identified from both their
location in the colour-magnitude diagram and from an indication of variability.
The large scale distribution of late-type stars is smooth but irregular in
shape; this points at a variation of inclination with radius.
