UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES ROBERT ERNEST COWAN HISTORY ALASKA n 6 » 69 9 « I InHiM \A/ _i=^t;?r^AA/Nj AN ABRIDGED fflSTORY OF ALASKA By JOHN W. BROWN A Lawyer of the Seattle Bar, Seattle, U. S. A. Copwight 6p John IV. Brown. May, A. D., 1909. ,.'VS*i-'>.. /^"\^ I w ANNOUNCEMENT I hf knowlcdKc. cxpluratiun and invasion of Alaska durinK the pasl twelve years has at last successfully rrvealed its true condition and future pos- sil)ilili(>s. I In- fur-seekinR Russians made no accurate maps and little recorded his- tory ; the land-Kral)bin>^ Rnglish explorers and navigators only cruised along Its shores, naming everything in sight ; the gold-seeking Spanish found no fable lounlains or glittering gold and hardly left their mark. All made extravagantly pessimistic or mythical reports and exaggerated guesses or prophecies. Thousands of adventurers, searching for the Northwest Passage, for Sir John Franklin, for fur. fish or gold, lost their lives on its ocean or river shores. Of lliem history is as silent and unknown as their graves. After over a hundred years of ownership, the Russians at the time they sold it (1867), were ready to abandon it as worse than worthless. Mad it not been for the debt of gratitude due to Russia the Congress and people of the United Stales would never have acquiesced in its purchase. For the fiirst ten years the United States made only a formal military show of authority, with no government, and the following seven years aban- doned it, providing no law, officers or protection. No reliable general history has yet been written of Alaska. Numerous reports and histories of a local nature have been written, however, mostly by persons officially engaged in or simply passing through the country; and while, as a rule, they are perfectly reliable as to a particular locality or subject, they are very unreliable and inaccurate as to the remainder of that country. Authors residing at Sitka for a year or less, or making a tourist's trip on the Inside Passage, or doing a little missionary work at one or two places, or passing down the ^'ukon within a month or two, or spending a summer at Nome, are very numerous. Their tales of death, starvation, Arctic winter, pitch-dark, endless nights, insanity-making mosquitoes, bloodthirsty Indians, lands, moun- tains and rivers of ice and general wail of calamity and terror, followed by novels of several authors so full of exaggerations and untruthful or mythical statements, have created a false impression in the minds of the people which now is very hard to correct. They are largely to blame for the government's tardy and scant attention to the needs and laws of the country, for the delays in settling it. utilizing its resources and wrongfully giving it an unjust history and lamentably untrue reputation. The author has devoted three years to diligently seeking information, and in person or by assistant has visited or investigated as far as possible all parts and subjects of Alaska. The important matter collected would till a half dozen large volumes. It all seems necessary. We have nevertheless summarized it for the purpose of making a convenient volume for the student, tourists and Alaska miners, as well as for the general reading public. We hope two years later to present a more complete history of Alaska than has yet been published from the data for which this book has been compiled. Although we have brought this publication down to 1909, events so rapidly succeed each other that we will hardly be off^ the press before some portions will seem behind the times. We hope that the information herein, with such as will be imparted through the Alaska-^'ukon-Pacific Exposition now ready to open at Seattle, will go far to show Alaska in a true light, and correct the errors and misappre- hensions so generally prevalent now. Scatllc. V. S'. A. JOHN W. BROWN. HEAD NOTE Physically, Alaska consists of three natural divisions, the climate, people, commerce, vegetation, etc., of each differing much from the others. First: The mountainous, timber-covered Pacific Coast, warmed by the Japanese current, sprinkled by incessant rains, peopled by a Mongolian-Indian known as the "Siwash" and rich m diversified minerals and fishes. Second: The treeless Aleutian Islands and tundra-covered slopes of Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean, chilled with long, cold, dark weird Arctic winters ; poor in meneral ; ice bound in winter, and peopled by Mongolian- Aleuts and Mongolian-Esquimaux. This strip of land extends inland about fifty miles from the Arctic seas. Third: The great interior, with its rigorous continental climate, scanty rainfall, fertile valleys, big rivers, peopled by the Redman or North American Indian, containing no trace of Mongolian blood. The timbers, vegetation, animals, climates and natives can be classed with those of their kinds to the south and east, differing only as modified by latitude. We will divide this book into three parts, treating each ol the above naluril divisions in the order stated. DIVISION 1 I I II. I'Ai II IC COASr OF ALASKA FROM SEA I IFF lO DIXON ENIRANCE. Sealtie is the gateway, iuicl the "Insidr Passage" ihe highway, to Alaska; therefore we will hegin at Seattle, pointing out some of the most interesting places and events on the way from Seattle to Dixon Entrance as a prelude. Early in the summer of 1908 my wife and self left Seattle on a cruise along the coast and among the islands northward to Cross Sound and Sitka, gathering information on the way for my Alaska books, including this one. In the Alaska boom days of 1897-98 every kind of cheap, questionable craft was employed for the rush to the North, and as they left the Seattle docks they whistled long and loudly. Friends of the departing waved or sobbed a feeling last farewell. Not so now, when almost every boat is safe and comfortable, and many of them even luxuriantly equipped for the Alaska trade. The arrival and departure of Alaska boats is a daily occurrence both winter and summer, causing no more excitement than the coming or going of one of our transcontinental trains. Jingle, jingle, jingle! and we backed away. Jingle, jingle! we stopped. Jingle! we started northward Irom the dock at Seattle for Alaska. These little signal bells from the captain were about the only audible sounds heard or made on our large boat, bearing two hundred passengers, in getting her off for the voyage. Swiftly we plowed our way up sound. Occasionally our boat gave a short toot and we passed on our port side ; or two toots, and we passed on our starboard side an approaching steamer. In the pioneer days of Mediterranean commerce the steersman sat in the stern of the craft and held in his hand a steerboard, which he used on his right to steer the boat. It is almost impossible for a "landlubber" to remember which is starboard and which port, but if he can recall the position ot the steersman he will have the starboard on his right looking forward. As we steamed up Puget Sound we passed several suburban villages, then Everett and Bellingham, cities of thirty thousand each, where some of the largest lumber and shingle mills in the world are located, and Anacortes, the head- quarters for many large fisheries, to our right. On our port side was the home land of Chief Seattle and his people, a miserable remnant of which may be found on the Port Madison Reserve near by. A little farther westward and across Hood's Canal is Jimmicum Valley, in which lived the Jimmicum tribe, once powerful, of which but one full-blood now survives. Mr. Bishop, a member of the Legislature of the State of Wash- ington for years, lives in and owns much of the fertile valley. He is an intelligent and wealthy man. His mother was one of these natives, whom his father, a white man. married at a time when all the whites here could be counted on your fingers. In the summer ol 1832 the first settlers took up donation land claims where Seattle now stands, living meanwhile at .Alki Point. Across the Sound, about twenty miles away, lived Chief Seattle with his daughter Angeline (ever the friends of the whites), in perhaps the largest tribe house ever erected by Indians on the Coast, being about a fifth of a mile long. The next year a sawmill was erected and Seattle platted; the next a post- office was established, and the third a church erected. From that time to this the Seattle spirit has never left the city, and instead of adding annual improve- ments, they became semi-annual, monthly, weekly and daily, until now the city doubles m population and wealth about every three years. The coming census will show that it has made greater progress than any other city in the United States, and that it now has a quarter million population or more. There were troubles in the early days, however. The Indians, apparently friendly, secretly conspired with the Klikitats from over the mountains against the whites, and made a concerted attack, ending in a retreat after they were shelled by the Decatur then lying in the harbor — 1856. This was the first and last stand of the Siwash; he went back to digging clams, and is digging clams still. When the sloop of war Decatur hailed shot and canister among the trees on the first hill (now the very center of the city), among the Klikitats, they could not understand the phenomenom and fled in terror. It is said they returned home on a run, without stopping to camp. They never formed any more conspiracies with the Siwash to fight the whites. In later years came the fire which destroyed the business part of the city. Then the financial panic, which checked its growth. But out of every calamity and vicissitude came a more vigorous development. Half of the mining population of Alaska live, or at least winter, in Seattle. A large part of the gold is invested here, and the head office of every large Alaskan industry is here. On March 8, 1791, officers of the British crown commissioned and instructed Captain George Vancouver to survey the western coast of America from 30 degrees north latitude northward. In 1 792 he explored and named about every part of Puget Sound. (See "Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound," by Professor Meany of University of Washington; "Pioneer Days on Puget Sound," by Arthur A. Denny, and "Indian War of 1855-56," by Alice Harriman.) At Port Townsend the boys had a juvenile attack ol the Seattle Spirit. Although they were not allowed to come aboard, they did a good business in gum, lemons, etc., by means of a net at the end of a long pole. We took on a good supply for our feminine pedagogues, and expected cases of seasickness. Port Townsend is the Port of Entry, and our townsman. Fred Harper, the Collector of Customs. The custom receipts of but few ports in the United States are larger. For 1908 the customs officer reports that Alaska exported to the Lnited States (including Klondike) $21,087,798 in gold and silver (almost two mil- lion more than the year before). At the same time Alaska exported to the United States through this district $12,255,255, practically all fish and fur. During the same time, through this district, we exported to Alaska $18,000,000. mostly food and machinery. These figures will serve to give some idea of the immense Alaska trade on Puget Sound now annually. I he total gold of .Alaska and the Klondike to dale approximates $250, 000, 000. Port Townsend has a population of about 7,000. and 2.000 soldiers are quartered at Forts Warden. Casey and Flagler nearby. One of the largest and best blocks of standing timber in the United States occupies the Olympic Peninsula, toward which several large railroads are now builcling. The rainfall on the north side of the Olympic Mountains is light, and the climate is almost perfect all the year. Formidable defenses and powerful modern guns face every side ol the Strait of Juan de Fuca (named in honor of its supposed discoverer, Juan de Fuca, a Greek, in 1592, just two hundred years ahead of Vancouver). The combined navies of the world could not force their way past these forts ; neither could an tiicmy rrilcr I'uk«-1 .Sound without rominK within their range. All the forts can be commanded from either one hy table, phone, telegraph, signal or wireless. I he waters are so charted that a gunner can fire accurately in fog or at an unseen enemy. The big guns disappear behind impenetrable walls of stone, earth and roiu rcle. where they ( ;im Ix- reloaded and protected after they have been discharged. Behind Port lownsend is the detention island, on the tops of the hills and forts are wireless instruments for commercial and government use, and out at the entrance of the straits is I'atloosh Island, with its wire and wireless telegraphs, busy informing the world in i^enera! and government in particular of all craft going in and coming out of this doorway to the commercial ports of the North- west. I his old tide-washed, storm-beaten lattoosh Island is the advance guard. Its honeycombed, water-made caves were homes, graves or hiding places for the natives hundreds of years ago, and will bear their marks long after they have ceased to exist. Some time it may be necessary to strengthen the island w^ith concrete. The long Cascade Range to the East, and Olympic Group to the West, sitting in an evergreen forest primeval; the snow-robed, sky-piercing Ranier to the South and Baker in the North; the beautiful brown, rugged San Juan Islands at the East end of the straits and boundless Pacific at the West; the blue waters of the Sound, framed at its egdes with the white spray of the breakers and on the banks with the dark green ferns, fir and cedar, makes one ofthe most beautiful pictures of nature to be found on the face of the earth. The Canadian steamers going to the States and ours going to Canada pass and repass with friendly salutes. These, mingling with others of all nations, make this a busy marine thoroughfare. In the afternon and evening of the first day out. with the aid of glasses, we recognized the Parliament Buildings, C. P. R. Hotel and Lord Dunsmuir Castle at Victoria. The day was still light when we passed Vancouver, near which the Eraser River empties. On September 30, 1 908, the citizens of New- Westminster erected a monument to Simon Eraser, who discovered the river one hundred years before. Alexander McKenzie crossed the upper waters of this river in I 793 on his way across the continent, but he thought it was, and reported it to be. the Columbia. I believe this river produces more good commercial salmon than any other in the world. There are dozens of salmon rivers and creeks on this Coast and in Alaska, but this one should bear the name. I he Strait of de Euca was a little rough until after -ve passed behind Vancouver Island, although no cases of seasickness developed. However, a few- timid ones from the interior of the States went to bed. sucked lemons, shut their eyes and waited in vain for the feeling to come, and at times declared that they felt a certain internal uneasiness never felt before, but at last were half ashamed and half disappointed. I he day was a perfect one. Ol all the grandeur of this matchless pano- rama. Mount Baker at one end and Mount Rainier at the other were the grandest and most awe producing, not even excepting the blue, boundless ocean. I he sunset was typically western, golden and beautiful; the night clear and warm: the water smooth, absorbing the colors of the sky and reflecting the trees from the bank; the songs and laughter had died down; the blanket-robed tourists had left the upper deck; lunch was over, and but few- persons were to be seen in the cabins when we retired to our stateroom at the close of the first day. Nothing was heard but the swish of the water at the prow, and the chug, chug, chug of the propeller aft. Everything was conducive to sound, restful slumber. 10 We lay in our berth and mused: Is this the land and these the waters of Maldonado, Fuca, Fonte, Gali, Drake and others, whose mythical reports and claims of discoveries are seriously questioned? Are these poor, dirty Siwashes the natives Fuca reported here as being "dressed in skins, rich with gold, silver, pearls, etc."? How long have these natives inhabited this Coast? They are not red men; they do not belong to the family of Indians eastward. Where did they origmate? How long since these titanic cloud-capped peaks were smokmg volcanoes? It was an even hundred years from the discovery of America by Columbus to Fuca's purported discovery of the Straits, and another even two hundred years (I 792) until the discovery of the Puget Sound by Vancouver, and yet another hundrded years before it was settled by white men. If the early explorers left monuments they have never been found. The natives have no tradition of them, and students of history will always question their fabulous claims. While John Mears and George Vancouver doubted Fuca's discoveries, they nevertheless honored them by giving the strait his name. Steam and gases still arise from the craters of Mount Baker and the tem- perature, taken m 1908, in the crater of Mount Rainier registered 109 degrees. Every year new islands and volcanoes are born among the Aleutian Islands. Two years ago the streets of Nome were covered with volcanic ashes; lava in recent years flowed freely in the gorges of the Naas River, so that these great peaks not many centuries in the past were violent vents for a cooling range. Extensive mounds, not unlike those of the Mound Builders, are well known on Vancouver Island, mutely testifying to a pre-histonc man. Last summer a stone ax was found under a tree on Hood's Canal ; the growth of the tree showed over six hundred years. Other implements have been found among the shell beds of the San Juan Islands and elsewhere, so placed as to indicate that they had been there a thousand years or more. It is very evident that when the people of Europe were still savages the Siwash, or their Mongolian ancestors, made their home within view of the grandest and loftiest mountain in the United States, Mount Rainier. Mexico has its Popocatepetl, Naples its Vesuvius, California its Shasta, and Japan its Fusiyama, but Puget Sound has its Rainier, the noblest of them all. In passing up Georgia Gulf one sees here and there a farm, cannerv, tumble-down Indian village or settlement, but always an unbroken forest of fir and hemlock. VANCOUVER ISLAND. Vancouver Island, rich with the splendid coals of Nanaimo, covered with a forest of good timber, surrounded with seas of fish, containing many valuable mines, several important towns, and dotted with farms in the valleys, is one of the most precious gems of British ownership. It must now have a population of about 75,000, including 10,000 Indians of the usual Siwash kind, living the usual Siwash lilc. Among the residents of this island are many "remittance men," who draw their periodical allowance and live to spend it. Of all the islands on earth, if I were banished from home, give me this banishment land for remittance men. Land, sea, mountains, forests, mines, commerce, parliament, society, ideal climate, hunting and every facility for amusement and comfort is there. Ella Higgenson. in her recent book on Alaska, very pathetically writes of a "remittance woman ' as follows: "It is said that the woman who should have one day been the Queen of England lived near the City of Vancouver a few years ago." Before the death of his elder brother, the Prince of Wales passionately loved the young and beautiful daughter of Admiral Seymour. His infatuation was returned, and so desperately did the young couple plead with the present kiiiK .111(1 iIh- .tdniir.il lli.il .il l.isl [\\r \ni\Hc was prrrnillrd to conlrati a mor- Xanatu marriaK*-. I lir undcrslaiiclinK and a«r«Tmcnt was ihat should the prince ever Ijcfomc the hnr to th»- throne of England neither he nor his wife would oppose the annulment of the marriage. I'hcre was only one brief year of happi- ness, when the elder brother of the prince died, and the latler's marriage to the Princess May was demanded. No murmur of romplaml was ever heard from the unhappy morganatic wife nor from the royal husband, and when the latter s marriage was solemnized, it was boldly announced that no bar to the union existed. Here, in the western solitude, lived lor several years the veriest remillance woman — the girl who should now, by the right of love and honor, be the Princess of Wales, and whose infant daughter should have been the heir to the throne. 1 o Vancouver, a few years ago, came with his Princess the Prince of Wales. The city was gay with flags and flowers, throbbing with music and filled with joyous and welcoming people. Somewhere, hidden among those sway- ing throngs, did a pale young woman, holding a child by the hand, gaze for the last time upon the man she loved and upon the woman who had taken her place. And did her long tortured heart in that hour finally breaks* It is said she died within a twelvemonth." . I his island is to Canadian Pacific what Baronov Island is to Alaska, and ^■^■"^ Nootka, on its western shore, is of as much historical renown as ^)itka. Perez landed at Nootka August 9. I 774, and named it San Lorenzo. Captain Cook, in 1 778, named it King George Sound. Many other explorers stopped at this point, and rival trading companies sought the business. In I 788- 89 a Spaniard. Martinez, took exclusive possession for his country, and when a few months later James Colnet arrived and asserted British right he was arrested by Martinez and sent a prisoner to Mexico. This act came very near making serious trouble. One author says: "A few sheds erected on the coast, a miser- able baston defended by swivel guns, and a few cabbages planted within an inclosure, came very near causing war between Spain and England." Other Spanish boats were hurried north, but the strong navy of England at home and the refusal of George Washington, President of the United States, to assist Spain were the primary causes of inducement inducing Spain to yield. An agreement to this effect was signed at Madrid in I 790. known as the "Nootka Convention." George Vancouver was directed to proceed to Nootka and accept the surrender of these sheds and cabbages and to survey these coasts, which he ^ did, and Spanish names and claims gave way to those of England through Van- couver. The Island ol Quadra became the Island of Quadra and Vancouver, and later Quadra was omitted. Our own Captain Robert Gray was cruising around in these waters during this conflict. The Spanish-English dispute ended on the Pacific with a conlerence bot\veen Quadra and \ ancouver at Nootka. The \X ashington University State Historical Society, through its secretary. Prof. Ed- mond S. Meany, erected a monument August 23, 1903. on a small rocky island in the bay, on which they inscribed the following: "Vancouver and Quadra met here in August, I 792, under the treatv between Spain and Great Britain of October, 1790." Now Nootka, like .'Xlert Bay and other Indian villages near by, is a brush- covered, decaying reminiscent of a century and a half ago. Georgia Gulf, sometimes named Georgia Bay or Strait, is almost a sea and is more like a strait than a gulf. The island is about 300 miles long, and between it and the land pass the coast vessels on the inside passage. In fact it is so long that many tourists think it is the entire inside passage. 12 The mineral and geological statements hereafter made concerning the Coast range will apply to all the range south of Dixon's Entrance. However, there is a wonderfully productive mineral belt here. The coal of Nanaimo and the mines at that place are such factors in this country that we can hardly believe what we see there. These mines are hundreds of feet under the sea, producing yearly 300,000 tons, and have produced 7,000,000 tons, nearly all of a superior grade of bituminous coal. Cable, electric, horse and mule cars on more than a hundred miles of track, run systematically to all prats of the mine. The most modern devices for protection of the mines and miners against explosion, fire and caving walls are carried into rigid effect. The coal is divided by a wall of rock, on one side is the best of bituminous, on the other a lighter coal. In the early times coal was discovered at Fort Rupert, on the northernmost point of Vancouver Island, and worked by the Hudson Bay Company, but it is soft and not of much value. The discovery is said to have been made by an Indian while trying to roast some venison. He gathered some of the black rock and placed it around his stick fire to keep the heat near the venison, when to his surprise the rock burned. This made him curious and he presented some of the black rock to the Hudson Bay Company men. who soon took charge of the coal found for their company. The history of the placer gold of the Fraser River and the stampede to that country years ago. and then on to the Cassiar and Atlin districts, furnish material for a large volume, and constitute the connecting link, intervening time and detailed prospecting between the days of the California '49ers and the Klondike rush of 97-8. These shifting, homeless wanderers, like flocks of sheep, invade one district after another, leaving no home, improvement, town, government or hardly an account as they pass on. Whatever they find of value they take with them. Many of these districts are yet rich in placer, and little or no attempt has ever been made to locate or work the quartz. QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLAND. Queen Charlotte Island and the islands of Hecta Straits add but little to the mineral wealth of Canada. Likewise the timber, as it becomes softer, and I am clearly convinced that valuable timber can hardly be lound north of Vancouver Island. But fish, millions of them, will afTord occupation lor all the natives and many Orientals and whites for centuries, and with the Alaskan waters will furnish half the export fish for the United States and a large portion for domestic use in the United States and Canada. As we passed from behind the island we came for the first time into the real swells of the ocean. We had heard and read about rough seas in Queen Charlotte Sound, but the spirit of the matter did not come over us fully until we saw the chairs, furniture, dishes, tourists and all kinds ol loose articles mixing without introduction. We said it must be a bad sea. It was. 1 he swells were large. We both rolled and pitched, and some of us did other things. But oh! oh! oh! the swooning of the ship. It went so far down, and breakfast seemed to strive to come as far up each time. 1 rue. the remedies bore down hard, but they were too light, and with some other things came on deck or over the rail. It was the only seasickness on the trip, and but few cases of it. We soon passed into Hecta Strait, named after Captain Bruno Hecta. a Spaniard, who explored on the coast in 1775. Queen Charlotte Island again shut out the swells of the ocean, about half of the tourists took lunch and all were able to surround the dinner table that evening. Whale are very numerous in these waters, likewise porpoise, the latter often playing about the prow ol ihc boat, ,iiul llic lornier somedmos coming very near. 13 WHAI.i: I hen- Is ,1 wli.ilc (islicrv .il Iviv. nil llic soudi I'lui ol .Aclmirnlty Island. L.ilci III tlu" sj-ason \vr look on hoard one of (lie whalers. lie said the whale wcr«' often as much as seventy-five feel Ioiik. and worth ahout five hundred dollars each lor oil. baleen, dessicaled hone ferlili/er and many other marketable products, and from a fish once thouKht to he profitless. I hat the mother whale gives birth lo her calf al sea, which is then eight or ten feel long and fairly capable of looking out for itself. I he whale is like a monster boat with a small engine. It is unable to protect itself from the smaller fish, escape from man or even dislodge the barnacles that grow upon its body. I hey are supposed to blow six limes before sounding (or diving). The whaler approaches in his launch and fires a bomb-pointed harpoon from a cannon on the prow. 1 he weapon sinks deep and the bomb explodes in five seconds, spreading out the barbs and making a fatal wound. In its death struggles it may draw the boat a mile. After death it is towed m or fastened to a buoy, or inflated with air and later picked up again and towed to the station. The 1908 catch at this station was over 200, and at Vancouver 600. 1 he latler's catch was given as 241 humpbacks, 66 sulphur bottoms, 10 finbacks and one sperm whale. Of course, such luck does not apply to the Arctic whaler, his average being about three per boat each year, but his fish produces the whale- bone of commerce, worth $5 per pound, and one whale will aggregate several thousand dollars while these do not. The whaling industry is reviving, not the old kind, however. Now there is no danger for the hunter and no escape for the fish. At the rate of a thousand per year it will not be long until the sight of a whale will be as unusual as of a buffalo or sea otter. The commercial fever has no more respect for these leviathans of the deep than it has for the Niagara. It rushes to every part of this shore, probing the mountains for mineral, hunting the woods for game, har- nessing the rivers, defacing the God-made pictures of nature, defiling the native youth with rum. and now depleting the sea of its innocent harmless whale. THE FUR TRADER. Sea otter were plentiful near the Island of De la Marguerite, now Queen Charlotte Island, and here came Perez, in I 774, Hecta, in I 775. Martinez, in I 778, and many others — French, Dutch, Bostonians, Portuguese and Eng- lish — to hunt and trade. Barclay, to whom we are much indebted for our western possessions, had his wife with him — the first white woman to visit this Coast. The Spanish, between 1 774 and 1 790, made many marks of ownership between Mexico and Cooks Inlet. The English also became active. In I 776 John Stringer named Queen Charlotte Sound. The next year Dixon traded at and named Dixon Entrance. John Mears brought over some Chinese with the assistance of whom he built the first boat at Nootka and the first English fort. Although dishonest and dishonorable as a pirate, he made the best claim on the Coast for England. The trading scheme in those days was to make cheap trinkets at home, trade them to the Coast Indians for furs, and the furs to Chinese for teas, and sell the teas at home or in Europe at enormous profits. Many of these crude sailing vessels circumnavigated the globe. The beautiful bays, narrow straits, inland seas, bold bluffs, islands, rivers and snow-covered peaks bear the names of these fur hunters. As we passed m and out among these narrow passages and numerous islands I could not con- ceive how they managed such crude sailing vessels m the strong tides, wind- 14 locked waters, fogs, storms and hidden rocks. With inferior nautical instru- ments and no charts. I would get lost if I was on foot here on a clear day. Many times along the inside passage the only way that I could see out was straight up. NA'ilVES. Canneries apear at intervals of about twenty-five miles and near them a few Indian huts; now and then a small native village. Alert Bay being one of the largest. A semi-circle of totem poles face the water at about hish tide line, and back of them a row of shacks also facing the water. Each shack has a door in the middle and a small window on each side of it. the whole appearing like a row of animal faces. Its population must be about five hundred Indians and half as many whites. It has a church or two. mill and cannery. A little farther north is the cleanest and most prosperous Indian village on the Canadian coast, the town of New Bella Bella. It consists almost wholly of Indians. Instead of the one-story, dilapidated, animal-faced, twenty-five dollar shack of the Alert Bay Indian, the Bella Bella has a two or more stor>' modem looking residence, newly painted white, with dull red trimmings, large enough to accommodate from ten to forty persons. The canery at this place is a large one and must furnish employment for about all the population — perhaps 600. The old village of Bella Bella was deserted a few years ago, and like the rotting totems and grave marks near it is tumbling down, as many other villages have done and are doing on this coast, some for fanciful reasons, others because of infection and contagion. Alexander Mackenzie, the first white man to cross Canada from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, came out on the coast here, and with red vermilion wrote on a rock in the sea: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, the 22nd of July, 1793." During the third day out we entered Dixon Entrance. Here the ocean swells rolled in between the north end of Queen Charlotte and south end of Prince of Wales Islands — in other words, between Canada and Alaska. The Indians named this body of water Kaiganee. The waters were not rough, as they frequently are. Whale and porpoise were plentiful. We examined under the glass every foot of shore, as well as every mountain pass and gorge, for this is the terminus of the Canadian Grand Trunk Railroad to be completed in 1911. Here is Port Simpson, started in 1821, and Prince Rupert, just a year old. This is the end of the British and beginning of our territory — the imaginary line of "54-40 or fight," the old 1825 Russian-English and new 1903 English-American treaty line. PRINCE RUPERT. The Portland Canal separated the mountains just enough to pull the Inter- national Boundary Line through, and which passes on out toward the sea so as to give Wales Island and another small island, which makes a sort of a pro- tection for these new harbors to Canada. They certainly need them for their harbor protection, which is not good. Extensive improvements are being made at Prince Rupert. One blast of forty tons of explosives in February, 1909, blew a whole bluff into the channel. Both Canadian and American boats will call at this port this summer, the travel and traffic will be large, and many tourists will invest in town lots. \X'hen this road is completed and a branch built to Dawson this port will be a busy one. It will have the shortest route across Canada and from Europe to the Orient. It will tap the rich coal fields, the farming; and ( allle country and timber resources of the Northwest Territory. 15 I he fish industry of llif ( anadian Pacific is capable of an annual income of five million dollars, and ihc K"ld output of Dawson as much more. 1 he new town has a |)opulation of a thousand now. mostly in tents, but 111 twenty-five years it will have twrnty-fivc thousand i)opulation or more and some of the trade of Vancouver. Years ago when Frederick Schwatka visited here he wrote that the Cana- dian Pacific Railroad was after a ri^ht of way aloni? the Skeena River. Political struj<(j;les betwcn that road and the Grand I runk have been numeruos and titanic since then. I en or fifteen years ago the Canadian Parliament authorized the Hudson Bay and Western Railway to build from Fort Churchill, on Mudson Bay. the eastern terminus of the Hudson Bay ( ompany, to Port Simpson on the Pacific, the western terminus of tha t company, entirely spanning the greatest private empire of this or any other continent. 1 he land of Mackenzie, Peace, Strathcona. Sir Donald Prince Rupert and others, fearless and lordly princes, in their own domain, lords of all they surveyed. No more fitting name could have been chosen for this new port, destined to be the largest Canadian city inside of a hundred years, than that of Prince Rupert, who received the first grant from the King, in I 669, of all this domain, and who was afterward first governor of the Hudson Bay Company. To him should be erected the largest monument in Canada. Grand is and successful will be the scheme to connect the Atlantic and Pacific with a railroad so distant from the United States, so naturally fortified on its western terminus, so direct and short for transcontinental traffic, and so surrounded with resources of sea, mine, farm and forest. The opening of the Orient to trade, the building of the United States Pacific navy, the power of the Japanese navy, and the growth of the west will cause England to restore and increase the naval facilities at Esquimault or else- where near, and keep on this coast a navy equal to the United States or Japan. When Edward Pierrepont in I 883 visited here he had the same inspiration that I have, he coveted it for his own country. The presidential issue of "54-40 or fight" was a warm one between politi- cal parties, but a warmer one, if possible, between England and the States. That isue was left to James Buchanan, our Secretary of State, and Richard Packinham. British Minister to this country, the result of which (1846) we all know. Mr. Pierrponl enthusiastically remarks that "it ought to have made the minister a duke, and placed the secretary in disgrace." As we gather more facts and history of early settlement, trade and claims, we are inclined to concede like Buchanan to Packinham's theory. If the Spanish had obtained justice at the Nootka Convention, the coast, from California to Dixon Entrance at least, would belong to Spain. If the Rus- sian traders and explorers would have made claim, history and record of their rights from the beginning, I believe Alaska would extend to California. If the issue of "54-40 or fight" had prevailed the sentiment of so large a per cent of the people of the States and Canada at the time would have made annexation very probable. But that little word "if" is written all over Dixon Entrance, and the issues have passed into history. In a few years Prince Rupert will be a large city and the statues of Rupert and Packinham will stand on its public squares. If James Buchanan was in error, then later, as President, he did some better, lor which statues may be elsewhere erected to him. The population of Prince Rupert will be typically western, and more like Seattle than Canada or England. Our boats and people will be as numerous as theirs. There will be no national strife, but the compe- tition of trade will be keen. 16 THE ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE. For a century the boundary line has been of serious importance to nations, but the discovery of gold in the Klondike, some on our and more on the Canadian side of the line, made it necessary to fix it definitely. At the time we were insisting on our rights of discovery m this Northwest Russia would have been highly pleased if we had extended the "Oregon Country" to the Alaska line, entirely shutting England off from the sea. In I 822-25 England and Rusia agreed upon a boundary tribunal which fixed the line practically as it is now, without marking it. At that time the English members contended for the whole Alaska pan- handle. Failing in that, they urged that the coast line was the outer coast of the islands, leaving nothing but a fringe of islands for Alaska, but at last yielding to every point, and bemg entirely cut off from all the waters north of Dixon Entrance. For boundary commissioners in 1903 the United States appointed Secre- tary Root, Senator Lodge of Massachusetts and Senator Turner of Washington; Great Britain selected Lord Chief Justice Alverston and Canada chose Jette and Aylesworth. They convened in London September 3d and rendered a decision October 20th, 1903. The commissioners for the United States and England practically agreed that the line was practically where we contended. The commissioners for Canada (like the press of their country) were ver\' poor losers, refusing to sign any report or finding. No case has ever been more ably argued or exhaustively presented than this one, before the tribunal of 1825, unless it was the presentation of the same issues before the commissioners of 1903. The treaty of 1825 was drawn in French. The 1903 English advocates argued long on the interpretation and construction of the words "crete-crest," "cote-coast," "lisiere strip" and the like. The maps of George Vancouver were used in fixing the line by the commission of 1825, which showed a continuous line of mountains parallel with the coast (so have many subsequent geographers). The fact IS that the mountain range is not continuous nor parallel to the coast, although it would have that appearance to a person cruising near the coast. 1 his was also a reason advanced by them for their construction of the Treaty of 1825, and every other possible contention that skilled diplomats and shrewd lawyers could make was presented. Maps from the archives and antiquated vaults of all nations were dug out, compared and discussed. On February 25th, 1903, the Fifty-seventh Congress appropriated $ 1 00,000 for the expense of the boundary commission. Ihe decision gave to Canada Wales (not Prince of Wales) and Pearse Islands, at the elnrance to Port Simpson, and Sitklan Island to the L^iited States. A well defined and permanently marked boundary lino is now being estab- lished on the ground, so that it need never again be disputed. The international questions for these waters are not all settled yet. how- ever. In time, as fish become more scarce or the industry more extensive. Cana- dians and Americans will jealously contend for exclusive rights in the waters on and near their own coasts, and the hundreds of island passages. I o settle these contentions their respective governments, together with the British govern- ment, must decide upon, mark and patrol the "open sea" and "three-mile limits." If one nation fosters and propagates the fish at its expense, and limits the catch while the subjects of the other have unlimited authority to take the fish, the issue will soon be as grave and annoying as the seal question. Some small dirty fishing craft will sometime eagerly pursue a school of splashing salmon, and in its haste carry a weather-beaten, ten-cent flag, without courtesy. 17 beyond tlir limits of a patrol or national line, and become the target for a cruiser. Hie trial will bririK up national or individual rights whicli may bo heard in Washington, London or Otlawa, or provoke international war. FROM DIXON KN IRANCf-: lO COOK'S INLET. As wr steamed over the l)ounclary lim* into Alaska, or Al-ak-shak (great land), as it was called by the I'.sc|uimaux, ( aplain Nord, of the steamship Dol- phin, ordered the whistle lied down for awhile. By the way, no more careful captain nor more accommodating company than the Alaska Steamship Company ever sailed boats along this coast. I he Portland Canal and Skeena River are gorges left by great glaciers, the marks of which are still visible, and their moram and debris will be the building ground for a city. The geology, traditions and natives of Naas River are interesting subjects, but with many others must be passed by in this short narrative. As we cross Dixon Entrance to the northeast is the famous Behms Canal, to the westward Duke. Annett, Gravinao and smaller islands by the hundred, for we are in the very middle of the Alexandrian Archipelago, the map of which looks like it had been used as a target for a double-barreled shotgun loaded with all kinds of shot and slugs. 1 here are bays, channels and straits like spiderwebs in every direction. The islands rise up abruptly from the water five hundred to five thousand feet. It is impossible to see through, around or over them, and as easy to get lost as in a Palace of Mirrors. The Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence are here multiplied tenfold, magnified a million times and beautified beyond description. We are hardly over the line before we reach Revillagigedo Island, so named by Vanocuver, and here, on the narrow beach at the foot of a for-^st- covered mountain, flanked by Indian shacks, graves, totems and canneries, is Ketchikan. KETCHIKAN. Sawmills, canneries, schools, churches, newspapers, stores, cable and wire- less stations, and many comfortable homes border the narrow planked street, or rather walk, huddled together as though in fear of the sea, mountain and natives entirely surrounding it. But small as it is, it is the metropolis of the country about it, recipient of no inconsiderable trade, and the center of the American fishing industry, and mines on Prince of Wales Island near by on the westward. Small boats to and trom the mines and canneries tie up and trade every hour, and large boats from Seattle every day. The cannery employes are about equally Indian, Jap and Chinese, with a few white managers. The Indians and Mongolians are renewing their blood relationship. It is im- possible to tell the nationality of some of these cannery children, and often I have been unable to distinguish the nativity of their parents. Ketchikan has about a thousand population, including three hundred In- dians, a few Japs, and Chinese. Generally speaking, it, like all the other modern villages and towns on the Alaska coast, is but a handful of Seattle. The big cannery, the mill, the water works, Indian shacks and totems, and by all means the curio stores, are interesting sights for the tourist, who is very hungiy for some- thing of the kind by the time he reaches here on his third or fourth day out. and they are indeed worth the cost and time of the voyage. Scow load after load of salmon, still flopping, arrive at the cannery and can be watched until they are in the can ready for market. I asked what they paid for them, and was told ten cents per Sockeye. seventy-five cents per hundred for Dog, and a little more for Humpback. For those who have a few days' time between boats, a most enjoyable recreation could be had by going to the cannery and hsh hatchery at Loring, on Naha Bay, where Vancouver repaired his injuries after being well whipped by the Indians at Traitor's Cove near by. The scenery can hardly be excelledOld Fort Tongass, occupied from 1867 to 1877, was on the American side of Dixon Entrance. METLAKAHTLA. From Ketchikan the Seattle boats usually go to Metlakahtla. but a few miles' distant on Annett Island. The Indian development at New Bella Bella, Sitka and Kodiak is remarkable, but here it is marvelous. An hour's talk with Mr. Duncan will never be forgotten, and two or three days spent waiting for another boat will not be long or regretted. The cannery, like everything here, is the cleanest in Alaska. 1 he most wonderful chapter in the history of missionary endeavor, in civilizing the Indian, is that relating to the work of Wm. Duncan at Metlakahtla on Annett Island, Alaska. An hour's run from Ketchikan, two from Prince Rupert, six or seven from Wrangell, and three days from Seattle. Between 1 850 and 1 860 the Indians, made intemperate by the Hudson f Bay Company, then robbed by it, became malicious toward the whites. Fhey^ were canabals, murderers, polygamists, believed in witchcraft, and had slaves, ate their food raw usually, and lived almost like beasts. In 1856 Captain Provost, who was patrolling the English waters between Russian and American territory, returned to London and reported this state of affairs and incidentally wrote a newspaper request for missionaries. The result was the equipment of young Duncan from a training school through the Church of England. After a long trip around the Horn and some preparations at Vic- toria, Mr. Duncan commenced systematically at Fort Simpson. He was opposed by the Shamen (medicine men and witch doctors), because he interfered with their business; by the Hudson Bay Company, because he destroyed their liquor trade and shameful practices; by the chiefs and influ- ential Indians because he abolished slavery and polygamy; and, most lamentably of all, by his own church, the Church of England, because he knew better than to introduce some of the dogmas and doctrines of that church to his savage converts. Hardly more than a boy, a stranger to the native language, opposed by every one, but with a real Christian message, inspiration and indomitable courage, he began the herculean task, which from that day to this, under his personal supervision, has evolved these most barbarous savages of the woods to a grade of civilization and Christianity that will compare favorably with any village in North America of 1,500 population, in Christianity, temperance, industry- and integrity. Their homes, buildings, streets and general appearance have the honor ol being better than any other Indian village known, and far superior to some of the white villages in Alaska and elsewhere, for that matter. On May 27th, 1862, six large canoe loads ol Indians joined the colony on Metlakahtla Island in Canada, and many others rapidly followed, increasing their number to about a thousand. They had a church, school, cannery, soap factory and other industries. This place was about seventeen miles from Port Simpson, on the location of an ancient Tsimpsean village, of which tribe the settlement is mostly composed, and the famous Legaic was their chief. I he members subscribed to the following rules: I . To give up Ahlied or Indian deviltry. 2. To cease calling in Shamen, or medicine men. when sick. 3. To cease gambling. 4. To cease giving away then property tor display (potlatches). 19 3. I o cease painting iheir faces. (>. I o coaso incliil^in^ in inloxK almi< drinks. 7. I o rest on tlic .S,il)l)all). H. I () iillcnci icIi^;k)Us mslruc tion. '). i () send llini cluldren to school. 10. I o l)c cleanly. 11. I o be industrious. 12. I o be peaceful. 13. In build neat houses. 14. If) pay the village tax. Several authors have published a letter, written early by Mr. Duncan to Sir James Douglass, which with reference to paying taxes, says in part: "On \cu ^ cars Day the male inhabitants came cheerfully forward to pay the village tax. which I had proposed to levy annually, viz. : One blanket or two and one hall dollars for such as had attained manhood, and one shirt or one dollar for such as had approached manhood. Our revenue this year amounts to one green, one blue and ninety-four white blankets, one pair of white trousers, one dressed elk skin, seventeen shirts and seventeen dollars." The Bishop of the Church of England tried to compel these people to take the Lord's Supper and observe some of the forms of the church. Mr. Duncan knew that to d oso would undo the work already done; the rupture caused a withdrawal from the church and the beginning of a new colony. I he Canadian Government took sides with the church and assisted it in confiscating all their homes, industries and church property. Mr. Duncan, with the assistance of such men as Dr. Sheldon Jackson and Henry Ward Beecher, induced the Government of the United States (under which one can worship » according to the dictates of his own conscience) to give them Annett Island, their present home, to which they removed and commenced anew in 1887. Books, good furniture and music may be found in almost every home. Their brass band is known throughout the coast, where it has given concerts. Although Mr. Duncan is now 77 years old, I found him this summer (1908) in perfect health, inspecting the cannery and other work, paying the men, caring for the sick, adiTiinistering the law and expounding the Gospel. He had solved the problem of civilizing the Indian. What he has done ]y' can be done again. He said the most important factors are: "Prohibit the use of intoxicating liquors; allow the Indian to assume Christianity as he abandons his own practices, and third, give him a square deal." Full civilization has been reached from the lowest savagery in the life of one man. without the aid of a church or mission. Through Mr. Duncan these pepole are paying their own way and working out their own salvation. Mr. Sessions, in his book pub- lished in 1890, and Daisy M. Stromstadt, in a neat little pamphlet published in 1907, describe Mr. Duncan's work more fully, and a complete publication to date will be out this summer (1909). RIVALLAGIGEDO ISLAND AND SURROUNDING COUNTRY'. This is a large island containing over a thousand square miles, almost sur- rounded by Behm Canal. On upper Thorn Arm, about thirty miles southeast oi Ketchikan, quite extensive gold quartz mine developments have been made, by drifting, cross cutting, damming and piping of water, etc. A small stamp mill was erected here in 1902. A little farther down the Arm are extensive quantities of uniform garnets, some of which the tourists carry away on every boat. George Inlet, a little nearer Ketchikan, has a few gold prospects, and Tongass Narrows, still nearer, has about the same. In the vicinity of the gold prospects and mines some good marble has been located, but not worked. 20 The Unuk River, on which gold was discovered in I 870, empties into the head of Behm Canal. It is of considerable size, short and very rapid, and for the most part lying in Canadian territory. A wagon road has been built on its banks for the purpose of developing mines. In the times oi gold excitement in Cassair, Atlin and Klondike districts, prospectors found their way in along this stream to the headwaters of the Iskut River over a low divide, as they also did by the way of the Stikeen, Skeena and Taku. There are several hct and cold mineral springs in this vicinity. Cleveland Peninsula, a large, mountainous, timber-covered spur lying on the north side of Behm Canal and south side of Ernst Sound, and east side of Clarence Strait, has many gold quartz prospects, but onlv one extensive improve- ment, which is on the Gold Standard Group, at Helm Bay, where a five-stamp waterpower mill has been installed, and considerable gold obtained. A vein from six inches to six feet in width and a thousand feet long is exposed. Duke Island and Annett Island, to the south of Ketchikan, have no mineral develop- ments, although James Bawden reported profitable gold on Annett Island in 1892. Mr. Duncan has been opposed to miners prospecting on the island, be- cause they endanger the missionary work he is doing there. On the west side of Tongass Narrows, opposite Ketchikan, is Gravina Island, of considerable size, but of little mineral importance, although some gold and copper prospects have been found at Valenor Bay on the north, and Dall Head and Seal Cove on the south end. The narrow channel and rugged scenery known as Tongass Narrows IS pictureseque in the extreme. Excepting those about the canneries, the natives are poor and few. PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND. I he most valuable island ol Alaska (excepting Douglass) is the Princel of Wales Island. It should not be confused with the small island of \X'ales near by on the Canadian side of the boundary line. It contains almost three thousand square miles, and for a hundred miles it shelters the peaceful Clarence Straits from the storms of the ocean. On every side it is indented with most excellent harbors, the homes for centuries of numer- ous natives, and ports of safety and rendezvous for lur traders from the days of Perez and Cook. Historic, Shakan, Klawak, Howkan, Sukkwan, Klinkan and other noted native Haidah towns are each marked by a row of totems at the tide line, and a row of shacks back of them. A picture of any one would be a picture of every one. The native man at one time proudly carved his totems, potlatch bouls and canoes, hideously painted his face and house in the most brilliant colors, and frantically combatted the imaginary devils of every ill. The native squaw deftly worked into the garments the family or tribe badges, totems or traditions, and performed the menial duties of slave for the whole family. How difTeronI now! 1 he days of the savage customs, sea otter and fur trader are over; the mission- ary, church, cannery, postoffice, general store and miner have taken llu-ir places. A visit to or sight of these one-time homes and totems ol a flourishing people is circumstantial evidence, convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, that the native race will ere long have disappeared. Many of the old villages are entirely deserted; all are largely so. I he old chiefs have died; new ones have not been chosen; dances and potlatches are infrequent; tribal laws are broken and abandoned; diseases of pulmonary and rheumatic natures are prevalent. These are a lew of the signs of the demise of . the Mongolian-Indian race on the Pacific. 21 On the west side of the island is a lar^c numluT of smaller islands of little known importance, the largest of which is Dalls Island. A low pass only ahoul 150 feel hi^h crosses the island conneclinK f ietla inlet on iIk- wesi with C hol- montlelay Sound on the east. I he apex of the range ol inounl.uns is reached al the sutnmii of ( opper Mountain, 3,800 feel above the sea. Glacial marks appear everywhere, but no glaciers arc known in the memory of men; beautiful small lakes are numerous at all altitudes; long arms of the sea. safe and convenient for trans[)ortation ; warm winds from the ocean current and numerous Indian villages, are interesting subjects, no detailed history or descrip- tion ol which has ever been written, although the field is a very inviting one. I he island is rich in mineral and stone; copper has been the most valuable — it is a low grade copper-iron sulphide. Many of the mines are worked no more than is nocrssarv to hold them ; others are abandoned from time to time. IK iWKAN" or made fraudulently to appear valuable for the purpose of million-dollar capi- talizations, the stock of which is sold to "confidential" friends or gullable "suck- ers." as was done to my knowledge by the Grindall Mining Company. Niblack. Copper Mountain, Hadley, Jumbo and other Prince of XX'ales properties are well known on this coast. They have certainly had their ups and downs. The Mamie Mines are connected with the Hadley Smelter by 6,000 feet of ariel way, and the Stevenson Mine is connected with the Mamie by a 1 .000-foot or more tram, and boats from other mines bring oar. On the whole the project is a very large one. and after litigation and trouble, I was much pleased to see it opened up again in 1908. Marble, pure white, light blue and blue veined, is found al many locations in this district, and some of the mines or quarries, such as the Alaska Marble Company, near Shakan, are producing beautiful blocks of commercial marble. The lime is not far distant when the coast can be supplied from these quarries. A variety of grades and kinds of granite and building stone can be easily found, but we have no market for them yet. 11 WRANGELL AND VICINITY. The Indians do not know, and history will never chronicle the date when Wrangell was first an Indian village. The Russians established a post here in I 833. It is named in honor of a director of the Russian- American Fur Com- pany, who was Governor General of Alaska during the period of his directorship, 1840-9. In going up the coast this is the first opportunity one has to see some trace of the Russians, and although it is but little, still one is anxious to see for the first time a creole, some old kitchen utensil, or any mark of their habitation, however dimly it may appear now. The old deserted Indian village, graves and totems are fair samples of their kind at fifty other places on the coast, and the most convenient of access. No tourist should pass through Wrangell without remaining over between boats. The village had its "up and downs." First, a frontier Russian post, en- joying the activities of the sea otter trade; then after being almost deserted, it was boomed by the gold excitement of Cassair District, and after that had passed, and for some years, being nothing more than a sleepy relic of curosity to tourists, it was suddenly revived again by the Klondike rush of 1897-8, many of the prospectors going in by way of the Stikine River, twelve miles above town. Gold was discovered on this river as far back as 1862, the first reports of which are in House Documents I 77 of the second session of the Fortieth Congress. The Cassair discoveries about ten years later brought hundreds of miners to Wrangell, and these prospected on every side, staking numerous claims of gold and copper. The Hudson Bay Fur Company trespassed on this Russian territory by the way of the Stikine, and came near causing open hostilities, which were happily settled f)y leci^ing it from the Russians, and Wrangell from 1837 to 1847 was a Hudson Bay trading post. The population of all kinds is about 1 ,200. The curio trade is good, and the fish industry is large. Scow Bay is the largest halibut shipping port in Alaska. It is a supply station for canneries and mines, and a boat runs up the Stikine in summer, to I elegraph C reek. Wrangell is on a small island of the same name, and just above it is another of the same size, Zarembo. named in honor of a Russian officer by Wrangell in recognition of his services m frustratiny the encroachments of the Hudson Bay Company. It has a spring at which water is bottled and sold at Seattle and elsewhere ; ask for Zarembo water. Northwest of Wrangell is Mitkof Island; .southwest. Zarembo; south. Woronkof ski ; in fact, Wrangell is surrounded with islands, capes, etc., bearing Russian names, in the midst of which is Petersburg, on Wrangell Narrows. 23 ulu-ic lishinK craft of every kind assemhlc, where miners and trappers come to trade or catch a hoat. where Indians and Orientals work or fish side by side, where game is plentiful, and the scenery unsurpassed. We passed through many straits, channels and narrows; Stephens Pass, with its bold rocks in the cracks of which, dwarfed, twisted and starved spruces twine their roots in search for nourishment and to hold themselves from precipi- tation into the sea; Granville Straits, where the shores are so near that we can almost touch the trees on both sides, and streams of snow water dash for thou- sands of feet down from snow-covered summits reared almost perpendicularly above us; and I ongass Narrows, so densely robed in evergreen forest, with here and there peeping vestiges of the I ongass natives. But of all. the Wrangell Narrows are the most interesting. The steamers whistle, and whistle and whistle as a warning to other boats not to enter the dangerous passage at the same time. If the tide is out a moderately large boat must wait for more water and go in on the incoming tide. A dangerous rock lies hidden at one of the most danger- ous places. 1 he strong tide currents are likely to swing the vessel out of the narrow channel, and at times the propeller kicks up the muddy water. The hulks of other vessels still visible on the rocks continually remind the pilots of the peril, particularly that of the Colorado, which went on the rocks in 1900. An enor- mous whisky sign spans the length of the stranded wreck, always creating some merriment for the pleasure-seeking tourist, but to others it is synonomous of a whisky sign just as red and visible on the stranded life and fortune of thousands of most noble men. The expense to the Government for clearing and improving this channel would be less than the amount of loss already; so would be the cost of prohibiting the sale of intoxicants for beverages be less to the Government than either the police expenses, costs of criminal trials, or losses of private for- tunes, not to include the physical pain, and domestic trouble. The Stikine River has been a thoroughfare to Indian, trapper, trader and miner for years. Some gold is found along the stream, and countless glaciers and rugged mountains are on every hand. A little north of the mouth of the river is LeConte Bay and Glacier, and farther, at intervals of ten miles, is Pat- terson and Baird Glaciers, about which great icebergs float at all times. The peak above Baird Glacier is Devil's Thumb, and above the others is Kate's Needle; they are Alaska boundary marks. Farragut Bay at the east end of Frederick Sound is noted for its abundant salmon and halibut. In these waters many of the small Arctic cod boats fish in winter, and with them the smaller halibut boats, perfectly safe from the ocean storms of the season, while in mid- summer they go on the outside. Some of the richest quartz samples that I have seen from Alaska came from the hills back of Farragut Bay. The small mountain stream running into the bay affords excellent power, and here are a thousand acres of bottom land, unexcelled in fertility; it will produce five tons of timothy or other grass per acre, with a market near always reay to pay $25 per ton or more. The same land will, I believe, average 300 bushels of potatoes to the acre, and will grow many other crops, with a yawning market ready at all times. This land and much other like it can be homesteaded. and will be in a few years. It is not lonesome here, as canneries, mines and other industries, and several villages can be reached in two or three hours' run of a good naphtha launch. Going from Wrangell northward. Kupreanof Island, on the west side of the narrows and at the head of Duncan Canal, is highly mineralized, in gold, copper and silver, and several mines have been extensively developed, deep shafts sunk, buildings, trams and wharves erected, and large sums expended, but it is a mixed lo\v-grade quartz proposition, which will not be profitable until some one solves the economical problems as at Treadwell, then here, on Prince of Wales Island and in many other places on this coast, will be millions and millions 24 of gold, copper and silver. These mines, generally speaking, are not profitable, and but few are worked at all, even after machinery has been installed. The famous Kake Indian village is on Hamilton Bay on the north end of Kupreanof. On the southwest of this island is Kuiu Island, on which no gold has been found, but a little coal. On Coronation Island several shafts have been sunken in Ga- lena prospects. The Star of Bengal, loaded with salmon, was lost on the rocks of this island September 20, 1908, and I I 1 persons were drowned, and 127 saved. As we were passing Cape Fenshaw, emerging from Frederick Sound and entering Windham Bay, a conspicuous mountain appeared as a landmark for miles around. It was Mt. Sumdum, about 7,000 feet high. Were we on its summit we could see over the Cassair gold district in Canada; to the northward, Tracy Arm encircles its base for twenty miles, piercing the range deeply ; south- ward is Endicott Arm, into the end of which Dawes Glacier discharges millions of tons of bergs; on the opposite of the Arm is Windham P. O. and Sumdum, in the vicinity of which are a few miners' and Indians' shacks. Truly, this would be a most ideal trip for a summer mountaineering club. The view over the Alexandrian Archipelago would include as much of Southeastern Alaska as could be seen from any one point, in addition to which a sweeping panoramic view could be had of that vast Canadian country over which so many prospectors traveled from the headwaters of the Skeena, Stikeen, Unuk and Taku Rivers to Teslin and the upper waters of the Yukon. Every creek, bench and rock for ten miles around Sumdum has been pros- pected. In I 869 Mix Sylvia discovered gold on W indham and Sumdum Bays, and the gold taken from here, about $40,000, was the first gold oi importance' taken from Alaska. Both placer and quartz mines have been developed and perhaps a million dollars taken out. A ten-stamp mill was run for several years, a 3,000-foot tunnel was dug, and extensive improvements made. At present there is but little mining in this vicinity. Here as everywhere on this range the great cone center is an intrusive diorite, possibly mineral-producing, but not highly mineralized, extending half way down the mountain, where it meets a shistose sedimentary rock, or the fruitful "green-stones," between which contact and the water level gold is usually found. Admiralty Island, toward the sea, seems to be a big chunk of low-grade nothing; the rock of the island is in part of cretaceous period of miocene epoch, likely to produce coal, and in fact coal signs are numerous, and a little gold has been found on the north, and some copper. Killisnoo, the large Indian village once bombarded by Capt. Glass (Ad- miral Glass, recently decesade) for insubordination, was one of the earliest fishing and fur trading stations. The Northwest Trading Company shipped fish oil from there twenty years ago. Its present commercial imiiortance is perhaps great- er than any other Indian village m Alaska. nil. jUNKAU GOLD BKi;i. I hi» gold Ix-ll iiiiis from StniKJuni to Bcrners Bay, the gold being usually found m llie gr«Tii-sloiu- In-il promiscuously. Going northward from the mmes on llic mainland already mentioned, the ne.xl of nnportant e are the Snetti.sham Mme.s to the n^'hl of Stephens Pass, where a smelter has been operated at times since 1901. and from which $ I ()(),()()() has no doubt been taken. laku Inlet and (jiacier are about twenty miles farther north, where many of the tourist boats stop to view the glacier, of marvelous beauty, hear the roar of falling ice and view the fields of blue and green icebergs. After crossing this inlet we enter the immediate vicinity of Gold C reek. Sheep Creek and Treadvvell, where half the purchase price of Alaska is produced in gold every year, although the rock is not so rich in gold per ton as at many other places. I he successful production of gold from this belt again diminishes from here northward along Lynn Canal to Berners Bay, where considerable develop- ment has taken place during the last ten years. Three stamp mills have been erected at Comet, or along Sherman Creek above it, to which a small railway has been built, and a million or more dollars has been taken out in gold. At intervals of five or ten miles from Juneau northward are Salmon and Lemmon Creeks. Mendenhall River, McGinnis. Peterson and Windfall Creeks, each cut- ting substantially the same rock as Gold and Sheep Creeks. In the late eighties these streams were thoroughly prospected and both quartz and placer finds were numerous. "Old Diggins." wrecked mining cabins, sluice boxes and even stamp mills he rotting in the brush of the gorges, telling their own history; nevertheless many thousands of dollars have been taken out of these small camps. The enor- mous granite core of the range reaches Lynn Canal above Berners Bay and this seems again to prove that gold need not as a rule be expected within it, no gold being produced again until the range has been crossed, and the belt of older rocks reached on the east side, or in the Porcupine district. On the north side of Lynn Canal some encouraging prospects have been developed at Lituya Bay by the Lukan family, whose lives have been endangered once by starvation and once by being blown out to sea in a small boat, without foor for a week. The glacier covered Fairweather range, and mountains to the north rise abruptly from the sea, affording no lodging place in the precipitous streams for placer, and making the country difficult to prospect. No mineral worth mention is known on the coast until near the Copper River and Prince W^illiams Sound, except a little placer at Lituya and Yaktag. TREADWELL. As we steamed up Gastineau Channel, on the left was the town of Douglass and the 1 readwell Mines on Douglass Island, which I suppose was named in honor of John Douglass, who prepared some of Cook s notes, aftersvard becom- ing Lord Salisbury, being again honored by the name of Salisbury Sound. No doubt the Russian fur traders explored this country, but they made no record of it. Quadra took possession for Spain in 1 775, particularly of Salis- bury Sound, Chicagonoff and Krugoff Islands. But Cook and Vancouver made the first reliable maps, renaming everything in sight. Jumbo Mountain, behind Treadwell, is 3.333 feet high. Ditches and flumes like a network catch the waters of the island, convey them to the mines, where they run 200 of the 880 stamps, the largest mills of the kind in the world. Mining developments commenced here in 1882. and nearly ever since the powerful trip hammers have been pounding the rock into dust day and night. For a mile and a half along the channel, and many feet under it. rock is being taken out. aggregating approximately i 00.000 feet in extent of workings. 10.000,000 tons of rock, and $30,000,000 gold. 26 27 .\llli(nit-:li llic |>i(K('ss nf saving ihc koIcI requires pulverization, amalgami- /atioii, (onreiilr.ilion and snielhnK. and a Ion of rock contains but aljoul three dollars of ^oid value, iieverllicless the system and economy employed saves almost ImII (iI it as a net orolil. I he records show that John 1 leadwell pur( hased the mine from F^ierrc Joseph Mrussard (f'rench Pete) September 13, I H8 1 for $5. 1 he company owns many of the tenant houses, employes forcit^n labor, and occasionally has a strike. Wars ago [• rcnch Pete was the cause of much trouble and a tragedy. About the same time the miners sold licjuor to the Indians, then took their squaws to the dances, which in time resulted in a battle. f hese are about the only ruflles in ihe even running history of this titanic mining plant. JUNEAU. ■'In the spring ol I H8() N. A. luller of Sitka, on the strength of a favor- able report ot John Muir (for whom Muir Glacier is named), sent Joe Juneau and Richard Harris to investigate ^ * ^ They, with three Indian guides, arrived at Windham Bay in May. located some quartz, and piospected lo Gold Creek (above Juneau) and Silver Bow Basin, from which they took 1,000 pounds of auriferous quartz, and staked both placer and quartz mines, which caused an excitement. "On November 26th a party of thirty started from Sitka, arriving Decem- ber 6th. 1880. founding the town of Juneau. It was first called Rockwell, then Harrisburg. and on December 14th. 1881. was named Juneau, and was the center of the first Alaska gold rush." The quartz of Gold and Sheep Creeks should repeat the production of Treadwell. They are picturesquely located on the high mountain sides, among the glaciers above the town, across the channel from Treadwell. No! Juneau has none of the appearances of a miners' town — peaceful, good schools, cable and wireless to the outside world, boats almost every day all the year from Seattle, newspapers, and the conveniences of a modern city. It is also said to be the capital of Alaska, although the buildings do not assume a capital appearance, and it is rumored that the Government is of a portable kind, usually found in Washington. D. C. LYNN CANAL. Lynn C anal is the water so coveted by and contended tor by Great Britain in the treaty arguments of 1825 and 1903. It certainly is the most clean-cut channel in Southeastern Alaska, and would have made the most ideal port for Canada. On the starboard side as we ascended \\ere Mendenhall. Herbert. Eagle. Mead and other glaciers, hanging from the 7,000-foot peaks along the tops of which the boundary line zigzags northerly. On the port side hung the spider-like glacier legs of the Muir Glacier, covering the Fairweather Range in a cap of ice. Just as we were passing the north end of the gold belt, the captain wanted to know if I saw a town on the bank. I told him I did not; but he insisted that there was one. and with the aid of the glasses we observed it to be one house, and which he said was Seward City. The Auk Indians, who scared Whidby out of his senses, are almost extinct. W hen Whidby. at X'ancouver's request, explored the canal he thought the natives wanted to kidnap him. and he named the point "Seduction," and in his attempt to get away other Indians followed him, and the next landing he called "Re- treat" (on Admiralty Island). On the westerly side toward the head of the canal and up the valley of the Chilkat there were and are more Indians. The 28 trails of the Porcupine gold stampede, the old Dalton trails and Indian and traders' trails to the interior passed pj by Healey's Store (Haines Mission), and inland to Wells and Klukwan, and although not nnuch used now, are still very plainly marked. A railroad has been projected to the interior over this route. FORT WILLIAM H. SEWARD. Alaskans everywhere try to erect monuments to the honor of Secretary Seward, who purchased it forty-two years ago. That is reason enough for giving his name to towns, forts, rivers, mines and so many otheer mailers and places. Fort Seward is but one of these monuments. All the attractions in the category of nature, from dense woods to barren rocks; from ocean level to ice-capped, cloud-covered peaks; from the soft, balmy breeze off the ocean current to the Arctic blizzard from over the Pass, may be found here. If this port was in any other part of the world in sixty degrees north latitlde as it is, it would be frozen over half the year. Icebergs float near by all the year, but the climate is never very cold, and in summer real "cow cream " (for the other is the stand-by of the miner) may be had from the dany, and strawberries, blueberries or raaspberries from the vine. The ice trust has no monopoly ; when the article is wanted, a berg can be lassoed near at hand, blue cold, clear and clean, perhaps frozen hfty years ago. when It commenced its descent from the summit of a mountain and liberated but a day. I can testify that they cannot be surpassed for ice cream purposes. I climbed a small mountain near the fort and took a view of the surround- ing country, — out to the ocean; upon the Fairweather Range; up the Chilkat, and everywhere the most awe-inspiring sights gladdened my soul. Fort William H. Seward is one of the most beautiful spots in Alaska. A Government boat in time of need can convey the soldiers to Skagway, where they can be taken into the interior by the railroad, or up and down the coast, wherever they may be needed. The fort could not resist a squad ol quail hunters, but it looks well kept, and breaks the monotony, which is the only use we have for such things on this coast. THE CHILKOOr TRAIL. As we ascended Lynn Canal to its head we came to a lork. On the left prong was Healey's Post, or Dyea of old. Near by is Haines, and a whart ready to fall, and a little below it Fort William H. Seward, a nicely kept bar- racks with about 1 00 soldiers, and one of the most beautiful spots on the coast. The tourist should climb some elevation here and look over the Fairweather Range; the view excels the choicest of Switzerland. On the right fork was Skagway. In the early days, when gold fever was most feverish, some disembarked on the left fork and cooled their fever in crossing through this valley and over the Chilkoot; others landed on the right fork at the foot of White Horse I rail, and just as effectively cooled theirs that way. The Chilkoot Trail was best known, and first used. Schwatka went over in 1883, naming the pass "Perrier Pass," after a Frenchman of that name. At the same time he named Lake Lindeman in honor of Dr. Lindeman of Bremen Geographical Society. He reached the summit in about six days. Although his is the first official exploration, nevertheless it had been crossed by others, who had made some report of it before, including Arthur Krause. also Bean in 1878. This pass was the highway for Indian trade between the coast and interior Indians from time immemorial. From the landing on Lynn Canal to Sheep Camp was twelve miles up the valley of this Dyea Inlet, up which small canoes could be rowed, poled or pulled, and these were often used to assist in drawing the freight up most of the way. 29 I lie Ir.til < rossfs and rfcrcisscs tlir strt-arii. .iiicJ iii its k y water the gold fevor found its first rliill as the victim waded, stuml)lcd and scrambled through ihc swifr rapids and over the round glacial stones which covered river holtom and valley. In the near proximity to Sheep Camp was and is a dirty Indian village. Hut its |)opulation of men, sc|uaws. children and dogs took a prominent part in the now historical stampede. Many of these Indians could carry one hundred and lilty pounds to the summit easier than some of the gold seekers could crawl up without any load. I he usual load was one hundred pounds; strong Indians more; squaws, children and dogs accordingly less. They charged from ten to twenty-five cents a pound. ■Ill I.Ki X IT TK.M 1. Now stories are told about strong Indians taking more than two hundred pounds to the summit on their backs. In one instance an organ weighing two hundred and twenty pounds; and in another a barrel of pitch weighing two hun- dred and forty-five pounds, which is the best record as told to me by a personal friend, who was an eye-witness. The last half of the trail to Sheep Camp (so named by pioneer hunters who killed some sheep there) is in the side of the bluff several hundred feet above the stream. But the climb does not commence in earnest until we leave Sheep Camp. This IS the timber or snow line. A glacier hangs on either side and the streams from each unite here. On every hand is evidence that these glaciers once were one and discharged in the canal at Dyea. Some portion of the glacier has receded several miles above the Camp, and there now groans, roars and dis- 30 charges ice and water near the trail. It is one of the rear guards of the retreating Malaspina Snow Cap, of which there are many visable on this side of the Fair- weather Range, including Muir, Davidson and Bertha. Looking backward from Sheep Camp we behold the glacier-worn, stone- covered valley of the Dyea River, up which came the tens of thousands of Klon- dike adventurers in 1897-8. In the mad rush some overloaded, inexperienced or reckless drowned in this river before reaching this point. Others became so footsore, homesick, or discouraged that they returned; still others had no provi- sions, some no money to employ the pack Indians, and after trying a few days to carry their own supplies (usually a ton) up to the pass in relays, abandoned the adventure and returned home. From here, looking upward, it seems that a barrier is built to the clouds; and so it is. For almost four miles we "scratch gravel," pull each other, look for shrubs to hold onto, cling to the rocks, and climb, climb, climb until you would think the perspiration and profanity would melt the snow-covered trail. Looking back again, we see that we have ascended almost a half mile upward, and looking toward the summit, only a half mile distant, is an ascent of over 1 ,000 feet more. This is the herculean task, the almost insurmountable bar, the turning or stopping point for hundreds of tenderfeet. But those with courage and strength enough remaining crawl with their bellies to the earth like lizzards. kicking toe holds, delving into the ice and snow for almost a day longer, at last reach the coveted summit of Chilkoot Pass (Schwatka says the Indians called the elevation "Kotusk Mountain"). No human being could face some of the blizzards that come through it. History will never record the names or numbers of all that gave their lives in attempting to scale this pass. The river claimed some, hardship and exposure dozens more, a great snow slide in I 898 sixty-one more, and a misstep ofttimes hurled the victim to the dizzy depth hundreds of feet below. Two hundred lives would be placing the number under that actually known. My friend, who went over the trail early in the spring of '98, says "that the best investment he ever made was the small sum he paid to an enterprising owner of a rope, which was so fastened as to enable the climber to use his hands by pulling himself up on the rope, and that this rope in those days was a living scrambling string of crazy gold seekers, day and night, and reminded him of the desperate, senseless salmon trying to swim up a dry creek bed in spawning time." Since then pack trains, better trail, Peterson's rope tramway or counter- weight tramway, lessened the labor and risk, and robbed the dirty Sheep C amp Indians of their vocation. Eventually traffic shifted to the White Pass I rail, and later still the White Pass and ^'ukon Railway modernized the travel. And now the old Chilkoot Trail is but little used, and Sheep Camp. Dyea, Hainos Mission. Stone House, and other familiar stations are almost abandoned. The altitude of the pass has been given all the way from 3.500 to 4,300 feet. The former is approximately correct. It was the highest of the passes. That is about as high as the highest mountains in the eastern part of the United States. It was nearly all above the timber line, in snow and ice. It required one month for many a poor miner to cany his provisions to the top. After reaching the summit, a small lake named Crater Lake was visible, only 500 feet below, and its waters flowed away toward the "^ ukon. By a sharp descent the trail soon reached and passed it, then became an easy grade for about nine miles to Lake Lindeman, where the waterway to the Klondike and ^ ukon Basin begins. 31 SKAGUAY. Skaguay (Skagway Postofficc) is a crcalurc of ihc Klondike rush, during which time il grow from a tenl lo a cily of tents, with 10.000 population. In those boom days it ex[)erienced all the dance hail, gamhhng hell, murder and other vices known lo lh<- '49ers. ( ri|)[)le C reek and every other great mmmg camp. The clink of the wine glass, click of roulette wheel, crack of the assassin's revolver, were lost in the sound of curses from the card table, songs and laughturc Irom the dance and beer halls, and the din of a wide-open mining camp. Men forgot their fatigue of carrying burdens through snow to the pa.ss, iorgot their home, marriage vows and honor, forgot everything, while half-crazed with vile whisky, they hilariously swung the scantily dressed but well painted dance hall girls to the call of the cjuadrille. or wagered their last cent. At the very top of this vice was the prince of gamblers. Jefferson R. .Smith (Sopy Smith). He had trained in every big city and mining camp in the United Stales and Mexico; many murders were charged to him, and every other crime IS well. He had a half-dozen confederates- ex-convicts hut. r-xpmen'-ed like SKAC.IA ^' himself; through them he murdered on the trail, and robbed and gambled in town. He was a good schemer, a good dresser, good shot, good gambler, and a charitable giver. When it became known that his men were murdeirng and robbing on the trail, they were called in; when the shell game wore out it was replaced with roulette; from one thing to another, he robbed all the people. It is said he was the first man to wire an offer of men to the President for the Spanish-American War; he patriotically galloped through the streets of Skaguay July 4. I 898. just four days before he was shot. Sopy's last game was won when he robbed a poor miner of a bag of gold that he had just brought over the pass, and refused to return it. The people selected a viligance committee, and armed themselves for a fight. As soon as Smith learned of the opposition he attempted to cowe them and met the guard. Frand Reid, at the land end of the dock, as brave as himself. After some words. Sopy knocked Reid down with his gun. Reid's gun refused to discharge, but just at the same instant that Smith shot him in the groin Reid's gun discharged and he shot Smith through the heart. Smith's followers fled to the mountains, but were rounded up, and sent out of the country or to prison for long terms. About two miles up the \X hite Horse Trail is an acre of graves, )2 inclosing the bodies of men dying on the trail or in this camp in 1897-8. I he one most conspicuously marked is that of Frank Reid ; another (no\s' unmarked, the markers having been taken for souvenirs) is that of Smith. Many of the signs of a mining camp can be now seen about the city, but it has settled down to a law-abiding village of about a thousand people, with good schools, and modern conveniences. The White Pass and Yukon Railroad built by Heney and Hawkins, now building the Copper River road for Guggenheims, goes over the old Brackett pack trail, and although one of the most difficult engineering feats in railroading, and also one of the most expensive, it nevertheless pays for itself every year. It is said that this railroad burned two thousand dead horses that had died in the rush over this trail. The number of human lives has never been estimated; the headboards in the cemetery tell enough. Every tourist reaching Skaguay should at least go to the summit of White Pass, 2,500 feet high (Chilkoot Pass is 3,600). On this miniature railroad the scenery surpasses that of any railroad in the world, except the new road now building on Copper River, so far as mountain scenery is concerned. scKNKK^' t>.\ I'm; \\ r 33 SI I KA. Sect-kali, as it was originally ( .ilird hv llic natives, is the most inlfrestinK, historic, and beautiful of all the places in Alaska. Sitka was a thriving town, the seat of Alaskan government, huilding ships, making plows, picks, spades, etc., for sale in Mexico and California when Chi- cago was hut an Indian village and the country helween it and the Pacific was the undisputed lands of the Indians. Some of the old buildings, now a hundred years old, still stand; the old trading post store house, a blockhouse, another large building at one-time head- quarters for the Russian Alaska Fur Company, and now a hotel at which Lady Franklin stopped while searching for her husband; a half-made burr for grinding wheat imported from Siberia, and parts of a mill, are among the important Russian relics. The first location of a fortified trading post by the Russians ( I 799) was on a flat purchased of the Indians about eight miles north of the present Sitka, and called Archangel Gabriel, which was robbed and burned and the occupants murdered or taken prisoners by the natives in I 802. I he facts regarding that massacre as told by an eye-witness equal in barbarism the most horrible Indian massacres of the East. The unfortunate victims were tortured to death; not even the cattle escaped. The valuable furs were removed to their own canoes and the buildings burned. In I 804 Baranoff returned to rebuild it with I 20 Russians, on the Ekaterina and Alexandra, to which 800 Aleuts in 300 bidarkas were joined, all being assisted by the sloop Neva. The Indians, with the assistance of seme Russian deserters, were fortified at Indian River, to which siege was laid, and the location of the present Sitka taken after a stubborn resistance, and named New Archangel. The Indians never again secured control, although in 1 878, after the sol- diers had been removed from Sitka, they demanded the lives of six men in return for six of their number who were lost at sea while working for a white employer, and being refused they conspired to retake the town, and after completing all preparations returned in force by the way of the Hot Springs, about twenty miles southward, where they killed a man by the name of Brown, and arriving before Sitka demanded five more. Before this massacre could be carried out, and by urgent request. Great Britain sent the Osprey from Esquimault, to which friendly act the Sitka of today owes its existence, and for which, with hundreds of other neglects, our own government ought to be ashamed. Nothing remains to be seen at the old site of Sitka, except a hunter s cabin, and grass as high as a man's head. Nothing remains at the old Redoubt, as much farther south of Sitka, except mere traces of the old fortifications and ship ways. Nothing remains of the Indian River fortifications, except a mark to identify them. The ways of the Sitka shipyard are lost in the sand; the old flour mill was replaced by a sawmill, which has recently been modernized, although the same old flume furnishes water for it; the once beautiful cemetery, forested with Greek crosses, is now overgrown with brush and \\eeds; but one of the circle of blockhouses remains; Kath-le-an and Anna-Hootz have surrendered, and their followers are members of the Russian or Protestant Churches; Baranoff Castle of history, 70x140 feet of logs, the center of gay and official life, as well as drunken orgies, from 1813 to 1894, when it was burned, has been replaced by a spacious residence, now occupied by Prof. C. C. Georgeson. head of the Agri- cultural Department of Alaska. So the Sitka of old. like its founders, will soon be only seen in pictures. read in books, or heard in tales of tradition. A federal barracks, coaling station, cable, wireless, agricultural experi- mental station, marshal's office, customs house, magnetic station, electric lights. 34 modern residences, churches and schools are indications ol a new era. But the old and new are so blended as to produce a reverential respect not elsewhere felt in Alaska. On one side of the town is the Indian River Park, where a large number of totems, presented by the natives to Governor Brady, are now preserved. High above the little "Naples" is a circle of ever snow-crowned peaks; back on the sidehill a thousand Russian graves, over which Greek crosses hold their arms; in front is an island-dotted harbor, which Schwatka has said could only be mapped with a pepper box, and for beauty has no peer in the world; off toward sea is Mt. Edgcomb, an active volcano until a little over fifty years ago, of which the natives have many legends. Surely, Sitka is entitled to all the beautiful names bestowed upon it. The industrial school for natives started by Brady is now the foremost native school in Alaska, with a yearly attendance of about 200, its full capacity. ^#- Bishop Roe, head of the Episcopal Church in Alaska, lives here in a beautilul home (he is perhaps the best posted man regarding the natives in Alaska). I he Sheldon Jackson Museum contains a collection worth a hundred times more than the Government so begrudgingly paid for the expense of collecting it. On one side of the town is a well kept street, on both sides of which are modern houses, in which may be found the usual furnishings of a white man s home. These are schooled natives, and it is known as the "cottagers. On the other side of the town is the native village, with square, unpaiiitod. unfurnished (except possibly a stove and table) frame houses in rows parallel with high tide, all facing the water; this is known as the "Ranchc." Indian tragedies: tales of love of native or creole by ofTicer. soldier or trap- per; of murder, suicide and assassination, and of Russian tyranny and native conspiracies, are now just old enough to invite the imagination of the novelist. 35 I lie 1)11(1 .tiid M-.i lilc IS nion* .!( live llwiii al any oth«'r point found \)y us m Alaska, and more convenienl lo sludy, for ihe scientist. I he balmy atmosphere from the sea, the quiet of the village and the beauty of snowy mountains, green forests and blue waters, dotted with rock-made islands, ought to be inspiring enough for artist and poet. I he hot springs lo the southward, now in charge ol Dr. Goddard from I acoma. and which I found to be 145 degrees F., were known to llic Indians to cure rheumatism, and to the Russians to cure gout. So that everything, in profusion, is piled up here waiting for people of art, culture, leisure and science. Historians have written much ol Baranoll. and the missionaries. Dr. Shel- don Jackson, Rev. John G. Brady. Rev. W. W. Kirby, James McNair Wright and others, have informed us quite fully concerning the natives, and to these I must refer the reader for want of space. lo the sportsman, I vouch that deer may be seen and killed within a mile or two of Sitka: we lound them lame enough for photographing. At the Squash- inski River, with the assistance of the Sitka Fishing Club, in two hours we caught with trout rods 153 trout, weighing 247 pounds. Sitka is so different from all other Alaska towns; every one has time; every one is sociable, and talent is plentiful ; it is the most ideal place on the coast for a month's summer recreation. Mr. deGrofT, who has done so much for Alaska, together with the Indian discoverer, owns about the only mine of importance in this district ; it is about thirty miles north on Chicagof Island. The silver-mounted, gold-haloed picture ol Madonna and costly robes, in the Russian Church; the museum, school, park, and curio stores, are of first mlerest to the tourist. Life in Sitka is idleness in winter; only the small weekly boat calls at the dock. Only the precipitation, in the form of a misty rain, must keep busy, as it has a perpetual contract to deliver eight feet of water per annum. Down at the "Ranche " may be found venison, salmon, seal, Indians, and dogs, all smoked by the same fire. A deer may be purchased on the street for two or three dollars, and fish for a few cents. I caught crabs enough for a party of seventeen in sight of Sitka as fast as I could lift them into the boat. Without moving from my tracks, I noted two kinds of Huckleberries ; blue and red Raspberries, Salmon berries. Crab apples, Alder, Elder. Hemlock, Alaska Spruce, Timothy, Red-top, Gooseberries, a wild Black Currant, and other plants strange to me. Back of the town is a tract of spongy, water-soaked tundra (which increases as we go northward), from which I plucked twelve varieties of moss. On the rocks of Japonski in the harbor I gathered nineteen kinds of sea moss, and numerous species of shellfish. Five thousand big. black, noisy ravens constitute the board ol health and garbage collectors of the town, and they do the work thoroughly. I lived a week among them, and learned eleven difFereiu calls. I saw them turn complete summersaults in the air, fly with their bellies upward, walk into the kitchen doors for garbage, play with the dogs, and do wiser stunts than I have ever seen other birds do. I am not surprised that the Indians selected it as an ancestor, and crown their totems with it. Eagles are also very numerous and wise, but silent and sullen. The natives of Sitka, consisting of two tribes, are said to come from near Nome, which may be the reason for the lack of totems in their village, and their 36 inability to understand other native tongues. 1 heir boats, shacks, customs and features are quite similar to the other tribes along the coast, and they possess a strong Mongolian likeness. The Russian church claims a native and creolc membership of 700. I believe the natives alone of Sitka equal that number. As a whole, they are more civilized than any other village in Alaska south of Cooks Inlet. As we sailed northward to Icy Straits we came to a considerable native town, Hoonah, where the baskets are good, and cheaper. We soon entered Cross Sound, where the first white man, Mr. Chirkoff, discovered Alaska (July 17, 1741). He sent his first mate with ten men ashore for water. They did not return. The next day he sent the second mate and ten more men ashore for fresh water, and they never returned. The next day the Indians appeared hos- tile, and he went to sea. The conduct of the natives near by shown to \\ hidby a few years later would make it appear that the Indians fearlessly murdered the sailors. CROSS SOUND. In going from Cross Sound westward to Valdez and intervening points, it was apparent that a radical change had occurred. For hundreds of miles hardly an Indian or miner or cannery or river or bay may be seen; there are no places for them. Nothing but an ice-capped plateau on the right, and a boundless ocean on the left. Although the geographers have named it Gulf of Alaska, its entrance is 500 miles wide and it is nothing but pure, unalloyed ocean. The Elias Range caps the ice field; its lofty peaks — Mt. Crillion, rj,90n feet; Mt. Fairweather, 15,293 feet; Mt. Vancouver, 15.666 feet; Mt. Cook. 15,758 feet; Mt. St. Elias, 18,024 feet, and Mt. Logan, 19,500 feel— are jewels in the crown of this crescent ot ice 250 miles long. I climbed a small mountain sufficiently high to get a full view of the range, and there before me stretched glacier enough to bury Switzerland; and from this giant field of ice issued such branches as Muir Glacier, three oi lour mi'es long and as many hundred feet above the sea; Malaspina, 70 miles long and almost 2,000 feet high at the water; and others smaller but yet so large as to make Switzerland's largest unworthy a name. Yes, this is a different country; it is such an abrupt change from the count- less bays, islands and timber-covered slopes, to this ice-covered range, fearlessly and precipitiously descending into an islandless ocean. This range of mountains is all different from the coast range. The inhospitable shore is a danger to e\eiv storm-caught craft near it. It for all time has been a barrier to the race south. They were not able to protect the coast here, and hence came the Athabascans from the interior of America through the valleys leading to Cooks Inlet. If the St. Elias Range is the end of the Coast Mountains, then Ml. Mi Kinley is the end of the Rockies — 20,460 feet hight is the summit, the highest point, the very climax of mountaindom on this North American Continent. In the same country is the vent pipe for this climax. Mt. Wrangell, an active vol- cano; the wierdest reports oi its activity can be heard every year now. Last summer Mt. St. Augustine and Mt. Iliamma were active, and the natives had numerous tears and traditionary tales concerning them. Ml. ST. LLIAS. In July, 1741. wlieii Behring discovered Alaska, one ol the Inst .uid most attractive features noticed by him from the sea near Valdez, was what appeared to him, and to every one else lor a hundred and fifty years after, the highest peak in North America. He gave it the beautiful name of St. Llias be- (ausc he clis( Dvcicd il on S.iinl I li.is clay. Any onr who sees it will ( orm-cif thai it is moic .i|>|)ii)|)i i.ilciv n.uii'-d lli.in most Alaska points, I he liuliaiis look upon it with as much awe as wr rjo. aiifl tell Iraclitionary talcs ol its ciuplions, supciluiman |)owcrs, etc. I l)(li<\c ilic New ^ ork I imes Expedition, including Schwatka and Seaton- K.arr. made the lirst attempt to climh it. in 1886. They described the large River \ ahtse, which flows for miles under the ice. Schwatka rlimhed the high- est, ascending 7.200 feet ; a higher ascent was impossible. In 1 888 the I opham expedition from England tried it. Up lo this time it was thought a large crater appeared on the side, and it does now look so from the bottom; but on arriving at that point I opham found it was a separate peak, and no crater at all. I hose attempting its ascent have concluded that it was not a volcanic mountain, although I cbenkoff. a Russian, reported it as smoking, in 1839, and its eruption, in 1847; and other reports have been made of vol- canic action. Topham named this point Haydens Peak. He reached I I ,460 feet altitude. In June, 1 890. the National Geographical Society and the Geological Survey united in their effort to ascend. Prof. I. C. Russell, glacier expert, headed the expedition. He landed on \ akutat Bay, made a long journey across the Malaspina Glacier, named Mt. Logan in Augusta Range, and Owen and Irving in Cook Range, but failed to scale St. Elias. His reports and in- formation were so valuable that he was returned the next year, I 89 I , ancf made another attempt to ascend the peak, reaching an elevation of 14,500 feet, and fixed the height of the peak at 18,100 feet. On his return he made a detailed exploration of Disenchantment Bay. Shortly after, the Italian, Duke ol Abruzzi (recently prominent in the newspapers of the world as fiance of Catherine Elkins), with the courase and system of the general that he is, the assistance of young men like himself, and an early start, succeeded in reaching the apex, and from it beheld one ol the greatest penoramic views ever coming to the eyes of an earthly being. He stood with his whole party on the pinnacle ; before them stretched the Malaspina Gla- cier 80 miles long, and dozens of others, smaller, of course, but still large enough to cover Switzerland, with its world-famous glaciers. Mt. Parouse, Mt. Crillion, Mt. Fairweather and other mighty peaks lay below his feet; whole ranges, patches of forests, rivers like silver threads, and fields of clouds here and there; on the east Canada, north ^ ukon Basin, west Copper River and Cooks Inlet country, and south the Pacific Ocean. No man can behold such a wonderful sight and not be a bigger, better and nobler being; is it worth ttie risk, expense, and suffering? Ask God; man is too small to answer it. At night time and on very cold days black snow worms would appear in the snows that cover the glaciers. Sand stone and lime stone and sea shells of known species of this age are found on the summits of the peaks of this range, indicating that the mountains are not of great age. Ingre Vittorio Novarese. Royal Geologist of Rome, who examined the collection of rocks gathered by the Duke, differs from Prof. Israel C. Russell on some of the intricate questions of age. priority of upheaval and the like, but I believe it will be conceded by all that an intrusnc diorite occupies the heart of the primary upheaval, similar to the Coast Range. For the student or alpinist, much ol interest has been written about the Fairweather and St. Elias Ranges and the glacier cap by the members of the expeditions above referred to. particularly Russell. Topham. Seaton-Karr. Abruzzi. and by Dr. Cook and the Harriman Expedition subsequently. 38 GLACIERS. From Cross Sound to Cook's Inlet is the home ol the largest glaciers in the world, outside of the polar regions. The warm air of the Japanese Current, loaded with all the water it can carry, meets the cold air of the summits of the highest mountain range in North America, and precipitates its burden on the coast side of the mountains. Glaciers are caused by the accumulating of more snow in winter than can melt in summer, and glaciers of various sizes are found on all the higher peaks in the United States. Glaciers like those of Greenland once almost covered our whole country. Their indelible marks are as enduring as time, and rocks as large as a farm were picked up in or near .Alaska and deposited in the United States. They gouged, chiseled and ground the softer rocks and earth from the highlands, leav- ing only mountain peaks of granite for summits, and leveled and rounded the plains and valleys convenient for the advent of vegitation, animals and men. changing the contour and topography of the country from Cape Barrow to the Ohio River. The rainfall and snow I all in Alaska behind the Elias Range and on the Arctic is not great, therefore but few small glaciers are found. This ice cap is the remnant perhaps of the parent that covered the country, and made much of the placer gold. It is rapidly receding at many places. One author made a careful estimate of Muir Glacier, stating that at the water it was 225 feet above, 450 below, and during his stay of 30 days emptied 149,000.000 cubic feet per day of bergs. This glacier now has receded to insignificance, compared with its former flow. There are numerous others, ancient children of the eternal snows of the summits of this range, leveling everything in their way to the ocean, in which, with a roar like the artillery of a great siege, they deposit morain, trees and debris, upon which some day rnay rest cities. Constantly as the clock, these rivers of ice, covered with spires, spirettes, steeples, domes, minarets, pinnacles and needle points of ice, criss-crossed with gorges, fissures, crevasses and cracks; honeycombed with rivers and rushing torrents, and streaked with long lines of morain, plow their way to the ocean. Some of the glaciers are "dead," that is, they do not now reach the sea; others, in pearllike chunks, as at Hubbel, or shaded in blue from a light summer sky to a dark indigo, as at Taku, drop into it. Woe be to the person on the shore or near it in such place as Yakutat Bay when a berg the size of a twenty-story office building drops in. The reverberating roar and the grinding of bergs on such occasion is beyond my ability to describe. YAKUTAT. Cros Sound is the northerly end of the "inside passage. ' On the southward IS the picturesque timber-covered island -i ringed coast — home of the Siwash. To the northward is five hundred miles of islandless ocean, beating at the |)recipi tous foot of a Greenlandish glaciated plateau, indented by Liluva. Dry. lev and Yakutat Bays. Lituya IS as tide-washed, surt -beaten and dangerous now as i( \\.i> wlnii La Perouse visited it in I 786. who had the misfortune of losing some ol his men. to whom he erected a monument on Monument Island. Near by some jilacer prospects give promise of a good return, but to gel to them with provisions and get in and out of the bay safely is a greater chance than even the most daring miner cares to take. The few Indians that live there have not improved since La Perouse described them. Dixon, who stopepd there in I 787, verified the reports of his French predecessor, and one of the miners working there iiow lurnished to i9 me a full report nl native life to date, which is littlo if any hotter and too shocking for |)ul)lication. Dry Bay. seventy-five miles north of Lituya. and Icy Bay. the same distance northwest of Yakutat, hardly deserve space here. ^'akutat Bay has been a trading post for while traders durinK the last hundred years, and for savaRcs indefinitely longer. It is the home of the hair seal, for which natives of the north, south, coast and interior come. Athabascan. I hlinkil. Aleut and l.squimaux considered it the terminus of their sojourn from Jinnic. I he result ol this cominglinR of natives is perhaps the cause of the differ- ence between the Yakutat Indian and other natives — they are a combination of all others. \ hey show some of the copper color of the interior Athabascan. Some of the round face, yellow complexion and oblique eyes of the Monoglian- Siwash and Aleut-Labrets. and customs of the Esquimaux and the vices of them all. I hey now build, and for as far back as we have record, built, large single- room houses, as do the Siwash. and lived in them in a sort of communistic Esqui- maux manenr. 1 heir basket weaving is a link between the coarser work of the Siwash and finer work of the Aleut. Their religion, if they ever had any, is a mongrel like themselves. They do not have totems and badges and long cere- monies, nor hold certain animals too sacred for food, as the Siwash do. About all the first navigators and traders called at Yakutat. and each applied a new name. Before them the natives in different parts of Alaska applied names of their own selection, but the name surviving is the most suitable, as it is the bay of the Yakutat Indian. Monti Bay. Admiralty Bay or Bering Bay would fail to convey the local color that is included in the word ^ akutat. One of the Russian convict colonies was planted here on the site of Mul- grave in I 796, the remains of which, like the villages of the Indians who destroyed it in 1805, lie rotting and obliterated. The village of Y akutat near the old settlement has been and is of some commercial importance. Mr. Mills' store, the Simpson mill, cannery, store and railroad, and the ocacsional call of a boat disturb the caressing spirit of Mor- pheus. A trip up the litle railroad, which is the only fish rialroad in the world, to the cannery and to the site of the Indian and Russian settlements will satisfy the tourist ordinarily. But the nature lover will marvel at the glaciers and gla- ciers, the bobbing heads of the hair seal, the roar and grinding of the bergs coming down from Disenchantment Bay ; the tents and bark huts of the Indians, where the women render seal fat. scrape skins, etc.. while the men kill a supply of seal for the coming season. The seal furnishes oil for fuel, light and cooking. In fact, it answers all the purposes of lard, butter, coal oil and molasses. The mission-taught Indian lad on graduation day would prefer the rancid seal oil to maple molasses on his pancakes, or anything else for that matter. It is rubbed in, warmed in, smoked in and fed in to the Indian from birth to death. Its use to the native is greater than all other animals or fish, not excepting the salmon. Malaspina, an Italian seeking the Northwest Passage in I 792 for Spain, thought he had found it when he entered ^ akutat Bay, the upper end of which he named Disenchantment Bay. One ot the arms of the latter is named Russell Fiord, in honor of Israel C. Russell, a glacier expert who exammed it very closely on return from his attempt to ascend Mount St. Elias in 1891. In Malaspina's time the glacier must have been lower and in one mass, while in Russell's time it was in three divisions, named Dalton, Hubbard and Nunatak, and still IS retreating as all glaciers on the Pacific are doing. Here are polar ice caps in sight from a coast with a moderate climate; Alps that would make Switzerland lok like a toyland, within easy reach of everyone, and a hunter's paradise at a moderate cost. Why go abroad when you can explore country and ascend peaks never tread upon by man? 40 KATALLA. Well do I remember the starting of Katalla in 1904, and "wildcatting" the Bering oil field — the leasmg and assignmg — the rows of sample bottles, the knowing arguments, the maps and hopes which came before me for my services as a lawyer long before I had any idea of an investigation for book purposes. I was a native of the East, where coal, oil and gas was so common that the prevailing idea "that oil came from the coal deposits and gas from the oil' was born or soaked into me. And although colege theories had almost eradicated it, it came back stronger than ever when I saw the seeping oil, and found that it tasted, smelled and burned the same as at home, and was in the immediate vicinity of a hard coal field, quite the same. But an oil field, or a coal mine, or Indian village, or most anything, is a sort of relief from the leagues and leagues of snow-covered mountains between Sitka and Katalla. The known Alaskan petroleum-bearing areas are confined to the Pacific Coast regions. One is at Comptroller Bay, with an eastern extension at ^'aktag; the other lies along the margin of Alaska Peninsula. At both there are strong seepages. At the former two wells have been drilled at Katalla and produce some oil, and other tests have been made, but the production thus far can hardly have a commercial importance, although I believe it will have in time. The old village of Kayak is near by. The name, as well as the architec- ture of the Indian houses, and little grave houses on posts, and the customs ot the natives will easily convince the visitor on sight that they are not Siwas^. There is a feeling that more than the usual amount of Aleut, and Russian blood, customs and religion are mixed in them than in any others to the southward. Cape Suckling was one of the best known of the early landmarks on this coast. These great glaciers have washed, shoved and hauled millions of tons of dirt and rock to the sea, and in many places for two to six miles from shore will be apparent beds of this deposit, and at almost every shore point where one attempts to land he will have as much trouble with the mud and silt as he will with the surf or rapidly moving tides. Kayak is on one of the islands at the entrance of Controller Bay and sup- posed point of Behring's first approach to the shores of Alaska, July I 8th, 1 74 I , and of which Cook took possession for England in 1 778. PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND. While nature has with lavish hand piled valuable coal on her very sea coast and near great copper mines, she has been stingy with her harbor-making shovel. Comptroller Bay is open to the ills of the sea, and what Katalla did to Kayak, Cordova repealed to Katalla, all because of no harbor protection. At least four railroad companies are now working on roadbeds or field surveys in this oil and coal field, with an apparent intention to haul the coal a little farther to a safe harbor. Even now it is a guess to select the spot destined to be the sea terminus for the oil and anthracite coal, for both of which the consumer, from Mexico to Nome, is eagerly waiting. Natives and native villages. Russians and Russian villages, promoters and promoters' villages, have in turn thrived and fallen within the Prince William Sound country. After a long and uselul life to Alaska as a missionary and governor. Rev. John G. Brady may trace his downfall, and Promoter Reynolds his insanity, to the luring prospects of these shores. On the other hand, the profits of every considerable trading com- pany are greatly augmented; the income of the big mills and canneries are fabulously large, and prospects to them are copper lined and coal laden. Mountains of copper and gold, placer and quartz, behind the range will perhaps soon be the largest producers in the Territory. Fo handle them, the 41 GuKKcnheims and Morgans liavr omi)loyecl ihc millions ol New York C ity and lh«' hrains of such men as I iaukms and I Icncy, to whom no passes are too high or rivers deej) to cross. Ihc Alaska Home |-(ailway. promoted hy llenry D. Reynolds, attracted the press of the country hecause of advertising; the purse of the Bostomans because it was vouched for by such men as Lx-Governor Brady; the people of Seattle and 1 acoma because Reynolds threatened to withdraw his boats from Seattle and land them at lacoma, as Seattle refused and Tacoma endorsed his promotion scheme; and the whole country because of the Keystone Canyon fight between the forces of the competing railroads in the mountains above Valde/ (a similar liattle between the Guggenheims and the Bruner Company had taken place a few months prior), which was the bursting point of his development and of many of his stock jjurchasers. The next chapter was the disgrace of Brady (those knowing him best believe him innocenl of fraudulent intentions), the stampede of laborers clamoring for their hard-earned pay, the long legal fight, the reorganization now going into effect, and the insanity of Reynolds, which many Alaskans believe to be a penitentiary dodge. The town of Valde? endorsed the scheme; women's guilds, school children and everyone subscribed for stock ; hotels, papers and a bank were purchased. VALDKZ The town voted a franchise on every street to Reynolds, and pledged the life of the town to his support. Some day the largest city in Alaska will be on this sound. Valdez may have lost that chance by playing its highest card with Reynolds, and it may yet win with the reorganization. Nowhere in the world are events of importance crowding each other more than here today. It will be an interesting rivalry to watch — this fight for supremacy and the commerce of Prince William Sound. It may be Guggenheim's Copper River and North- western terminating at Cordova; it may be the Alaska Central at Seward; the Alaska Home at Valdez, or some other yet unknown railroad and port that will be the metropolis of Alaska. The government tests prove the petroleum and hard coal of Comptroller Bay and hard coal ol Matenuska to be equal to the best grades of Pennsylvania. The Bonanza, Nicola, Jumbo and other copper mines near X'aldez Creek pur- chased by the Guggenheims are but mountains of copper, worth untold millions. and yet but a drop in the bucket compared with the richness of the country drained by the Chittistone, Nizina. Chitina. Kuskulana, Kotsina and other streams flowing into Copper River, including seventy-five miles square copper stained throughout. The year 1908 was a prosperous one on these rivers for 42 gold hunters, among the most successful are the well-known Dan Kane, for whom Dan Creek is named, and Pete Monohan, the discoverer of gold on Valdez Creek, now working rich placers near the Bonanza Mines. The only free silver nuggets that I have seen from Alaska came from this country. Copper boulders weighing a hundred pounds roll down the creeks or are washed out of the gold placers, some of which have been piled up, awaiting the approaching railroad. No description of mine can overstate the value of the mineral of this country. VALDEZ. A little to the northward are the Susitna and Kuskoquim basins, also richly mineralized, and destined to be a farming country equal to or better than the Dakotas. In the great bend of the Yukon, traversed by the basins of the Xanana, Kuskoquim, Susitna and Copper Rivers, is a country somewhat like the plains of the Middle West, and in which a couple states like Iowa could and will be carved. More wheat can now be grown there per acre of the hard variety than can be produced per acre in Minnesota; likewise more bushels of potatoes or tons of hay. When the railroads reach the Tanana and ^ ukon valleys this agricultural district, the coal and oil of Comptroller Bay, and the anthracite beds of Matenuska, one of the busiest ports in the United States will be somewhere near Valdez. Valdez is not an antiquated Russian relic or rotting native village. It is one of the towns born in the gold excitement of 1 898. Judge Reed ordered a census a year ago because of an issue between the wets and drys, which showed a population of I 1 64. The Valdez-Fairbanks trail, early opened by Abercombie, who did more than any one man to discover the wilds of this country since the days of Vancouver and Malaspina, keeps business alive every day in winter as well as summer. Good schools, cable, wire, wireless, stages, newspapers, canneries, mills, copper mines, coal mines, gold mines, oil wells, railroads, cross-country trails and frequent boats, winter and summer, make Valdez a modern, busy little town. SEWARD. All I have said applies to Seward, as well as to V^aldez; and in ad- dition it may be said that few harbors in the world are better than that of Seward, and that the Alaska Central is more favored by nature than any of the other roads headed for the Yukon. It would be most fitting if Seward, named in honor of the purchaser of Alaska, should become the largest city in Alaska, and its prospects are as good as the best now. The Alaska Central will tap one of the largest beds of anthracite coal, for which it will have a down haul and perfect harbor. At the same lime it is in easy reach of the Kenai Peninsula, laden with minerals awaiting development, and the upper Cook's Inlet country, as well as the Copper River country now being staked by other railroads. RAILROADS. The litigation of the Alaska Central was finished two months ago. and peace reigns once more among the stockholders, and the road will proceed rapidly, as about twenty-five miles of grade is already complete and timbers on hand. Both the Alaska Central and the Copper River and Northwoslern have pro- gressed beyond the fifty-mile post w ith rails, and this year will add much. T he Guggenheims have terminal station, shops, etc.. erected; the road from Cordova to Abercombie Rapids, fifty-four miles, is complete and known as the Copper River Railroad as far as the Tusnuna River, above which it is known as the Copper River and Northwestern. Only a few miles of the latter has been built, but it will this year be completed to Bremner Flats, and such boat and train service connected as will enable not only the company but the country to develop 43 rapidly. I liey will have five Rood boats on the Copper River and a small l)oat will operate as far up as Gulkina. I liis service will enable the miners to get into Copper Center. Gulkina. or even Valdez Creek without much hardship — advantage of which I expect to take for myself. From these points and others trails lead across the country and along every river and creek in every direction. The road work of the government is commendable, but madccjuate for the busi- ness IrafTic, which is no fault of Major F^ichardson in charge of it. I he population of Prince William Sound and ( ook's Inlet includes some •nl all the native races — hunter trapper, trader, canneryman. prospector, promoter and miner. I he Indian villages are numerous but small. I he Greek Church of Russia and Russian Creoles may be found in almost every village. There are numerous islands of importance in the Sound. Hinchingbroke. on which Baranoff located Port Etches, where he built his ships for the Sitka Expedition (the native name for the island and village is Nutchek). was a Rus- sian trading post for many years, and is a fishing station now. Later Orca became the most important village and largest fishery. Now the Ellamar mines and village by the same name is a busy place of 500. and the mines on La I ouche and Knight Islands are almost as industriously engaged digging out blocks of copper for the smelter at Tacoma or elsewhere. The Ellamar miens are under the sea at high tide and within sixty feet of the surface. I am informed that they will place a coffer-dam before proceeding to remove more metal. This will enable them to work the level between high and low tides, at that point about twenty-five feet. The tides in some of the arms of the sea in this vicinity approach thirty feet and are very high at all points for several hundred miles up and down the coast. There is an Indian village at Tatitlike. but like elsewhere it is in the same state of decay that the race is. I believe there are five thousand residents in the vicinity of Prince William Sound, a thousand in the valleys of the Copper River and tributaries, two thousand at Seward and Susitna River and tributaries, a thousand on Kanai Peninsula, besides another thousand on the shores of Cook's Inlet. This estimate includes a mixture of natives and Russian Creoles not exceeding a fourth of the whole number. 1 he development of the coal and oil at Comptroller Bay (or Bering River) and at Matanuska and of the mineral in the basins of the Copper and Susitna Rivers will double this population every year or two. While the ports of Vladivostok, St. Petersburg, those in Norway and Eastern Canada in the same latitude, or even a thousand miles farther south in places, are frozen, these ports are mild and open. In fact, no oter ports in the world so far north are open and free of ice in the winter season. Neither does any other country in the world in the same latitude (or five hundred miles farther south, for that matter) have such mild climate. The influence of the Japanese Current are wafted inland up the Susitna and Copper and over the plains of the Kuskoquim. which with the long hours of daylight and warm sum- mer sun will make this a better farming country than other lands much farther south. COOK'S INLET. Hope. Homer, Sunrise, Kenai. Knik. Tynook. Seldovia. Kusiloff and other villages, canenry stations, trading stores and mining camps on Cook's Inlet; Coal Bay. Turnagain Arm. Knik Arm and othr branches ol the Inlet; the hanging glaciers and beautiful glacial streams; the gold discoveries of Kenai Peninsula; the old Russian coal mines and deserted villages of a hundred years ago; the new coal mines of recent years; the millions of birds and fish that come to these waters in season, make this one of the most wonderful spots in Alaska, of which so much can be written, that we are obliged to pass it by in this short work. In a few years it will be as well known as some of the western states, and more resourceful than many of the eastern. 44 Here came nearly all the early navigators searching for the Northwest' Passage, Sir John Franklin or fur; their successors establishing salmon canneries, and they, in turn, followed by promoters of oil, coal, copper and gold schemes. The birch and poplar of the East meets the spruce from the West. The forest of the South gives way to the tundra and treeless slopes of the North. Siwash to the southward, Athabascan eastward, Esquimaux northward, and to the West Aleut. This is the limit of the northerly coasting. From here we produce south of westerly toward Japan to the end of the Aleutian Islands, which almost reach the Asiatic coast — it is another kind of country. Here come the Coast mountains and the Rockies. At the head waters of the Copper and Susitna, and Tanana, and Kuskoquim they unite in a climax, the apex of a continent, then go off westward together until, step by step, they sink deeper and deeper into the sea. disappearing almost within sight of the shore of Japan. Here the boats from Seattle turn back. And as we trust ourselves to the old reliable "Dora" we seem like saying farewell to human kind and plunging into silence and the unknowable. But before we enter into that journey we must finish a few subjects belonging to the first division of this book. INDIANS BETWEEN DIXON ENTRANCE AND COOK'S INLET. While we are inlhe midsl ol the coast, or Siwash, Indians, we will reler to them m a general way, to which we are limited m this short work. Very little that is reliable can be learned of their past from then own state- ments ; their homes, implements, etc., are not enduring. 1 he Russians looked only for fur. likewise the Hudson Bay Company. The white man left them to the last for research. The exhaustive research commenced a few years ago by the Jessup Expedition among the Kwakiutis should be extended along the entire Pacific and Arctic coasts. Evidences, dimmed by the erosion of years, on the rock; charred and mummified remains in antiquated caves and vaults; implements of ivory, stone, copper, iron, bone, resisting decay or turned up by tailing trees hundreds of years old, and shells, bone and debris from the camplire many feet beneath the mould, abundantly prove the habitation of a primitive race here. Anthropologists and archaeologists have usually said that prehistoric man kept away from the coasts. That may be somewhat true. I would rather believe, however, that the present coast lines were many fathoms under the sea when the roofs of the continents were first inhabited by man. Nevertheless it has been unquestionably proven that people lived here during an extremely early period. lo use the comomn terms, the natives of Alaska have been usually divided in four distinct families, the Esquimaux, Aleut, Athabascan and Siwash; but when they are classed accordin to their blood they will be divided in two classes: First — The Athabascan is the typical native red man, or Indian, of America and inhabits the interior of Alaska, but breaks across the mountains, coming to the coast at Cook's Inlet and vicinity, where his blood and language shows in the Yakutats. Second — Ihe Coast Indian, from the ColumlMa Riser northward, is one of a distinct race. His flat nose, squinty, oblique eyes, high cheek bones, short bow^ legs and broad chest plainly disclose the Mongolian and l.squimaux blood (of which I will speak later). The Coast Indian, with his soft, yellow com- plexion, is not a red man or North American Indian at all, and is no farther removed from the Aleut than the latter is from the Esquimaux. I he Esquimaux. 45 Aleut and Sivvash should be classed as different families of the same parent stock, springing up originally in Asia, or mingling with people of Japanese or C hinese ancestry in America. ( ourageous chieftains for centuries no doubt led their clans or "kvvans in chase, in war and in peace, but until the advent ol the "paleface" no history recorded their deeds of valor or just government, except as were carved on totems or painted on rocks or handed down "by word of mouth." I' rom the days of Baranoff and Vancouver many daring Siwash, I ecumseh- likf. att.ukcd the explorers, settlers, forts, traders and missionaries, resisting the encroachments and religion single handed or with such forces as he could assemble. These have become well known, including the following chiefs in particular: Seattle, the friend of the whites on Puget Sound; Annahootz and Katlean. whose tribes burned Sitka and murdered the Russians; Legaic, who resisted the efforts of Duncan among the Indians south of Dixon's Entrance; Skowl. on Prince of Wales Island, whose people were the last to fight Chris- tianity; Shaaks, the renowned chief of Wrangell, and Kohkluk, of the Chil- kahts. For twenty-five or more years there have been no wars to fight. 1 he old chiefs have died. The missionaries. Bible and God have overcome the most barbaric of the customs, and the government of the whites has taken the place of the chief, so that the occasion for a great man has not arisen, and never will in the old way. We have some half-bloods on the coast abundantly able to practice law anywhere, or fill the executive chair of a state. But the end of the race is inevitable. The Indians on this coast are included in the general term "Siwash." On Vancouver Island and near it live the Kwakiutl tribes. In passing I quote from "Ethnology of the Coast Indian Tribes of Alaska," by Ensign A. P. Niblack, U. S. N.: "The strip of Coast territory extending from Puget Sound to Cape Saint Elias, and bordered on the east by the Cascade range of mountains, known in general as the Northwest Coast, is a continuous archipelago about 1 .000 miles long and 1 50 miles broad. I hrough its narrow channels winds the steamer route to Sitka, and dotted along its shores are the picturesque winter villages of the Coast Indian tribes, an ethnic group, corresponding to one of Bastian's geographical areas, materially differing not only from the hunting Indians of the interior, but in themselves presenting some of the most interesting problems in anthropology. The northern Indians of this region, comprising the Tlingit. Haida and Tsimshian. may be called the wood-carving group; and the southern Indians, the Kwakiutl. Wakashan and Coast Salish. the cedar-bark group, such designations being based on the peculiarities of each in the use of wood and cedar bark, respectively, for industrial, ceremonial and other purposes. "There have been three semi-official estimates of the Tlingit tribes of Alaska. The earliest is that in the archives ol the Hudson Bay Company under Sir James Douglas (1839), made by Mr. John Work, a factor of the com- pany. The total as given, including the Kaigani tribes of the Haidan stock, and adding on the Sitka and Hoonyah. which were omitted, is 8.973. In 1861 Lieutenant Wehrman. of the Russian Navy, in the emploj' of the Russian-Ameri- can Company, compiled a census of Tlingit and Kaigani, giving the total popu- lation ol free and slaves as 8,597. The third estimate appears in the Census Report of 1880. and places the Tlingit and Kaigani population at 7.223. That the enumeration is faulty goes without saying, when no real attempt was made to actually count them. What is needed is a census taken in the winter when the Indians are gathered in the villages, and it should include the enumeration of the different sub-totems and totems composing the great phratnes of these tribes. This should be supplemented by an accurate plotting of the Indian 46 hunting and fishing grounds which have been held in the different famihes and handed down for generations. A collection of the various myths and traditions, with ail the local variations, and a study of the significance of the carved wooden columns in the villages is also needed to throw light upon their intricate totemic system. The semi-religious sects and the elaborate ceremonials and dances would in themselves constitute a special branch of study. In the United States National Museum is a magnificent collection of ethnological material from this region. What is needed is a systematic governmental supervision of the collec- tion of anthropological data, and a comparison of results with those obtained in the southern portion of this region." Franz Boas has written about 400 pages for the Smithsonian Institute concerning the Indians in this vicinity, to which any reader may refer for an exhaustive account. The extensive research was made possible by the liberal contribution of Morris K. Jessup, the philanthropist, and the thorough knowledge of Mr. George Hunt, of Fort Rupert. I quote the following from Dr. Boas, which will apply quite well to the coast as far as Cooks Inlet: "TtlF INDIAN TRIBES OF THE NORTH PACIFIC CO.AST. " I he Pacific Coast of America between Juan de Fuca Strait and ^ akutat Bay is inhabited by a great many Indian tribes distinct in physical characteristics and distinct in languages, but one in culture. Their arts and industries, their customs and beliefs, differ so much from those of all other Indians that they form one of the best defined cultural groups of our continent. "Extending our view a little beyond the territory defined above, the passes along which the streams of culture flowed most easily were the Columbia River in the south and the pass leading along Salmon and Bella Coola rivers to Dean Inlet and Bentinck Arm. Of less importance are Chilcat Pass, Stikine River, Nass and Skeena rivers and Fraser River. Thus it will be seen that there are only two important and four less important passes, over which the people of the coast came into contact with those of the interior. 1 hey have occupied a rather isolated positon and have been able to develop a peculiar culture without suffering important invasions from other parts of America. "As the precipitation all along the coast is very great, its lower parts are covered with dense forests which furnish wood for building houses, canoes, imple- ments and utensils. Among them the red cedar {TIniVa giganlea) is the most prominent, as it furnishes the natives with material for most manufactures. Its wood serves for building and carving; its bark is used for making clothing and ropes. The yellow cedar, pine, fir, hemlock, spruce, yew tree, maple, alder, are also of importance to the Indians. T he woods abound with numerous kinds of berries, which are eagerly sought for. The kelp and seaweeds which grow abundantly all along the shore are also utilized. "In the woods the deer, the elk, the black and grizzly bear, tiio woll and many other animals are found. The mountain goat lives on the higher ranges of the mainland. The beaver, the otter, marten, mink and fur seal furnish valuable skins, which were formerly used for blankets. I he Indians keep in their villages dogs which assist the hunters. "The staple fod of the Indians is, however, furnished by the .sea. Seals, lions and \vhales are found in considerable numbers: but the people depend almost entirely upon various species of salmon, the halibut and the oulai lion or candlefish (7 haleichthys pacificus, Girard), which are caught in enormous quan- tities. Various specimens of cod and other .sea fish also furnish food. Herrings visit the coast early in the spring. In short, there is such an abundance of animal life in the sea that the Indians live almost solely uj')on it. Besides lish, they gather various kinds oi shellfish, sea urchins and cuttlefish. 47 " I he proi)l(' arc. thorrforc, essentially fishermen, all other pursuits being of secondary imiwrlance. Whales arc pursued only hy the tribes of the west coast of Vancouver Island. Other tribes are satisfied with the dead carcasses of whales which drift ashore. Sea lions and seals are harpooned, the barbed harpoon point being either attached to a bladder or tied to the stern of the canoe. The harpoon lines are made of cedar bark and sinews. I he meat of these sea animals is eaten, while their intestines are used for the manufacture of bow- strings and bags. Codfish and halibut are caught by means of hooks. These are attached to fish lines made of kelp. I he hook is provided with a sinker, while the upper part is kept afloat by a bladder or a wooden buoy. Cuttlefish are used for bait. The fish are either roasted over or near the fire or boiled in wooden kettles by means of red-hot stones. Those intended for use in winter are split in strips and dried in the sun or over the fire. Salmon are caught in weirs and fish traps when ascending the rivers, or by means of nets dragged between two canoes. Later in the season salmon are harpooned. For fishing m deeper water, a very long double-pointed harpoon is used. Herring and oulachon are caught by means of a long rake. I he oulachon are tried in canoes or kettles filled with water, which is heated by means of red-hot stones. The oil is kept in bottles made of dried kelp. In winter, dried halibut and salmon dipped in oil is one of the principal dishes of the tribes living on the outer coast. Clams and mussels are collected by the women ; they are eaten fresh, or strung on sticks or strips of cedar bark and dried for winter use. Cuttlefish are caught by means of long sticks; sea eggs are obtained by means of round bag nets. Fish roe, particularly that of herring, is collected in great quantities, dried and eaten with oil. "Sea grass, berries and roots are gathered by the women. The sea grass is cut, formed into square cakes and dried for winter use. 1 he same is done with several kinds of berries, which when used are dissolved in water and eaten mixed with fish oil. Crabapples are boiled and kept in their juice until late in the winter. They are also eaten with fish oil. The food is kept in large boxes which are bent of cedar wood, the bottom being sewed to the sides. "In winter deer are hunted. Formerly bows and arrows were used in their pursuit, but these have now been replaced by guns. The bow was made of yew wood or of maple. The arrows had stone, bone and copper points. Bows and arrows were carried in wooden quivers. Deer are also captured by being driven into large nets made of cedar bark, deer sinews or nettles. Elks are hunted in the same way. For smaller animals traps are used. Deer and bears are also caught in large traps. Birds were shot with arrows provided with a thick, blunt point. Deer skins are worked into leather and used for various purposes, prin- cipally for ropes and formerly for clothing. " I he natives of this region go barelegged. The principal part of their clothing IS the blanket, and this was made of tanned skins or woven of mountain goat wool, dog's hair, feathers or a mixture of both. The thread is spun on the bare leg and by means of a spindle. Another kind of blanket is made of soft cedar bark, the warp being tied across the weft. These blankets are trimmed with fur. At the present lime woolen blankets are most extensively used. At festive occasions "button blankets" are worn. Most of these are light blue blankets with a red border set with mother-of-pearl buttons. Many are also adorned with the crest of the owner, which is cut out in red cloth and sewed on to the blanket. Men wear a shirt under the blanket, while women wear a petticoat in addition. Before the introduction of woolen blankets, women used to wear an apron made of cedar bark and a belt made of the same material. When canoein or working on the beach, the women wear large water-tight hats made of basketry. In rainy weather a water-tight cape or poncho made of cedar bark IS used. 48 " The women dress their hair in two plaits, while the men wear it compara- tively short. The latter keep it back from the face by means of a strap of fur or cloth tied around the head. Ear and nose ornaments are used extensively, rhey are made of bone and abalone shell. The women of the most northern tribes (from about Skeena River northward) wear labrets. "A great variety of baskets are used — large wicker baskets for carrying fish and clams, cedar-bark baskets for purposes of storage. Mats made of cedar bark, and in the south such made of rushes, are used for bedding, packing, seats, dishes, covers of boxes and similar purposes. "In olden times work in wood was done by means of stone and bone imple- ments. Trees were felled with stone axes and split by means of wooden or bone wedges. Boards were split out of cedar trees by means of these wedges. After the rough cutting was finished, the surface of the wood was planed with adzes, a considerable number of which were made of jade and serpentine boulders, which materials are found in several rivers. Carvings were executed with stone and shell knives. Stone mortars and pestles were used for mashing berries. Paint pots of stone, brushes and stencils made of cedar bark, formed the outfit of the Indian painter. Pipes were made of slate, of bone or of wood. "Canoes are made of cedar wood. The types of canoes vary somewhat among the different tribes of the coast, depending also largely upon whether the canoe is to be used for hunting, traveling or fishing. The canoe is propelled and steered by means of paddles. "The houses are made of wood and attain considerable dimensions. 1 he details of construction vary considerably among the various tribes, but the gen- eral appearance is much alike from Comox to Alaska, while farther south the square northern house gives way to the long house of the Coast Salish." The native population is not now. nor never was, reliably counted on the coast or in Alaska. The Indian with his family migrates from herring to salmon, salmon to seal, seal to deer, deer to berries, etc. His life is one of existence only. The simplest foods, raw at that, and a blanket are enough to make him perfectly content. The spreading branches of a tree, the canopy of heaven, a spruce bough or bark hut, a shack, a skin teepee or most any convenient pretense for shelter is his home as he roams in search of food. If his stomach is full, the house, whatever it may be, is a mansion and the country a most desirable one. 1 hese habitations are everywhere, but not one in ten are occupied, which fact should be taken into consideration when estimating the people. The statistics should be taken at a time when the Indians are all in the villages, and they should be numbered and scheduled in the family or tribe to which they belong. I o use their tribe totem, or badge, would be very pleasing to them and more readily understood. 1 he Indians are changing their manner of living. Many of them go with the whaling or cod boats to the Arctic waters, others to the canneries along the coast, others to the interior, some to the mills, some to the garbage dumps of the towns and cities and some to the hop fields. One year one place, the next another; sometimes alone, at others with a large family or many families. I heir old customs have little or no binding force now. 1 hey marry on short acquaint- ance into any tribe, and separate at pleasure. All but the oldest can speak English, and they speak their own dialect, or "Chinook." Chinook is a trade jargon. Mr. Hale early prepared a list of Chinook words. It was found to consist of the following: f- rom Nootka. 18; English. 41 ; French. 34; Chinook Indian. 111. I find no trouble :n under- standing them or in making them understand me (when ihey wish to do so) any- where on the coast. 49 General Hallc.k in his offn lal report t^avc tin- follownit/ population of vSiwasli on the Alaskan C oasl : Hydas, Prince of Wales Island 600 Hennagas. Cape r-*olc 300 Chatsinas. Northern Islands of Alexander Arrhi|)clav; > 300 Tongas, Tonga Island, etc 500 Slikeens, on Stikeen River and coast 1,000 kakes. on Kupreanoff Island 1 .200 kuins, Frederick Sound 800 koot/-noo.-, Arimirally island 800 Awks, Tahkoo River 800 I ahkoos and Sundowns, on coast near I ahkoo River 500 Chilkahts, Linn Canal . 2,000 Hood-su-noo-hoos, Chatham Straits 1,000 Hunnahs (Hoo-noos), Linn Canal and Cape Spencer 1,000 Sitkas, Baranoff Island 1,200 Copper River 150 kenai, north of Copper River 2,500 Total Sivvash (1869). 14.650 Elliott, Dall, Jackson and others in those days more qualified to numerate the natives than persons unfamiliar with them, usually reported the natives to be fewer in number than above given. At the present time no tribe or "kwan" is larger than it was then. Some have entirely disappeared, and others nearly so. My own opinion is that the whole Indian population on the Pacific Coast, from Dixon Entrance to Cooks Inlet (excepting the ^ akutats) will not exceed 10,000 population. The Rus- sian estimate for 1838 in whole of Alaska was 40,000; south of "^I'akutat, 10,000. INDIAN RELIGION. It can hardly be said that the native Siwash had a religion, but such as it was It consisted of witchcraft, traditions, legends, superstitions, shamanism and frenzied fear of evil spirits. The Siwash does not fear or worship God. He fears the Devil ; and his religious efforts are put forth to appease, deceive, frighten, cajole, or in some manner outwit, outrun or outdo him. He does not call upon God to assist him in this, but uses all his craft and cunning, all his knowledge of escape learned from the wild animals, all his fanati- cism, all the baths, herbs, fires, etc., believed to be injurious to devils, all his hideous paints, masks, dances and incantations or songs, and in the end. if the sick do not recover, if the hunt is no more successful, if famine, pestilence or other trouble grows worse, he calls in the whole family, or the witch doctor or the Shaman. And if still unfortunate in obtaining relief from the devil a witch may be pointed out among his people and tortured or killed, or the village may be deserted forever. No good fortune is attributed to God, but to the licking of the devil or prowess of the Indian. All misfortune, however, is charged to the Devil. It may be the earthquake, smoking volcano, elements of the weather, unfavorable season, smallpox, chasing of the fish or game, loss in war, in any event, it is always the Devil. No wonder he wears rabbit feet, asafetida, teeth, claws, beaks, stones and the like, when he considers many of them as charms against the evil one. No wonder he adorns himsell so badly with masques, paints, etc. They give him success, health and life, whatever and wherever his mission may be. 50 He did not hesitate to take the Hfe of his parent or best friend if con- victed of witchcraft, nor to pay to the Shaman or witch doctor the last blanket or chattel he possessed for relief from his fancied misfortune. Instead of lookm to God for protection, he looks to his charms, one of the best being the totem of his tribe. His philosophical, stoical, ancestrial, devil-fearing theology is more similar to that of the Chinese than of any other people. The same may be said with regard to his contented theory ol life, his atti- tude toward women and children, the fearless manner in which he dies, and many other phases of his life. His wrongs magnify before us. We should not forget that in ma.iy locali- ties in our own country now we find people of our own race believing in witch- craft. And while he was burning witches on the Pacific Coast we were e.xecuting them on the Atlantic. A moment ago I said he was like the Chinese in his attitude toward chil- dren (practicing female infanticide). Perhaps I should have found the likeness more nearly at home, where such practices are ten times worse than they ever were with the Siwash. His creed permitted it; we are traitors to ours. One author terms the religion "Devil worship." It is generally known as "Shamanism," and is about the same as that of the ancient Tartars, and still practiced in Northeastern Asia. The first white man to penetrate the unknown Alaska found that the interior Indians had a tradition of a flood, or glacial period, and another of the creation. When a research was made on the caost, it was found that the Indians had similar traditions long prior to the coming of the first white. Traditions enough can yet be secured from them, but those coming from such reliable men as Elliott, Dall or Jackson, secured while the Indian was still living in his own way, are most desired. I quote the folowin from Dall: "Their religion is a feeble Polytheism. Yell is the maker of wood and water. He put the sun, moon and stars in their places. He lives in the east, near the headwaters of the Naas River. * * * There was a time when man groped in the darkness in search of the world. At that time the Thlinket lived who had a wife and sister. He loved the former so much that he did not permit her to work. Eight little red birds, called kun, were always around her. One day she spoketo a stranger. The little birds flew and told the jealous husband, who prepared to make a box to shut his wile up. He killed all his sister's children because they looked at his wife. Weeping, the mother went to the seashore. A whale saw her and asked her the cause of her grief, and when informed, told her to swallow a small stone from the beach and drink some sea water. In eight months she had a son whom she hid from her brother. I his son was Yehl (God). At that time the sun, moon and stars were kept by a rich chief in separate boxes, which he allowed no one to touch. Yehl, by strategy, secured and opened these boxes so that the moon and stars shone in the sky. When the sun box was opened, the people, astonished at the unwonted glare, ran ofl into the woods, mountains and even into the water, becoming animals and fish. He also provided fire and water. I laving arranged everything for the I hlinkets (Siwash) he disappeared where neither man nor spirit can penetrate." There are similar traditions and legends for everything and of every place of sufficient interest to a Siwash for a subject of meditation. I he stories of the Creation, of the worm, fi.sh, mountain, sea. etc.. are numerous and as weird and tanciful as those of the earth or themselves. 1 he brilliant aurora, smoking mountain, important s.ilmon and the like are big subjects for bigger stories full of phantoms, ghosts, goblins and bugaboos too 51 iiunuTous lo mention ni a puMu ution as brief as ihis. I lie above story of the Creation is a fair sample of millions, at leastan inexhaustible supply. The most interesting feature of that story is: Where did they get the material for making it so murh Iikr our own story of the ( reafion ;ind fatherless Savior? BURIAL. If you lived m a country where ghoulish animals and birds, gormand-Iike, wer always and everywhere ready lo devour the dead, and you had no tools or lumber or even a spade with which lo make a coffin or dig a grave, what would you do with your dead? Circumstances, little by little, would make a custom, and custom makes law. Which IS exactly what happened to the Siwash. I ie mummified and inclosed them in caves, as near Sitka (where a perfectly preserved mummy was found two years ago) ; rolled them in blankets or incased them in a bundle of sticks or split slabs and hung them in a tree or on a pole scaffolding, as at Fort Rupert; cremated them and incased the ashes in the hollow of the family totem pole with those other members of the family cremated before; or inclosed them in a small cache or gravehouse, erected from the ground or from a pole scaffolding six or more feet above the ground, as at Wrangell and elsewhere. The modes of burial prove nothing as to their religion or ancestry. It simply shows that they honored their dead by placing them where they would be least disturbed and best preserved. I notice that several methods were used by the same tribes originally. Then came the whites with spade and Bible and persuaded them that it would be better to bury in the ground, which they prac- tically all do now. Within another century we will be back to their method — cremation. MARRIAGES. At the present time marriages among the Siwash Indians are of the "com- mon-law" kind usually, and divorces are as frequent and easily obtained as among the whites at Seattle. In fact, neither the old customs of the Indians or new of the missionary are observed. In general it may be said that few laws of the whites are observed, and fewer customs of the natives followed now, excepting such Christianized com- munities as Sitka and Metlakahtla. The officers of our government and courts give little attention to the con- duct of the native, so long as he does not involve our race or property. One of the missionaries tells of open murder of a wife, unpunished. The Indian even braged that he purchased his wife and had a right to kill her if he chose. Where tribal government existed, no doubt our officers had little authority, as was decided in our Supreme Court December 14, 1883 — holding that our Federal Courts could not convict a tribe Indian of murder. The forms of marriage years ago were as varied among the tribes as those of burial, and the bride had little or nothing to say in the matter. She might be purchased or stolen by the groom, or exchanged by her parents for a trinket. She is considered a chattel by the husband, treated as a slave by him, and is a subject of ridicule and abuse by the children. All the work is hers to do, except the lordly occupation of hunting. At one time many of the tribes imprisoned the girl for several months as she arrived at womanhood, and then pierced her lip near the corner of the mouth and inserted a stick, piece of ivory, silver pin or the like, which was enlarged as she grew older, or became a wife, a mother, etc. Some of the old squaws had large round-ended pieces of stone inserted, .so heavy and big as to draw the features of the face all out of shape. Perhaps for 52 the same barbaric reasons that the Chinese have when they black the teeth or bind the feet of their women and girls, or other natives of Alaska have when they tattoo theirs. I attempted to get a list of the numerous grounds oi divorce, and was told that a squaw had no grounds for divorce, but that her husband might divorce her for laziness, drunkenness, and for anything he chose, except I did not find the ground or reason of the white man — "incompatibility of temperaments." Prostitution, bigamy, polygamy and even incest have been common, and even now occur not infrequently. A man's wealth is often measured by the number of squaws that he pos- sesses for wives. They are the most faithful slaves. By their industry he ac- quires numerous blankets and chattels. These he can give to his friends at the Potlatch, and they in time will at their Potlatches give him as much or more. Numerous kinships are added to his iamily and tribe, so that it is only a ques- tion of time when a man with many wives becomes a powerful chieftain. SLAVERY. The "Siwash" had their slaves, mostly women, taken from the weak Stick Indians on the ^ ukon, or some other weak tribe of the interior or Puget Sound country. 1 he treatment of these slaves was more cruel than ol the wives, not much better than of the dogs, and ofttimes as atrocious and bloody as that of the witches. The owner of a slave had full authority to inflict any injury upon or kill his servant. Although slavery is practically discontinued, we here and there find a slave in servitude or at liberty choosing voluntarily to remain in the land of his master, but the social rating of a liberated slave continues to be that of a slave. CANOES. On this timber-covered shore, where the larger part of the food comes from the sea; where the forest is so dense that migration is obstructed; the mountains too high to climb and the wind and tides so useful for motor power, the canoe becomes the most useful of the Indian's possessions. I ales and traditions of these Indians associate the canoe from the begin- ning. At first they must have been made with the stone ax or chisel, then hard- ened copper, ivory and bits of iron. It vvasnecessary to fell the tree and convey it to the shore, then to dig out the interior and nicely round the sides, until it became a thin shell, when it was filled with water and hot stones placed into the water until it was boiling, and when well steamed and softened it was warped and braced in graceful lines to glide over the water with the least resistance. I hese canoes are in all sizes from baby dimensions for children or one person up to war canoes large enough for 1 00 men. We used one large enough for 50 men last year for cruising along the shores of Alaska, propelled by a gasoline engine. I believe there are almost as many of these canoes on this coast as there are Indians. A squaw in one of them could make a Cornell oarsman in a Peterborough "go some." Man, woman and child fit to them as though they were a part of the craft. Everywhere they look the same, everywhere the same neat, ad/-like prints in straight rows show how carefully and same-like they are made. Old canoes, made generations ago before while man's tools were obtained, appear the same as now. Some of the potlatch bowls and totem poles show similar construction and marks of that universally used hand-adz. 53 SHAMF.N. MDSIC. SONGS AND DANCES. A Padcrcwski musical, symphony ordiaslra, colonial hall. jig. huck and win^ dance, (luadiillc, o|)cra or some other classical or otherwise of ours, would to an untutored, unsaved savage seem as strange, vulgar, inharmonious as his potlatch. funeral, marriage, war or other dance, his battle-chants, death-wails or other songs and his rude skin drum or other music would the first time lo one of our race. Our civilized, calcimined maidens at a formal evening or colonial ball can oulslrip in more ways than one the most comely Siwash belle at a chief's potlatch dance. I he Indian has his songs of war and peace; ol death and birth; of this life and the next. The following is a portion of one translated by Dall, as sung by a squaw while in hunger she waited for the return of her husband singing to the pappoose. "The wind blows over the ^ ukon ; My husband hunts the deer on the Koyukum Mountains. Ahmi! Ahmi! Sleep little one. There is no wood for the fire. The stone ax is broken, my husband carries the other. Where is the sun-warmth? Hid in the dam of the beaver, waiting spring time. Ahmi! Ahmi! Sleep little one, wake not." Numerous songs with the music may be found in the valuable collection by Fran/. Boas. Medicine dances, except those given for entertainment, arc rarely seen now, but I quote from Karr as an eye witness to a real one: "Presently he stripped himself and opened his box of charmes, took out a wooden figure of a crane, with a frog clinging to its back, with a lot of sea- otter teeth and carved walrus tusks. The latter he placed on the stomach of the dieing man. Meantime the drums and sticks kept up the monotinous noise, and the heat and stench were increased by the fire. He grew more and more ex- cited, his contortions and jerks more active, crouching, gesticulating. -i^ ^ * At a sign his hair was uncoiled by an assistant magican. its length was at least five feet * * every minute or two white eagle down was blown over and stuck fast to his head and bare body, giving hair and skin a hoary and ancient look. ' The patient soon died. 1 he hideous masks, rattles, and dress of the shaman, his wierd songs and yells, his howls and groans, his writhing aggonizing contortions, and his exhaustion and collapse, continues until the pay runs out, the patient recovers or dies. The shaman is more feared than the chief, and in some ways has more power, at least over the devil. He is too sacred and lazy to work or risk his life in grave peril. Ever since the coast Indians have been known, the medicine man, shaman, or witch doctor, has been losing power and influence. At the present time the Indian (unlike his cousin in the states) has no government or native doctor. I he pulmonary and rheumatic diseases kill or maim a large percent of the natives. A disease known among them as "Hip Joint Disease" is very common even where they are most sanitary, as in Sitka. I saw young and old, men and women, swinging themselves on crutches or dragging their helpless lower extremeties as a result of this disease. Possibly it is a sort of rheumatism. POTLACH. The potlach may be given by and Indian because he thinks he will not live much longer, and by giving away his blankets and other gifts and a feast to his friends he pays his debts and makes an honorable name for himself. Or it 54 may be given as an announcing event of the retiring of an old or beginning of a new chief. Or it may be given for the purpose of outranking a rival, or many other reasons. But some of the underliemg reasons are, that the giver is entitled to and will get in return any where from 25 to 200 percent for his gifts from the recipient or his friends, and a great name. Therefore it has a three-fold bene- ficial result — it makes his rival poor, it makes him rich, and gives him honor and rank. Invitations to these potlaches are often sent out to thousands, covering the whole coast from Yakutat to Puget Sound, and several months may be re- quired to make the canoe journey. Eating, drinking and gay festivities, georgeous dress and lavish gifts continue until the givers estate is exhausted and he is ap- parently as poor as poverty. But that is the richest moment of his life, his honor and generosity will be handed down from generation to generation, totems high up on the top of a pole will announce to all coming near for years the greatness of this man, and the gifts from time to time will be repaid with usury. At these gatherings the history, traditions, legands, customs and news are related, and thus disseminated and perpetuated ; the young bucks and squaws form new acquaintances and often marry; matters of tribal importance are dis- cussed and decided; in brief for a people that has no school, church, books, news- papers, courts or law-making assemblies, it serves for all purposes. At different seasons of the year hundreds of natives gather at Yakutat Bay to take seal for the year's supply, or at Dixon Entrance or Nase River to take herring for the same purpose, or at other places for salmon, and these meetings are important as the potlach. They unify the tribes. Blankets are the medium of exchange, and values are fixed by comparison, for example a canoe is worth 10 blankets (single). A good quality of government blanket, a double blanket and specially made blankets are worth more than the single blanket used as the base of value. There are engraved copper plates in use on the coast which, according to their engraving, are worth a certain number of blankets. The ordinary cheap white blanket is perhaps the correct standard now. The Chilkat blanket, so much sought by tourists and playing such prominent part in the display of chiefs and extravagant dress on important occasions, is worth from $50 to $1 50. TOTEMS. Totems from Seattle to Valdez, Chief Totems, Potlatch Totems. Tribe Totems, Grave Totems, Totems for sale, of slate, of bone of wood, of ivory woven into baskets, and blankets, for two cents up to two hundred dollars each. Like the canoes and dogs, they are almost as numerous as the natives, and as illy kept. Many lie on the earth, rotting records are they, some carved two. three hundred years ago. Others, yet standing, have but dim traces of the bright paints which once made them look like the wise, silly, courag'i'ous, sacred, ludic- rous, stern or frendly faces of men, or of birds, animals, fishes and devils. In those days they marked lone cabins, deserted graves, also thriving villages and homes of an undisturbed race. Now they lie rotting and hidden as they fall like forest trees. None of the old ones are preserved, none ever repainted, no new ones made, except for commercial purposes. Neither is a "Siwash" born in these times who will replace the ancestor of totemic days. The young man works in the mill and cannery or is devoted to idleness, hardly able to speak in the language of his father and mother. But few native dwellings show the mythological totem faces of old. fewer are oc- cupied at all. I he canoes, blankets mittens, etc., are more often of the com- merical kind from the store, containing no badge of the tribe or clan, nor fancy needlework of the squaws, as of old. 55 56 ■n I'CKM 57 C on^ress should < (jnic Uj tl)f rescue ol lliese jnoijle, and make more public parks where totems could he shown and preserved as at Indian Kivcr Park, Silka, where the only new and perfect totems can now he seen. If Hassan, now roltniK in the hushes, was on the hanks of the Hudson all the senators of New Lngland and the Atlantic Coast would join in making it a National Park the next session, and save every shack and pole, but for the Pacific not "six bits" could be obtamed. I he native had no written language, and no hooks of record, to hand down to prosterity, therefore, Egyptian-like, he painted and carved his family tree, great events, history, etc., in that hieroglyphical tolemic sign language nowhere so uniformally used and clearly understood as among the natives be- tween Puget Sound and Yakufat. But few Indians could tell much about this queer race custom and fewer would if they could. White men have not thoroughly mastered it. 1 he sand- covered ruins of the deserts of Asia and Africa hide no more interesting mysteries than the sills of the Cascades and forest debris of the Alaska Coast. While a remnant of ttottering representatives of the genuine native, his resi- dence, totem, basket and the like remain, the time and cause would be most op- portune for exhaustive research. If some one with the money and philanthrophy of a Jessup would come forth, I am sure men well able and qualified would join in the task of thoroughly exhuming and recording the past and present of these people and their ancestors from Dixon Entrance to Pt. Barrow. Certainly one or two of the twenty-five colleges and universities now digging m the sands of the Orient might profitably turn their spades to the newest shore of the newest continent, deciper the to- temic language and dig up the numerous evidences of a strange people on the very limit of the Occident. The transportation companies, towns and people of Alaska will lose a very valuable asset if they allow these old villages and totems to disappear. Many tourists come across the continent and even from Europe to see them, and in- cidentally become interested in the country. Suppose some native should ask one of us, why we erect monuments and what they indicate, and to explain the W. O. W., the Cross, or one of a thousand other emblems? Would our answer be more intelligent to the Indian than his to us? I believe the relation of the ^'akutat to the interim., natives is the reason why he is not a totem Indian. Among the Esquimaux. Aleuts, Siberians, Chinese and Japanese may be found carvings in wood, stone, copper, and ivory resembling those of the Si- wash (or Thlinkit). These similarities will assist in tracing the Mongolian from Asia to South America or the reverse, over a pathway along the Pacific Coast. To the writer no connecting link is suggestive between the Mongolian and the "Red Man, ' the real North American Indian of the interior. The people, including most students, have always "taken it for granted" that an Indian was an Indian, and all of the same race. This year thousands of tourists will have opportunity to observe the Thlinkit or Siwash as we usually call him, and to even a casual observer the marked difference between him and the real Indian will be apparent. The totem and tribal badge revealed a volume of information to those fa- miliar with them — the tribe. location, marriage, ancestor, ownership, social position, etc. The height and number of totems could fairly be attributed to the wealth and popularity of the owner of the pole. The bird or animal supposed to be the ancestor of the tribe usually has the place of honor at the top, and other animals, sacred, or useful, and the influential 38 members and totems of both the husband and wife'e lamihes, make up the other figures of the family totem pole. Other potlatch poles, grave poles, chief poles and the like make up a hideous wilderness of grotesque face-trees on the waterfront of every old Indian village between the Straits of Fuca and Yakutat Bay. INDIAN BASKETS. A thousand miles westward of the mainland of America, and almost over to Japan, is Attu the first island of the Aleutian chain, and the home of the Attu basket. There are only a half hundred natives, and time has little value. Tourists rarely ever reach the place; pride rather than commercialism is woven into the work. H.\SKK'r.< i"i;i>.M rAcii'ic coast m" .m.a.ska The Aleut, Yakutat, and Siwash, Irom Attu to Seattle, now and for time immemoral, were makers of baskets, having somewhat of a general resemblance, but enough individuality to readily classify them in the eyes of a well informed dealer. In fact the work of a single weaver may be distinguished. As a general rule, the crude root basket of Seattle make grows <» little botlei oil Vancouver Island, and cleaner at Mellakalhia, and very much improved, with more straw, and native dyes, at Sitka, and still more improved, with finer work, native dyes and better straw at Yakutat, and reaching the climax ol b.isket-prefection in a delicate thing of skill and beauty on Attu Island. It is said that only one woman on Attu can make this perfect work, and no successor has learned the art. The good baskets are made by the surviving squaws of the old stock, and but few of the young women can make them. They will speedily become scarcer and cruder as the present weavers die ofl. 39 I lii-se haskcts vvrrc ol llir most usclul implcriK-nls before the toming of the uliilc man. I hey did the work of a water bucket. fjoiMn^; keltic, fish basket, baby cab, (ish trap and burial casket. Nearly all the baskets south of Wrangell an- made from spruce or other roots, steamed, healed and split, and usually colored with Diamond Dyes, and of little value. 1 heir genuineness may be determined by the "Siwash odor," which neither age nor soap will remove, and which can not be f ounterfitted, nor forgotten. In this basketry, sea weeds, roots, splits, reeds and grasses, yarns, wild goat hair and twigs are used. The gathering of these materials and preparation thereof, and of the native coloring matters, is a task of small proportions. Coloring matter is extracted from mosses, in fact from animal, vegetable and mineral matter. I he well informed buyer will not purchase a Diamond Dye colored article. The weavers have learned from the tourists or are instructed by the mis- sionaries or traders, to use their own dyes and to make a variety of styles, in- cluding cuff and collar boxes, car cases, sewing baskets, etc. Some of the material used is so delicate that it must be kept in water until woven into the basket. It is told that in Attu a certain kind of work must be made under water. Totem, animal, and plant designs are most freguently woven into the basket. Great war hats were often made in the same manner, likewise potlatch uniforms. These baskets may be found in every museum of importance in the world, and in many homes in Europe and America. They can be purchased cheaper in the shops of Seattle than in Alaska, but the tourists perfers to have some native or local story with his souvnir, and therefore purchases of the Indian, pre- fering to pay for it. Many curio stores await the traveler on the Alaska shore, and hundreds of Indians listen for the boat whistle, and meet the boat with their wares of every kind for sale. Goat-horns spoons. Elk-horn knife handles. Moose-horn knapkin rings; or- naments of ivory, stone and bone; jewelry of gold, silver, copper; souvnirs of tusks, teeth, claws, hooves, beaks, tallons, fish and shells by the hundreds of thousands are for sale by the natives and stores everywhere on the Coast. A few Chilkat blankets are made worth from $50 to $150 each, and like the best baskets, rank at the top of woven wares made by unschooled natives any where in the world. i 1 ' til I IK. \i' i:i..\.\'Ki-:'r 60 INDIANS. From Sitka, north and westward. Russian influences have not died out, the Greek cross marks the school or mission and cemetery, and the priest is the most influential factor among the natives. While the results of Russia missionary work are good, it by no means is equal to the results of the Protestant churches and schools. Particularly is this true with regard to the cleanliness, industry and moral habits of the convert or student. All up and down the coast the high Indian regard lor the Presbyterian school at Sitka may be heard. It is the high goal to which many a:id Indian youth aspires, and, next to Carlisle, is the most lofty aspiration. It IS a sort of post-graduate institution lor those receiving a little schooling elsewhere. The Government is now installing industrial schools at Nushagak, Klana- kanak, Alsik, Chogiung, Quinhagak, Tagic, Tanana, Tatitleka, Fort ^ ukon. Circle City and Eagle, but the Presbyterians at Sitka have been using this method for years, both for boys and girls. I examined a lot of their work last year. 1 he most important consisted of the building of a parsonage from the ground to the top in and outside such as would be creditable in any city, and boats of ex- cellent construction. I see that they are capable of building a new college for themselves, and need it. I think the church or some philanthropic person should advance the money for the material and put them to work at it. The tuition is normal, the instructions are good in the lower grades, the Christian environments are uplifting, and the students appear so clean, polite and different from those of same age found elsewhere, that they do not seem to be of the same race. The Russians have a large school in Sitka also, and many other places in Alaska. So that now almost every considerable Indian settlement has a Russian, Government, Episcopalian, Presbyterian mission or other school of some kind. AlA.^K .\.\|) KA'ITI.I-: <>!■■ I .M ' I A .\ iPucroK l'( i'|-|,A'l'< '11 I >ISII < II' \\i >i i| 61 II.sll AND I-UR. 1 lif pioducls ol tin- lisli ,incJ lur industry belwcen Dixon Lntrantc and Cooks Inlet for 1908 will a^KifKate about eight millions of dollars, and employ about ten thousand persons. I he professional trapper and hunter has largely given way to a modern commercial corporation. I he fishing and cannery work IS done by Indian, ( hinesc and Japanese, under directions of a while superin- tendent. Many of the cod and halibut boats tie up in Puget Sound for the winter, and the canney crews during the off season go to their homes, or other em- ployment. The Government keeps several cruisers, cutters and other boats for service on the Pacific and Arctic seas, most important of which is the fleet of revenue cutters. The most difficult duly for these cutters is to watch the seal heard, and ap- prehend alien poachers who attempt to raid the rookies or fish within the three- mile limit. At this moment the fleet lies beautifully at rest in the harbor at Seattle (April 29th, 1909), and the news is cabled down that the seal heard is going north to the Pribloff Islands, and is now passing Sitka, followed by Japanese poachers, who are taking them illegally, without hindrance. But that kind of service to Alaska is about the same as it has received since I 867. A few days later Mr. Shoup, U. S. Marshall at Sitka, armed a launch and took about 30 Japanese poachers, I 2 skins and a boat, for illegal sealing. A more specific statement of the fur and fish industry will be included in the second division of this book. LIGHT HOUSES AND AIDS TO NAVAGATION. The modern, large and well constructed light houses on the coast of Canada and the numerous other lights, bouys and aids to navagation make a striking contrast to the small, ill-looking light houses, drifting bouys and absent aids on the Alaska coast. We should have had an appropriation of a quarter million for such aids from the last Congress; instead the puny sum of sixty thousand dollars was allowed. It was reported that Captain Pond would this year place I 1 7 aids, including I 3 fog signals and 72 lights between Dixon Entrance and Valdez, but the amount of relief can be best surmised from the amount to be ex- pended. Congress overlooks the fact that the inside passage is the busiest and most dangerous marine highway on the Pacific. It should be charged with man- slaughter for the numerous loss of life in these waters because of its criminal neglect. TIMBER. The Pacific Slope of the Coast Range from Dixon Entrance to Cooks Inlet is densly covered with timber. The forest to a stranger appears much like the cedar, fir and hemlock of Washingeon, but it is not the same at all. The trees grow shorter, the limbs nearer to the ground, the wood becomes softer and lighter, as we proceed northward from Puget Sound. By the time Dixon Entrance is reached no first-class timber for commercial purposes is found. The strength and weight of the timber on the coast of Alaska is about the same as eastern cotton wood or linn. The Government has made no cruise, estimate, or even reconnoissance of Alaska timber, and I was unable to get any valuable information from it. con- sequently my statement is made on my test. and enquiry at the mills along the Coast. 62 1 he early reports and the statements of most authors about the "mex- haustable timber supply," some going so far as to say it was superior to any m the world, are entirely untrue, and have been very misleading. This fifteen hundred miles of coast forest in Alaska will produce no first- class lumber. The trees have grown up without sunshine, in the mist and fogs of the sea, and they are soft and porous as sponges. When the lumber is dry it will weight about one-half as much as the commercial dry lumber, and in time it may furnish material for boxes, crates, barrels and second or third rate building material for sheeting and the like. There are saw mills at all the larger villages, and some at canneries and mines, but the output is for local use. All the good finishing lumber, bridge timber and the like, requiring clear, clean and strong wood, is shipped up Irom Puget Sound, and even many of the railroad ties, and some of the piling. The timber laws of Alaska are such that the timber cannot be obtained for outside trade. It wold be a very harmful condition if the timber was fit for outside markets. Several foresters have been stationed along the Coast to protect the timber, and a large launch for their use will be completed by May I, 1909, with which they can cruise about the islands and shore. Timber-testing machinery has been installed at the University of Washington, where teste will be made this or next year, without the often requested Government assistance. AGRICULTURE ON THE COAST BETWEEN DIXON ENTRANCE AND COOKS INLET. Prof. C. C. Georgeson, whose residence stands on the history-famed site of Baranrof s Castle at Sitka, is at the head of the Department of Agriculture for Alaska, and ably performs his duty. The Coast Range descends abruptly to the sea on the west, and there are but few deltas, gorges, or glacier morains large enough for farming or gardening. Wherever room can be found all the usual garden vegetables, grasses, berries and such grains as oates and barley may be raised successfully, and sufficient for local use. R. W. DeArmond, of Sitka, has charge oi the experimental station there; James W. Gray at Kenai, and Mr. Heideman at Copper Center. At these stations last year we found, growing successfully, cabbage, cauli- flower, parsnips, peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, parsley, onions, leek, radish, turnips, rutabaga, potatoes, rape, beans, blue grass, red top. meadow grass, timothy, wheat, barley, oats, rye, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, red and black currants, salmon berries and a cross between the salmon and raspberry, accom- by Prof. Georgeson. Berries wild and abundant everywhere in Alaska, .\iid suflicient at this le to supply local needs. Beach hay. \sild timothy and blue grass may be in large tracts without clulivation. because of the rainfall and fogs and lack of sunshine, it is deficient in sacharine and hard to cure. T ruit trees do not seem to grow well, and the rains wash the polen off so that little or no Iruit results. In the Copper River country, where the rain fall is slight, the grain, m fact everything, matures better, and several farmers have taken up homesteads and are farming successfully. In llic summer the long hot days, and small rain- fall, may require irrigation for the best results, but the water is easily obtainable, and the yield is enormous. C attle and horses may be found at all the villages 1^ some of the mines and canneries, doing well on native grasses, requiring 63 little oi no wiiilci (arc or Iced, cxc*"!)! shelter Irom the rains, and hay in case the snow covers the ground, which is not frequent. I he productions of Alaska will he marvels in the sight of those who have heretofore looked upon it as an iccburg. ALASKA ( ABLK. A cable runs Irom Seattle a. id I 'oil I ownsend. to all the most important rommercial stations on the Coast as lar north as Seward, including Ketchikan, I ladley, Wrangell, Petersburg, Juneau, Sitka, Skaguay. f lames Mission, Fort Liscum. C ordova and Valdez, in all 2,592 miles, to which more is being added from time to lime. The phone lines, telegraph and wireless branches in Alaska are feeders. Almost any well known point in Alaska can be reached now by cable, wireless, or wire communication or all combined. The Government has suppleemnted its Coast service by a system of wireless stations, which work well at night but not during the day. The United Wireless, a corporation, has almost duplicated the Government wires and wireless in Alaska, and it assumes tho private business of the country. The cable-ship, Burnsides, is always busy repairing, or extending cable, and although the Government expense has been large, the income justifies it. 64 DIVISION II The Aleutian Islands and Coast? cf Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean Irom Cooks Inlet to Point Barrow. FIRST, THE ALASKA PENINSULA AND ALKLTIAN ISLANDS. There is a wider dissimilarity between these islands and the first division of Alasl^a than exists between the plains of Kansas and wooded lands of Maine. [n place of the jagged granite islands and mountains of the timbered shores, we find oval topped, beautifully rounded domes, symmetrically curved and robed in dark green grass. In contrast to the daily steamers, one lone monthly boat breaks the silence of this strange northland. The yet ash covered jed peaks appear too new for vegetation and are void of mineral. y thing is on a grand scale. The Black or Japanese Current (T he Kuio-Shiwo) bathes the shores and fills the air with perpetual spring; I he long sweeping curve of islands extending nearly to the shores of Siberia and Japan; The wide-spreading blue vault of the heavens; the limitless expanse of the variegated ocean ; and the whole days glow and matchless setting of an Arctic summer sun. There dwells in this land a spirit of almost pitiful, lovely loneli- ness. A few small boats are owned among the islands, a cod, halibut or whaler puts in for shelter or water at times, or the smoke of some vessel seen far out at sea, are about the only signs of the busy life of the outside world. Bristol Bay and Cooks Inlet are almost united by Clark and Iliamna Lakes, and at several other places the peninsula is nearly severed. Some time a waterway will be made, which will shorten the route to Nome and the Arctic almost a thousand miles. Tri-oh-nek, Toyonak, Kustatan, on Cooks Inlet; Nikhkak, on Lake Clark; Kak-ho-nak, Kas-an-ahk, Iliamna, on Lake Iliamna; Katmai, Kaguyak, Kami- shak, Chignik, and Douglass on Shelikof Strait; Koggiung, Kwichakh, Kiniaak, Naknek, Ugaguk, Nushagak, Igagig and Fort Alexander on Bristol Bay, are all native or Russian villages now or heretofore occupied by the natives or Russisna, or both, on the Alaska Peninsula. Also St. Paul, Orlova, .Alsentic. Karluk, Uyak, and Kadiak on Kadiak Island. All of the larger and some of the smaller islands are occupied with from one to one hundred natives. Russians and Creoles. Unga, Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, Nikolski are among the most important settlements. The Russian estimate of Aleut population for the peninsula and Island was 10,000; they may number hall that many now, and among them 3,000 other bloods and Creoles. I he Governor, in his last report, estimated the whole Alaska population at 3 LOGO whites; 33,000 natives, and 7,000 mixed, who work in .Alaska in summer and go elsewhere for winter. My own opinion is that a census will give the whole native popu- lation at about 30,000, resident whites 35,000 and non-residents who work in Alaska in summer only at 20,000. 65 I line arc no hmsoiis to appu'liciid .111 increase ol population amon^ the Aleuls in the near luture. I he mouiilains and islands are poor in resources. 1 he )a;overnmenl reports copper at Kamishak Bay. coal or coal hearing rocks on Port Moller. Stcpovak. Chignik and Katmai Bays and on Kodiak and I rinity Islands, and gold and silver lode on Unalaska. and (jctrolcum seep- age at the entrance of Cooks Inlet, hut these are all mere prospects, as a rule not very encouraging. I he beaver, once i)liii(ilul, is rarely seen now, likewise the land otter. 1 he Schooner Shallcngc. owned by Henry Dirks, of Aaka Island, and used for sea otter hunting, has been sold to the whalers. Mr. Charles Rosenberg and his son patrol thirty miles of sea off Unimak and took three skins last year. The Kodiak bear is the largest known species of that animal. Sports- men Irom all quarters of the globe long to add him to their store of trophies, but the native keeps a safe distance. The Aleut takes a few fur seal during the migration of the herd. The walrus, once plentiful, is now almost extinct south of Bering Strait. There is a small catch of land furs. One hundred years ago this country, land and sea. was literally alive with valuable fur. Now it is poor in every resource except fish. For foods the natives (and Russians) love the sea urchin. One old Russian lady with us last year ate them alive and raw. as we do oysters. Mussels are plentiful and palatable, and the octopus, crab and some clams are used. The hair seal and salmon are the main supports. I here are twenty-seven canneries and salteries on the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands. These furnish the largest part of home employment. Some of the natives are employed in other fisheries and on the cod, halibut and whaling boats away from home; others on Cooks Inlet and Prince Williams Sound. /^ Garden vegetables, cattle and sheep do well, and inasmuch as grasses grow luxuriantly, it would seem that in time the country should provide a comfortable aTO.4irofttable home for a large population. C. H. Fry. the packer, has a large stock farm at Kodiak. where a dozen horses, 200 cattle and 200 sheep thrive, increase and keep fat the year through on native feed, consisting of beach grass, blue top, timothy and willows. A small amount of hay and silage is prepared for feed at such times as the snow may cover the winter pasture. Frost may be expected about September I st. The Government station at Kodiak. and Calinsky Bay near by, have a herd of fifty Galloway cattle, from which it is intended to supply the local tand for cattle of a hardy breed, and provide a dairy for Kodiak. A good harrowing of the native soil easily prepares the ground tor thy or grain feeds, over which a mowing machine can be run. Four or five homesteads have been taken up on Kodiak. The indus- trial schools and experiment stations will open the way for new resources. The Government has extensive fish hatcheries at Afognak Island and Kar- luk River. Bristol Bay and Shelikof Straits afford the best commercial salmon fishing waters of Alaska. Even the Kuskoquim River is producing fish for outside market. While all the large rivers northward from Bristol Bay supply the natives and miners, they will perhaps never produce many fish for the market. The fish industry ot Alaska is enormous, employing 13,337 men, one- half whites, the remainder equally divided between Japs, Chinese and natives, last year. The capital invested exceeds ten million dollars. Over t\vo hundred seventeen million fish were taken out last year, amounting to over eleven mil- lions of dollars. (Nothing but whalebone and walrus ivory from the Arctic.) 66 There are approximately thirty canneries and forty saUeries in Alaska. I he catch includes principally salmon, halibut, cod, whale, herring, crabs, clams and sole. The salmon output last year, given in cases and values, as 69,000 coho or silver, valued at $275,000; 218,000 dog, at $554,000; 664,00 hump- back, value $ 1 .700,000; 24,000 king, value $100,000; and 1,663.000 red sockeye, value $7,318,000. These fish were caught generally either with gillnet, seine, or trap. But most excellent sport can be had with a king salmon weighing fifty pounds at the end of a light trout rod and silk line. Use Hendryx Seattle trout bait spoon No. 5. A steelhead salmon puts up a noble fight, likewise the coho. A tenderfoot will find much enjoyment in chasing crabs in four feet of water or less. After the required number have been caught, boil them alive in the sea water. No more palatable morsel could be imagined. All the crabs are cooked this way before being shipped. In any non-glacial stream, the Dolly Varden (salmon trout) may be hooked in large numbers on the salmon spawning grounds. They weigh on an average two pounds, and will make interesting sport with a light trout rod. The large salmon come up the stream when the tide is about two feet high or more, then the trout disappear up stream, until the salmon have gone to sea again, with the ebbing tide. Last year 385 persons were engaged in halibut fishing, the catch bringing $1 74.000; almost as many more in the cod fishing marketed $1 34,000. These figures are under estimates, as large quantities of fish are taken ot which no record has been made. Halibut and cod boats go up from San Francisco or Puget Sound and fish during the summer in all the coast waters. The larger boats go into Bering Sea, or on the ocean side of the islands. Numerous stations are estab- lished on the shores, from which fishermen in "dories" go out and catch the fish hand over hand at the end of hook and line. Some of the boats return to Seattle with from fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand fish. No one has ever claimed that it was sport to catch these big, lazy fish. But many a man. broken in health, has returned from the Alaskan codfish waters, after a sum- mer's outing on the sea with a codfish diet, retstored to perfect health. THE BUILDING OF THE COAST MOUNTAINS OF ALASKA. A chain or system of mountains extends from Cape Horn to Attu. tin- longest on the globe, and perhaps the newest. Its eastern slopes are more gentle, the western descends precipitously into the Pacific Ocean — or rather at one time arose abruptly out of it. Of Alaska the early explorers and geographers for many years made maps showing a continuous chain parallel with the coast, and so it appears to one at a distance on the sea; nevertheless it is bioken up in groups known in Southeastern Alaska as the Cascades. St. Elias. Wrangell. Chugach. and Kenai Ranges, and in Western Alaska as Aleutian Range. Recent lava flows and volcanic action is first noticeable near Dixon En- trance, then at Sitka, where Mt. Edgecombe was active for about a half century after discovery by the Russians. But the smoking craters now begin near Cooii^Inlet. and of the 150 volcanic cones an average of ten arc active. Shishal- dyC near Unimak Pass, being the most prominent. The Aleutian Islands are but mountain tops of a range still growinv,'. Each year new islands appear, volcanoes are created, and the continent en- ;roaches a little more on the sea. But the crust is cooling fast, soon the last vMcano will cease to belch fire and the day of creation will be at an end. 67 Bogslol IsI.ukI is |)(iI)<»|)s till- inosl attractive of tin- m-w-born islands; its oldest peak shot out of the ocean in 1796 to a height of 800 feet; others have heen created and some have disappeared since. In 1906 the revenue cutter Pcrr\} was near by when a new island, now known as F^erry Island, was created, and a year ago still another appeared, at which time the revenue cutter McCtillnugh was near. I he officers of the latter, as soon as possible, climbed over the steaming cone and took photographs of it. Although the sulphur fumes and steam are disagreeable, sea lions and birds are already making it their home, and the Government during the last days of Roosevelt's park-making adminislraticn made it a bird reserve. The red peaks, bare of vegetation, are common, and the dark red ash is everywhere apparent. I he account given by the Harriman expedition is very explicit, and another is expected any time from scientific reconnoissance made made west of Unimak last year. The Coast Range and Rocky Mountains seem to terminate in a grand climax of peaks above Cooks Inlet, or unite in the Aleutian Range, which is more and more submerged until only the very highest appear nearly at the shores of Japan. Whichever the fact may be, it is very evident that the Aleutian Mountains are hundreds of years younger and of a decidedly different forma- tion. The Coast Range from Mexico to Cooks Inlet consists generally of three kinds of material, erected in as many distinct epochs. First. — Following the Silurian and Devonian ages, sediments settled, solidi- fied and hardened, becoming flexible sandstone, limestone and the like. These water-made, stratified material form the foundation and lower one-fourth of the range. 1 hese old rocks are often found doubled, faulted, buckled and twisted, from which it is concluded that the first step in building these moun- tains must have been in the pliable age, when a great fold was raised in the earth's crust where the range now stands. The latter periods of these rocks bear fossils and signs of living creatures; the older ones do not. They did not seem to be mineralized, but in later periods seams and pores were sometimes filled with minerals by intense internal heats, the action of gases, water or eruptions. Second. — After the fold had become hardened, and perhaps after many coal beds had been formed (as they are found pitched up edgewise like the sand and limestone), it was opened, and through a crack the length of the range, from the interior was forced, not a sedimentary, but a fire-made (igneous) rock, much of which is classified or known to the miner and geologist as the "Greenstones. " They are highly mineralized, and the period was the most mineral-producing of any, and in this second belt or period the miner expects to make his "strike.' It occupies the second one-fourth of the bulk of the mountains. Third. — At a much later period, and again by internal force, the range was opeend up and the great diorite granitic cone or center piled high upon the others, sealing it (excepting volcanoes) forever. This igneous rock com- poses about half the material of the range, contains little mineral and forms a hard cap almost irresistible to the elements. This upheaval at least opened up the seams, exposed the mineral to the elements, and forced it into the softer and more porous rocks, where frost, ram. snow, glacier river, and at last man can get it. If we compare the mountains to a book, then each age will be a leaf, and when turned back we plainly read in unmistakable records of stone, the creation and evolution of every creature, from the beginning of land and sea, animal and vegetable; also of the minerals, upheavals and construction of the continent. 68 We cannot fully open the pages, but the rains, snows, glaciers, frosts, rivers and miners have hewn deeply, and the eruptions have broken the lids and revealed records made thousands of years before the date set as the date of creation. Chapter one — "In the beginning the earth was without form and void;" chapter two and three and so on, until the sediments began to settle, and then other chapters while they became resisting crusts, pushed up out of the water, carrying coral, sea grass, shells, and the lowest forms of sea life, etc. Land and water being separated, the warm muds and slimes bgan to develop crawling reptiles; as they pushed up higher vegetation began to grow, and walking animals developed to eat it. Before this range was formed, the storms, and upheavals gathered the slimes and tropical vegetation into the sags, then covered them over, preserving the coal and oil for our use, and the records and pictures for our enlighten- ment. The general forms of the prehistoric forests of Alaska were similar to our ferns and evergreens, but on a larger scale. Could it be possible that the present dense woods date back to a parent so old? These mountains present to the student and intelligent miner volumes information on their upturned stratas. The growth, or ageing of the range is no less interesting. Just as the wood of the tree or bones of the man grow dryer, harder and mature, then age and decay, so the rocks become metamorphosed, shistose and shaley. The sediments of one age become the limestone of the next and marble of the next ; the sands of the river and sea become sandstone, and the volcanic or eruptive intrusives become granite. Five thousand years ago the present deserts oi Africa, India, and China; were the centers of the most advanced human habitations and covered with| fertile fields of grain; they have died with the age. How many ages we have had, we hardly know, but here m Alaska the sedimentary age, the age of greenstones, and of the diorite, are plainly shown ; the coal age, the period of plant life, of reptiles, and of mastodons, and the glacial period are as unmistakably disclosed. This is the age that yields to drouth, crystallization and fire; the a^ before it yielded to the ice cap and the floods. THE NORTHERN COAST. I he low, bleak, treeless tundra-covered shores of Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean are but mud banks frozen many feet deep, thawing a few feet in sum- mer, extending northward and eastward from Bristol Bay for two thousand miles, quite similar at all places. The Kaiyuh Mountains east of Norton Sound, and Baird Mountains east of Kotzebu Sound, and occasionally a few rounded hills rising above the ordinary country, break the even sky line on the horizon. Miles of beautiful flowers adorn the mosses during the short summer; at the same time mosquitoes arise to make life miserable for every living thing. PRIBILOF ISLANDS. St. Paul, St. George, Walrus, and Otter Islands, with some other rock points, constitute the group of seal islands in Bering Sea, isolated by about two hundred miles of water from any other land, free from the Arctic ice pack and icebergs, and consequently free from the native hunter and polar bear. About I 700 A. D. a Russian by the name ol Altasov made u.so ol the fur seal taken on the location of the present seal rookeries on the Asiatic coast, and later on an extensive fur seal trade was developed in the Antarctic seas. 69 Sonu- seal wtic taken l)y Sicllcr and I^criiiK cxijeclilion wliilc wrecked on Bering Island. I 74 I -2. " Pacov discovered Fox Island, 1759; Glotlov explored Kodiak. 1763; Krenilain is credited with Alaska Peninsula. I 768. and numerous Russian traders frequented all parts of these waters then, and the sea otter was already becoming scarce. 7 he fur seal was seen going spring and fall (like the birds) through the passes of the Aleutian Islands and, although the ships attempted to follow, they were never able to locate their destiny any more than they could find the home of the winds. The Aleuts, however, knew of the seal islands, which they called "Aleek." and. with this information. Subov and Pribylov, after several years search, located them in July, I 786. Pribylov gave them the name of Subov. but for some reason they later took his own — he died in Sitka, I 796. The islands were uninhabited by men, although the remams of a recent fire, a pipe and brass handle of a knife were found on the shore. In I 787-8 the Russians located some Aleuts on the islands, and from that time to this they have possessed a population averaging 200, now 263, and gaining at the rate of three per annum, bearing Russian names, belonging to the Greek Church, but mostly of Aleut blood. The seal were almost depleted in 1 796, and the huntmg rights were leased to the Russian-American Fur Company in I 799, and steps taken to increase them. An unusually cold winter nearly destroyed them in 1 834. but they were increased again. In 1 867 they became the property of the United States, and in 1870 were leased to the Alaska Commercial Company, the highest bidder (headed by H. M. Hutchinson), for twenty years. In 1 868, Hutchinson, Ebenezer Morgan and others took a large number, as the herd was open to all. The followmg year no hunting was allowed except for food. When Professor Elliott took charge of the islands for the Government and on behalf of the Smithsonian Institute, there were five million seal. 1872-6. The lease to the Alaska Commercial Company, pursuant to the Act of July I, 1870, limited the kill to 100,000 per year, provided for a rental not less than $50,000 per year, secured by United States bonds, and for a bond of a half million from the lessee guaranteeing the terms of the lease. At that time and since all kinds of laws have been made, regulating the weapons used, boats, territory, season, sex and age of seals taken, agents, etc., etc., etc., and the administration of the laws has been booted from one department or com- mission to another like a football. The result has been that our own citizens (excepting the lessee) have been prohibited from sealing; a treaty with England has limited the Canadian poachers, but all others may take any kind of seal any time and manner or place outside of the three-mile limit. The Japanese have availed themselves of this privilege, and, in addition, have violated every law, of God and man. They raid the rookeries, murder the mothers and pups, regardless of age or sex, and will soon exterminate the herd, while their government makes no effort to check them, nor join in the treaty existing humanely between the United States and England, which could be done any day. The report to the Sixtieth Congress, 1908, shows only 172.512 seal of all ages and sex. The limit of the lessee's annual slaughter has been cut down to 15.000 bachelor seals, and even that number may not be obtained. A fleet of about thirty Japanese sealing vessels hovers about the islands, and any mother seal venturing beyond the three-mile limit for food is promptly shot, while her pup. which no other seal will suckle, starves to death on the shore. At night time, during fogs, and any other time possible, they come within the three-mile limit, and even on shore, to kill illegally. They also follow the 70 herd up and down the coast, and at this time. May I st, are near Sitka killing seal. The seal are due at the breeding ground about two weeks later, and will produce their young immediately after arriving, so that the slaughter of every mother now is the death of two. The Japanese and Canadian catch amounts to about 1 0,000 skins annually each, and the Alaska Commercial Company (or its successor, the North American Commercial Company,). 1 5,000 m round numbers, according to the number of skins for sale in the London market. The Jap uses a gun, and three out of ten seal killed are lost, and numerous others wounded escape to die later. The time is coming when the seal business must be brought to a close. If foreign countries will not be humane enough to join in a protecting treaty, and their subjects to abide by it. then there is no use of our Government employing four revenue cutters annually, paying $20,000 for support of the natives, and numerous other sums, anci run the risks of international complications, for the purpose of raising and protecting seals for other people to kill. Numerous Jap pelagic illegal sealers have been taken in the very act, some have been released, a few were shot in resisting capture, and the last bunch of I I 8 we were obliged to haul around to Valdez. and keep them a long time. They were recently fined by Judge Reid $800 each or 300 days in jail — the latter will be accepted, and they will be hos- pitably entertained at our expense. I understand that a treaty was made last year between Russia and Japan, with reference to sealing on Bering and Copper Islands, across the line. I hope this is the forerunner to one by all nations, covering all seal islands, and if it IS not forthcoming, it seems just as humane, and the only protection to our own property, and the most economical from every standpoint, to take the skins from the remnant of the herd at once. The natives now get 75 cents for each skin. At one time they made more money at 40 cents per skin. The company takes good care of them ; they are advancing intellectually, have some school privileges, coal to burn, a doctor, and the climate is agreeable — rarely exceeds ten degrees below zero. The natives take annually approximately 500 fox skins, from the blue fox, including one white fox to each hundred blue ones, the profits of which are about the same as from the seal herd. The fox industry is nicely cared for, no trouble and little expense, and can be protected. A sea lion is sometimes captured, but they are shy and not plentiful. Birds, in season, come in countless numbers, some garden vegetables can be raised, crab and shellfish are found, and the hair seal could be relied upon if necessary. The seal herd has eaten or scared the fish away, and the walrus is practically extinct in the Bering Sea. likewise the sea cow. St. George has an elevation of 900, and St. Paul 600 feet, with sandy coves convenient for seal. Walrus and Otter Islands are but rocks, and all are of recent volcanic construction. The seal and sea lion are perhaps the most intelligent of animal kind. as well as the most beautiful. They most resemble a dog. and will obey in the same manner; they bark somewhat the same, cool themselves by opening their mouths as dogs do, and have a somewhat similar head, with more intelli- gent expression. The expense of the fur is largely due to the work in pulling out the long hairs, clipping and coloring the fur. and tanning the hide. No skin is of much value without this extensive preparation. The male seal does not fully mature until it is about seven years old. when it may weigh 600 pounds and measure as much as seven feet. It then fights for its harem on the breeding grounds, and. Mormon or I urk-like. main- tains as many wives as it can keep. It arrives on the islands covered with fat. and for three months during the breeding season rules over its harem, with little sleep and no food, except the fat of its own body. 71 I lu- tow seal, mcrk .iiid ohccliciil lo liiT lord; llif ostracised, haremless bachelor seal doomrd (o slauj^litrr ; tlic lordly fiKhtin^ liarem bull, as ho fl^hts for his own or steals from another; the innocent, soft-eyed. hlattinK lamblike pup, and numerous other intereslm^ features of this almost extinct animal. are so interesting as to make it almost impossible to omit them from this brief comment. When the first lease expired, it was extended for twenty years more to the North American Commercial Company. In all the lessees have taken almost $40. ()()(). ()()() from the islands, and the Government has received enough to pay a good profit on the amount invested in purchasing Alaska. ISLANDS OF BERING SEA. There are numerous small islands around Bristol and Kuskoquim Bays, and north of the latter are Nunivak and Nelson Islands, both large and inhab- ited by the Esquimaux. A hundred miles westward are Hall and St. Mathews, of no value, and a hundred miles north of them is the large island St. Law- rence, tundra-covered, of volcanic construction, and eighty miles long, visible from Siberia in clear weather; discovered by Bering. 1728. Two or three hundred Escjuimaux live here, and in good weather could reach either Siberia or Alaska. Polar bears land on the island by means of icebergs, which usually melt soon after entering the warmer waters of the Jap- anese Current. The sea lion, a giant furless seal, often weighing a thousand pounds, may be found here, as well as in numerous other places on the Pacific and Arctic Coasts, the intestines of which are very valuable to the natives for water- proof clothing, and the skin for boats. Also the walrus, which is another yet larger hairless seal, weighing as much as the largest horse or cow. The fur seal can waddle along at about one mile per hour on land; the sea lion not half so fast, and the walrus scarcely at all, and they make comparatively the same difference in swimming. Either of them can float in a somnambulistic siesta on the surface of the ocean, with as much grace as they can bask in the sun- shine on the shore, and they can remain a month at sea with no inconvenience. They usually swim two or three feet beneath the surface, arising at times for respiration. The oil of the seal, sea lion and walrus constitute the light, fuel, and a large part of the fat and food needed by the natives of this island. Their flesh fills the larder, and their skins make the boots, boats, summer houses, and some of the clothing, and provide thongs and leather for innumerable pur- poses. The walrus skin is from a half to three inches thick. The animal is a helpless bundle of blubber, subsisting on clams and seaweed, which it digs up with its tusks and strong whiskers on the end of its nose. Sledge Island (so named by Cook because he found a sledge upon it), near Nome, is important simply because it can be reached from there ; but King Island has attracted the attention of all who have seen it because a num- ber of Esquimaux hang their skin houses on its ledges in summer and burrow into them in winter, from which they watch for animals in the drift of the surrounding sea. Much has been written about these peculiar people being the connecting link somehow between the peoples of East and West, but it seems they are the same as all the other Esquimaux, except that they have changed their modes of living, building and burial to conform to the rock on which they live. The Diomede Islands are of the most importance, inasmuch as they are mere stepping stones between East Cape of Siberia and Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska, some of them in Russia and some in Alaska. From these islands the mainland on either side is plainly in view, and but a pleasure journey for a small boat, or a day's walk when frozen over. Their inhabitants now. and long before the advent of white men. were Esquimaux, trading in both continents, 72 and by them the Alaskans went to Siberia and the Siberians to Alaska. On the Siberian side the Mongolian blood thickens until it reaches China and Japan; on the American side it thins until it reaches at least to Puget Sound. There are no islands of importance in the Arctic Ocean belonging to Alaska ; however, there are some small shore islands or sand spits known as Flaxman, Barter, Midway, and Thetis Islands, on which whalers or natives sometimes winter. East of the boundary line is Hershel Island on one side and Geography Islond on the other side of the Mackenzie River. Between 1770 and 1860 a stream of explorers, lead by Samuel Hern, and including such men as Franklin, Beechey, McClintock, McKay, Hood. Mackenzie and Richardson, came to the Arctic in search of it, of copper or of Ross and Franklin, and from them we have our earliest reliable informa- tion concerning the natives. They usually came from the Hudson Bay or lake regions of Canada, down the Copper Mine or Mackenzie Rivers. They reported the Esquimaux from Icy Cape or Point Barrow eastward to be the same people as those on Hudson Bay and in Labrador, and near of kin to those of Greenland. The exploration of this part of the Alaska shore is credited to these overland expe- ditions, and IS but little better known now. The Northwest Passage, for the discovery of which all maritime nations strove for three hundred and fifty years, was not successfully navigated (ex- cepting possibly some whaler) until 1903-7. by Amundsen, in the Gjoa. In these vain searches several hundred men lost their lives, and as much money was appropriated as has since been set aside to discover the similarly elusive poles. Amundsen found the Franklin Monument, placed by McClintock, 1858, and some of the supply station left on Beechey Island, 1852, for Franklin, but Franklin and his brave men were silent in death not many miles away, after having passed through the coveted passage. The whole Bering and Arctic tundra-covered coast of Alaska is thawed enough on the lop in summer to grow moss, breed mosquitoes, and fill the surface with water; in winter it is bleak, snow-covered, icebound, blizzard-swept, and at all times it is the most uninviting land lor man or beast. I he land, as a rule, slopes back gently, with low mud banks along the sea and rivers. The water, loaded with mud, flows sluggishly to the Bering Sea. which is now almost filled, so that near the mouths of large rivers boats can not approach land, and can find anchorage almost anywhere at sea. A few scattered wil- lows or birch may be found in the sheltered valleys or river banks. otherNvisc it is a waste of well-rounded, cheerless, treeless hills, interrupted by the Nush- egak Mountains back of Kuskoquim Bay; Kusilvak, Chantinak, Kaiyuth. and Kaltag Mountains back of Norton Sound; Hooper Mountains behind Point Barrow, and Franklin and Romianl/ov Mountains inshore from Maxman Island, and Pelly Mountains behind Pelly Bay. These mountains, or hills, as a rule, rise to a climax at about 1,500 feet, back from the coast twenty-five to one hundred and fifty miles, and somewhat mark the boundary of the tundra land? inhabited by the Esquimaux. After the search for the Northwest Passage, Ross and I-ranklin discon- tinued, the country north of the ^'ukon was abandoned by the white man. and for the most part is now unknown. The natives are few, whale are scarce, and thus far the country beyond I eller is poor in mineral. The district southward of the ^ ukon. particularly along the shore and rivers, was the trapping ground of the Russian-American Fur Company until the United States purchased Alaska, but their discoveries were rarely pub- 73 Iishi'd; liowcvcr, the remains of missions, trading stores, block houses and the like, may still he seen along the \ ukon to lorl Yukon, along the Kuskoquim to Kolmakofski, on ihc Nushegak. Lake Iliamna and small rivers. 11 li: NOKIHWKSr PASSAGE. I he discovery of this contiiuiil, and breaking u|) of the narrow, bigoted, Arristottolian ideas was due to the search for a shorter route to the Orient. Thus at the same time was a new land, and more freedom of thought presented to those who had the courage to dare the sea or church. Columbus, 1492; John Cabot, 1497; his son later, then C ortereal, then Frobisher, 1576; then Drake; after him Davis, 1585-8; then Hundon, 1617- 10; Button. 1612; James Hall, 1612; and, 1615. Baffin; Fox. 1631; Ross and Parry, 1818-29 (Ross located the magnetic pole substantially as known now) ; then, overland from Hudson Bay and Central Canada, went Hearne. 1770; Franklin. Beechey. McKay. Hood. Mackenzie, Richardson, and others, and after these the lamentable Franklin expedition by sea, all seek- ing a waterway to the westward. The prominent features of the land and sea bear the names of these ex- plorers from Teller, Alaska, eastward, and that part of the world is but little better known now. What they failed to accomplish was successfully carried out by Amundsen, 1903-7, in the Gejoa. in that he brought his ship through the "Northwest Passage," and camped about two years within a hundred miles of the magnetic pole, and walked all around and perhaps over it. The fact that the pole bobs about a little and cannot be fixed at any one spot, and that the compass refuses to work, is nothing new. and but little knowledge of scien- tific value was added by his sojourn. Why not place a magnetic station at or near the north and south magnetic poles at the same time, to determine their relations, which would at least lend aid for the solution of other questions? Leffingwell and Mikkelsen are now attempting to thoroughly explore and map the northeast coasts of Alaska. The former will leave Seattle some time this month (May, 1909) in the Argo. and Amundsen will also visit that country again. Only that part of the country immediately on the coast has been correctly mapped, and some of the large rivers have never been explored. When Heme, in 1770; Mackenzie, 1789; Franklin. 1819-27, and others first penetrated the unknown Arctic shores, they found the Indians, who had never seen white men, living in polygamy, adultery, incest and the lowest kinds of immorality; cases of infanticide, witchery, cannibalism and murder were reported. Instruments and weapons were of stone, bone, copper, ivory, and wood. Wives were talJen and discarded at pleasure. It was common practice to engage in a friendly wrestling bout, the winner to take the woman. Their religion, if they had any, was vague, although they had stories of creation and the flood, somewhat similar to our own. handed down as very ancient traditions; likewise a tradition that their ancestors came from the westward. Along the Arctic Ocean Esquimaux, well mixed with Mongolian blood, were found. They had never seen white men, and were as immoral as the Indians, but more charitable, good-natured, content, and friendly, although inclined to steal and lie. They belonged to the same stock as the Greenland, Labrador and Siberian natives, speaking dialects of the same parent language. Their snow igloos in winter and skin tupecks in summer were the same as of all exquimaux living in the treeless regions, and the same as the white man now makes when he goes into that country. The smallest piece of wood is rarely found beyond Herschell, where the last house of wood is seen. Implements for the house and chase were of ivory, stone, copper, horn, shell, and such material as nature afforded. Fire was made by rubbing wood together, and seal. 74 whale, and walrus afforded not only the light, cooking fats, and fuel, but their bones made supports for houses and boats, implements for hunting and defense, oranments and sleds. Their skins were useful as tent coverings, boats, boots, rope thongs, dog harness and the like; the intestines for oil and water bottles and waterproof clothing. Castaway bones, and skin boots and clothing were often required to sustain life when food could not be obtained. They faced death as stoically as their Mongolian ancestor, and their religion was a matter of philosophy much the same, scarcely arising to the observable status of a known belief, the most noticeable feature being the fear of evil spirits, ill- omen, the sick, dead, and the avoiding of certain locations believed to bring them ill luck or death. They erected special abodes for those abandoned to die, and never returned to them; those dying in their own houses were allowed to remain there unmolested until the wild beasts or summer sun destroyed them. At Herschell they place the dead in a box, which sits on top of the frozen ground. The men, particularly on the Siberian side, wore glass beads in their ears, and the women were tatooed. Labrettes or metal and stone or ivory ornaments were sometimes worn in the lips, similar to the Siwash Indians on the Pacific Coast. Meat was sometimes cooked slightly, but more often eaten raw; also other foods. The difficulty of heating stones with the moss and heather fires, or seal oil, for the purpose of throwing them in skins of water to boil food, or upon which to roast meat, was so difficult that it was necessary to have epicurean tastes that would conform to the conveniences of the land. At the present time some articles of clothing, food, cooking utensils and firearms are obtained from the whites, and occasionally lumber and tents are used for dwellings, and a school teacher or missionary injects a little edu- cation, and a miner or whaler a little more bad whisky, but on the whole the natives north of Teller are but little changed since the first visit of white men. Hearne came down the Copper Mine River to the ocean, I 770. and look possession for the Hudson Bay Company (England), and Alexander Mackenzie down the river that bears his name to the ocean, I 789, but neither explored the shores. After them came Franklin and Beechey, who made the first notes on these shores, but the notes of Franklin, made 1825, were checked over by Thomas Simpson, of the Hudson Bay Company, 1836-9, from Boat Ex- tension to Return Reef and from Return Reef to the Mackenzie, and it was he that named all the capes, rivers, bays, etc.. between Return Reef and Point Barrow; he also named the Franklinand Pelly Mountains. Jones Islands. Cole- ville, Gary, and Smith Rivers. St. Clair and McKay Rivers are named for two of his guides; Cape Simpson is in honor of his uncle, the Governor. Dease Inlet was named in honor of Mr. Dease. his companion, and McKenzie Bay in honor of a member of the fur company (not the explorer.) Fie took pos- session of Point Barrow and raised the British flag in the name of the king. These explorations completed the link between the two oceans along the North- west Passage, uniting with those of Cook and Clark and Kotzebue from the Pacific. De Fuca lead the search for the Northwest Passage from the Pacific side in 1592. (The stories of Maldonado. 1588. arc said to be pure fabrica- tions. See "A Chronology of History of Voyages Into the Arctic Regions for the Purpose of Discovery of Northwest Passage, by John Barrow, of Lon- don, 1818.") Many other navigators followed, but to James Cook is due the credit of exploration to Icy Cape, followed later by Clark and K.olzcbur from the west. August 9th. I 779, Cook arrived at and named Cap Prince of Wales; then he crossed to Siberia, where the natives politely made low. sweeping bows to him; then back to Alaska at Pt. Mulgrave, and from there 75 lo Icy Cape; llu'ii hack lo Cape Lisburno; then across to Cape North, on the Siberian side, and returning to Norton Sound (all of which j)oints he named) ; thence southward lo the Sandwich Islands, where Ins useful life was shortly afterward taken by the natives. I he Siberian Kscjuimaux, or ( huckchees. had trade relations and wars with the natives of Alaska, the beginning of which is not known, and the news of the new world had found its way to St. Petersburg long before Alaska was discovered. Perhaps a Polish seannan. Dejenev, should have the honor of discovering first the Arctic shores of Alaska, 1 648. However, historians seem to have omitted him. But Peter the Great had acquired Kamtchatka and desired a northern waterway along the north coast of Asia to his possession. to find which repeated efforts were made from the northern rivers and seas of Asia, all of which failed. Then Bering was instructed. 1 728. to attempt the discovery of such passage from the west, and, although he passed through Bering Straits and must have been close to Alaska, he made no report of it. For three hundred and fifty years the maritime powers of the earth sought the Northwest Passage. Fortunes were spent, hundreds of men perished, and numerous ships were losi, but the most pathetic story is the loss of Sir John Franklin. His overland trip and tin. death ol Hood has no parallel on land; neither does his voyage at sea. In 1828 he married a second wife, Jane Griffin; the next year he was knighted by Kuig George the Fourth ; then he saw valuable service in the British navy ; he was then made Governor of Van Diemans Land ; returning in 1845, he headed an expedition in the Erebus and Terror to dis- cover the Northwest Passage, although sixty years old. Captain Crozier was second in command; 134 men made up the party; they carried both sails and coal, and modern equipment for the time. They were seen in Melville Bay, July 26th, by a whaler, lor the last time, frozen fast in the ice. The vessels ultimately pushed through to Beechey Island, on the north side of which they wintered, 1 845-6. For two years following nothing was heard, and many expeditions were in search for them from England, Canada and the United States, and fifteen more followed in the next six years. McClure entered the Arctic from the west, was shipwrecked, and rescued by an expedition from the east, and was the first to cross from ocean to ocean in the Arctics, re- ceiving a reward of ten thousand pounds. Lady Franklin, at her own expense, equipped an expedition headed by Forsyth, who returned and reported that Franklin had wintered on Beechey Island, which aroused fresh hopes, and she followed it up unsuccessfully with a second and third expedition. Then the English government sent a big expedition under Kellet, McClintock, and Osborn, which was lost, but the crew was saved. Then Kane tried it. and others. But Dr. John Rae. 1854. overland from Canada, obtained informa- tion that about forty of the Franklin expedition had been seen by Pelly Bay Esquimaux, and a renewed effort, with more hopes, was made by the widow and friends, headed by McClintock. 1857. In 1859. in Bootha Feelix Land, he obtained relics and information to prove the death of all the men. A record was found near Cape Herschell, on King William Land, telling of a sledge trip of seven of the men, and of the wintering on Beechey Island ; it was dated May 28th, 1847. This record was later supplemented. April. 1848. by others of the party, saying that the ships had been abandoned on the 22nd. having been in the ice since September 12th. 1846; that 105 of the crew were alive, under Crozier; that Franklin had died June 1 I th. 1847. and that they would start for Backs Fish River April 26th. 1848. Subsequently from time to time remnants of the wreck have been found. In I 906 the Esquimaux informed Amundsen of the location of one of the boats, or where it was de- stroyed. Lady Franklin herself went as far as Sitka. Stories of her sorrow 76 are still told, and the old Russian furniture, pegged together with wood, in the rooms where she lived, are now in use, or at least we were informed last year that we were sleeping in Lady Franklin's bed. THE SCHEME OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY. The Alaska shore south of Cape Prince of Wales, and the Yukon to Fort Selkirk, were as thoroughly explored and better mapped by the agents of the Western Union Telegraph Company than that part of the shore north of Cape Prince of Wales was by those who sought the Northwest Passage, or the lost expedition of Franklin and Ross. Standing on the Diomede Islands, one may look over to Asia on one side and America on the other. The strait is narrow and the water is shallow. The Western Union Telegraph Compan conceived the idea to connect the old and new world by wire, and during 1 865-6-7 had large parties of men surveying and reconnoitering in the wilds of both. On the Siberian side it proposed to start at Irkutsk (to which a line already extended) ; thence along the Amoor, Kamchatka and Anadyr Rivers to Anadyr Gulf, or Penti Gulf. On the American side a line was already established to or near Cariboo, British Columbia, from which it was to extend northward up the Eraser and down the Yukon to Nulato; thence across to Norton Sound and ending at Port Clarence. A cable was to connect the two across Bering Strait. Many men were employed and much work done. To this day their marks are plainly seen, the knowledge of the country and natives was preserved by the Smithsonian Institute, printed in the papers of the whole world. The books by Wymper and Dall are even now the best early authentic information existing. This knowledge of the country, indirectly, at least, was one of the largest factors inducing Seward and Congress to purchase Alaska. The company doubted the success of Fields Atlantic Cable, just as many doubted the utility of the wireless a year or two ago, but its success was soon proven, causing the company to abandon its scheme, about the same time Seward purchased Alaska. Captain Beechey extended his exploration to Port Clarence, 1827. .At that time the natives were freely trading with the Chukchis, of Siberia, as they were during the busy days of the telegraph company thirty years later, and as they are now. There can be no question about the near blood relation of the people of the two continents at this point, and it would have been appropo to unite the continents by wire here. Wireless now communicates from boat to boat and with Alaska shore stations throughout the North and will soon spread to Asia. Railroad building is feasible and profitable in Alaska, and may yet extend across the Bering Strait by car ferry and provide an overland route from New York to Paris. ORIGIN AND EXTEN r OF THE ESQUIMAUX. It has not yet been settled whether the Alaska Esquimaux came I mm Asia or the Siberian from Alaska, but it can not be disputed that they ^anie from the same original ancestors. It is also an irrefutable fact that the Esqui maux is either of Mongolian parentage, or in very early limes became lhorou«hly mixed with the Mongolian people. The former seems most probable. The genial, contented disposition of the race suggests Norwegian l)lood. but the predominating Mongolian features, color, customs, traditions, stoical, philosophical religious indifference, overshadows and breaks down in the mind of almost every investigator all the ancestral theories e.\cept the Mongolian. 77 This Mongolian Kscjumiaux Mood cxlonds down the Asiatic coast to China and Japan and along Northern Siberia. On the Alaskan side it extends from Greenland to the very end of the Aleutian Islands, which is in sight of the smoke of the steamers of Japan, and also along the Pacific Coast on the west side of the mountains as far south as Seattle at least. I'he whole [)oi)ulation of Indians and Esquimaux in America containing Mongolian blood docs not exceed 50.000. I he same rate of decrease applies to Siwash. Aleut and F,sf)uimaux wherever the trader, miner and whaler, with their vice, disease and whisky, can reach them. In their Northern home their whole lives were devoted to a food-struggle for existence; the fish, game, seal, whale, and walrus, upon which they depended, have, by the white man. been almost exterminated. At Herschell and Point Barrow, where once villages of 500 healthy, pure-blooded natives lived, now a half hundred syphilitic mixed bloods mingle with as many whalers each winter. A similar condition of affairs prevailed in Western Alaska during a hundred years of Russian supremacy -a most lamentable thing to say a^out our boasted civilization and Christianity. Of these people Wymper (page 249). who lived among them on both continents, concludes they are of Mongolian origin; Markham. that they are of Tartar descent; Arctic Miscellanies, that they are Mongolians driven north- ward by a more powerful Tartar race; Henry W. Elliott's Report, 1875. of natives on St. Lawrence, says, "They strongly resemble Chinese;" A. W. Greeley, 1885, says there is no question but the natives of the two continents had trade relations back in the Sixteenth century; Sessions (page 103) says, "They do not look like our North American Indians, but many ot them look like Mongolians;" Arctic Provinces, by Elliott. "They strongly remind us of Japanese faces and forms;" Retzius and Humboldt find the Pacific Coast Indians related to the Mongols; Dr. Sheldon Jackson, for many years among them, said. "In mental traits, artistic ideas, and methods of labor, they are singularly like the Mongolian Japanese;" Catlin says the same; Spurr. 1896. says, "They are wonderfully dilTeient from those on the Yukon form Nulato to its headwaters, being round and rosy, rather small in stature, and with a certain Mongolian appearance (page 260). And thus I could continue to name authors of similar opinion, but the most convincing argument is that even per- sons like myself, who frequently see Chinese. Japs. Aleuts, Siwash and Esqui- maux, are often unable to distinguish them. It is not unusual to find Esquimaux having every appearance of a full-blood Jap. In Alaska these people inhabit the tundra belt. They are found twenty miles up the Copper Mine River, on the Mackenzie as far as the Peel, on the Yukon to Nulato, on the Kuskoquim to Kolmakofsky. The Russians carried them farther inland, and the Ameri- cans mixed them more. In the treeless and woodless country they built their houses of snow in winter and skins in summer, and buried their dead in skins covered with stones or left them in their abodes sealed to shut out wild animals. In the wooded country or on shores where wood could be found, they built houses of it, and buried their dead in boxes covered \\ith stones or dirt, or erected upon poles to protect them from dogs and wild animals, as they did their food stores. Everywhere they followed their game food from place to place in season, and more than half the Aleutian barabaras. Siberian topecks. and .Alaskan igloos found are unoccupied save for a few days each year, if at all. Now. as in early years, one may travel the rivers within their territory and find but a few families on each, with three or four exceptions. Ornaments may be found in the nose. cars, lips and elsewhere on the men; anklets, bracelets, tatoos upon the women. They carve Oriental figures, Chinese idols, and money of very ancient dates have been found buried centuries ago by them, showing conclusively that 78 79 they were Irorn ihat country or had communicalion of some kind with it hun- dreds of years before discovered by whiles. The small race living nearest to the pole, as described by Perry, are almost, if not altogether, pure Mongolian. 1 he similarity of the hieroglyphics from ( haldea traced northward through Asia, then through the l",s()uim;)ux. Pacific (oast Indians, and down to the origmal |X'opies of Mexico and South America, has lead several archaeologists to say that this was the route over which came the first inhabitants of America, and that the people of Mongolian blood in Alaska and along the Pacific Coast ■are the remnant of that people. The argument is believable and convincing, and proofs of which are too numerous to set forth in this small book of con- clusions. I have been accumulating facts for several years on these questions, the whole ol which will be given in an extensive history of Alaska to be pub- lished in about three years from this time. A comparison of the names of towns in C hina, Japan, and all Esquimaux and Aleut countries will reveal a marvelous similarity, and the names of towns of the Siwash and Athabascan will be as marvelously dissimilar. The table on page 88 may not be a satisfactory test, as some words are not common to all the languages; others may have a broader or narrower meaning; none of them are phonetically or diacritically marked, and the number of words should not be less than a hundred. However, it will serve to convince any one that the Greenland. American, Asiatic, Esquimaux and Alaskan Aleut derive their dialects from a common ancestral language, and that the Japanese language is so similar in many ways that we are justified in concluding that at some period the parent language was the same or closely associated. I am fully convinced that a comparison of dialects from Bering Strait to Japan, and a careful research along the Coast, would corroborate my statement. The table on page 88 will also show that the ^ ukon Indians have a lan- guage in nowise related to the others, and that the Haidah (or Siwash) are as distinctly separate. The fact that the Siwash has the face and features of a Mongolian and Esquimaux more than of any other human being, and yet has no similarity in speech, makes it more difficult to place his ancestry. A Negro in Africa, and another in America having a common parent, or a Japanese in Japan and another in Alaska having been born in the same house- hold, but acquiring from the beginning different languages, which is often and can easily have been the case many times, will be an illustration of how language may fail to disclose ancestry. Several cases of lost or shipwrecked Japanese have been reported, where they have drifted entirely across the Pacific, in one of which almost a hundred years ago, a Japanese junk landed near Puget Sound. In such cases the blood could become mixed without the language becoming apparent. AURORA BOREALIS IN ALASKA. Polar Auroras are of two spheres, those ol the north, known as Aurora Borealis, and of the south as Aurora Australis. I will refer to those of the north only. The Aurora has been classified and subdivided by many, but after all it is but a matter of degree or extent. For practical purposes it may be divided, first including those extending far south and manifesting more magnetic and electric force; and last, those of less height, more local and producing little or no magnetic or electrical dis- turbances. Almost a hundred authors have written as many different theories as to what the Auroras are and their cause, etc., including: 80 First — Divine. They have frightened the human race for all ages, and history is full of ghost-like tales. Second — Polar ice radiating at night, the light absorbed during the day. (Disproven by the polariscope, showing that they are direct and not reflected rays. ) Third — The movement ol polar ice upon which the sun reflected. (Also disproven. ) Fourth — Phossophoriscent light. Fifth — Luminous gases. Sixth — Foggy weather near the poles. Seventh — Same as sun halos. (Refuted by polariscope.) Eighth — Caused by sun-spots. (This theory has many more advocates than most of the others, although the Auroras have occurred so adversely to the sun-spots some years that they seem to prove no reliable cause.) Ninth — Magnetic forces. To which many tenable reasons can be as signed, such as the effect upon the magnetic needle: the origin or home of the Auroras being generally in the vicinity of the magnetic pole (westerly side ol Smith Straits and north of Bafflns Bay, as first located, or 96 degrees west of Greenwich and 70 degrees north latitude on Boothia Felix Land, as fixed by Amundsen, 1906). Tenth — Foreign neobula or meteoric substance coming into our atmos- phere, being magnetized, electrified, or illuminated. (A moment's thought by any student will cnoclusively disprove such theory.) Eleventh — Light from other and far distant planets. Twelfih — Light upon cirius or snow clouds in very high altitude. Thirteenth — Electricity, (of which many actions of the Aurora remind the observer) , has many modern-day advocates. 1 o all who have watched the Aurora generally appearing from and re- tiring to the vicinty of the magnetic pole; moving the magnetic needle (to my knowledge as much as ten degrees in one instance) ; disturbing telegraph, tele- phone, cable and wireless, as well as other magnetized or electrified apparatus, the theory that the Aurora is closely connected with electricity and magnetism will be accepted. Only the great Auroras extend far south, and the magnetic and electric force is more noticeable (possible, however, because we have more instruments to affect and men to report), than in the Alaskan country. The magnificent Auroras of 1859 and 1872 are the only ones on record to my knowledge that seemed to extend from pole to pole, and actually covered the whole earth. As a rule they are seen but about once in Gulf of Mexico, five times in San Francisco and ten in Dakota per year, while east of the mountains of Alaska and the Arctic Sea they are observed about 100 limes annually. Whalers and Arctic explorers have reported them still more frequent nearer the magnetic pole. Ihe Alaskan Pacific Coast and Aleutian Islands are so continually clouded over that the Auroras are infrequently seen there. Explorers in the far north, above the magnetic pole, report the Auroras as coming from the south. Others wintering near the magnetic pole report them as being so low as to have been observed shining under the clouds, and as ap- pearing from various points of the compass. Frequently the clear Alaskan night reveals a sight that fills the ob.iervcr with awe. We know the warming, cheerful effect of the sun, the fright and fear of the storm and lightning, the amazement of the mirage, the dread of the vol- cano and earthquake, and even of the moons silent influence. 81 But tlu- Alaskan Aurora brings forth the genuine goose-pimplc. hair-raising, reverential feeling that all other phenomena connbined can not produce. Clouds of light, waves of light, oceans of light, ripples, flames, darts, chains, snakes, and halos of light; ultra-violet, whitish-yellow, green, purple, and flame-ligc light. Light that enables you to read at night, dims the the stars, threatens to fire the earth, the heavens, and to stick its darts of lightning into you. You can see battles as it advances and retreats. You think of Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno and the threats of dire and awful punishment of the wicked as pictured to you by the old testament or expounded by some out-of-date, self-made preacher. If to all these the light and beauty of the Glorified Throne as seen or related by John the Revelator could be added, then the scene could hardly excel the actual sight of one of these Great Auroras, made greater, grander and more effective by the long night, lonesome camp, frost- locked and silent environments of this Arctic-like land, Alaska. As you look with open-mouthed awe, every <"'p<"^ is so alert that you hear its electric spark snap (or think you do), feel 's liirusts of lightning (or think you do). Then it disappears (or you t'liiiK it does), but instantly it comes again, until by the indescribable panoramic fire, one is hypnotized almost into ar.lnc; existence. While Mr. Hall was wintering in Frobisher Bay, near the magnetic pole, he witnessed an Aurora which he describes in his "Arctic Researches" as follows : "Then I tried to picture the scene before me. Piles of golden light and rainbow light, scattered along the azure vault, extended from behind the western horizon to the zenith ; thence down to the eastern, within a belt of space 20 degrees of width, with fountains of beams, like fire threads, that shot with the lapidity of lightning hither and thither, upward and athwart the great pathway indicated. No sun, no moon, yet the heavens were a glorious sight, flooded with light. Even ordinary print could have been easily read on the deck. Flooded with rivers of light. Yes. flooded with light. And such light! Light all but inconceivable. The golden hues predominated. But in rapid succession prismatic colors leaped forth. We looked, we saw, and trembled ; for. even as we gazed, the whole belt of the Aurora began to be alive with flames. Then each pile or bank of light became myriads ; some now dropping down the great pathway or belt, others springing up, others leaping with lightning flash from one side, while more as quickly passed into the vacated space; some, twisting themselves into folds, entwining with others like enormous serpents, and all these movements as quick as the eye could follow. It seemed as if there was a struggle with these heavenly lights to reach and occupy the dome above our heads. Then the whole arch above became crowded. Down, down it came ; nearer and nearer it approached us. Sheets of golden flame, coruscating while leaping from the Auroral belt, seemed as if met in their course by some mighty agency that turned them into the colors of the rainbow, each of the seven primary, three de- grees in width, sheeted out to twenty-one degrees; the prismatic bows at right angles with the belt. While the Auroral fires seemed to be descending upon us. one of our number could not help exclaiming, 'Hark! Hark! Such a display! Almost as if a warfare was going on among the beautious lights above — so pal- pable, so near — seems impossible without noise.' But no noise accompanied this wonderous display. All was silence." And again Mr. Hall says: "But the northern lights, in their eternally shifting liveliness, flame over the heavens each day and each night. Look at them ; drink oblivion and drink hope from them ; they are even as the aspiring soul of man — restless as it. 82 "They will wreathe the whole vault of heaven with their glittering, fleeting light, surpassing all else in their wild loveliness, fairer than even the blush of dawn, but whirling idly through empty space they bear no message of a com- ing day. "The sailor stears his course by star. Could you but concentrate yourselves, you, too, O Northern Lights ! might lend your aid to guide the bewildered wan- derer. But dance on and let me enjoy you. Stretch a bridge across the gulf between the present and the time to come, and let me dream far, far ahead into the future. Oh thou mysterious radiance! What are thou and whence comest thou? \ et why ask? Is it not enough to admire thy beauty and pause there? Can we at best get beyond the outward show of things? What would it profit even if we could say, that it is an electric discharge or current of electricity through upper regions of air, and able to describe in minutest detail how it all came about, it would be mere words. We know no more what the electric current really is. than what the Aurora Borealis is. And happy is the child. * ^ ^ '^e with all our views and theories are not in the last analyses a hair's breadth nearer the truth than it." Although this is Mr. Hall's statement a half century ago, so far as the Aurora is concerned, it could be made now. In the land of Seward, every Alaskan who remains over winter witnesses the long night, the midnight sun, the clear air, the frost/ stillness, the peculiar moon and that awful monotonous loneliness and if he returns with unimpaired rea- son will corroborate what I have said about the Alaskan Aurora and add that no pen can fully and justly describe it, nor can any artist but the God of the Uni- verse paint such a picture. The Aurora is not the only awe-producing phenomena of Alaska. 1 he Creator of the long night provided a great silver moon, and a big red sun three or four times larger than they are down in the States and seemingly so close that one is almost afraid. The feeling that enrobes one while a death-like silence pervades every- thing in a lonely land, and the thermometer registers sixty below or the mercury is frozen, can be experienced, but not told. 83 84 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHS . Wire telegraph and telephone lines are few and ot a short or local kind ; the cable extends only along the Pacific; mail, on the river boats in summer and over the long trails in winte, is often delayed for weeks, and Alaska remains connected to the outside world by the rapidly spreading wireless telegraphy. The government has been very negligent in many respects concerning Alaska, but in respect to the wireless, it has been diligent in reaching remote corners far ahead of private means of communication of a like kind, so that powerful transmitting stations are fixed at Nome, Ft. Gibbons, Circle, Eagle. Chena, St. Michael, on the interior, and at many points on the coast. This service supplemented with the overland wire from Valde/. and the cable, as well as an overland wire through Canada, gives inestimable aid to a winter-im- prisoned people. The abreviated press dispatches in midwinter are very welcome indeed. The breaking of ice on the rivers and sea. shortage of provisions, orders for machinery, and all matters of haste may be dispatched to the coast by wireless. The signal corps men have undergone all the tortures known to Arctic winters at 35 cents per day while erecting and maintaining the land wires so necessary in the outset. The established land wires now begin at Valdez, running to Gulkana where one branch goes northeast to Eagle and the other northwest to Chena : thence down the Tanana and Yukon to St. Michael. The wireless apparatus, as it becomes more perfect and is increased in power, reaches farther so that now messages are frequently intercepted over two tiiousand miles from the transmitter. Night IS better than day, and \vinter beter than summer lor wireless com- munication, therefore Alaska is abundantly supplied with the natural aids. A number of aid stations are being prefected on the interior of Alaska, and a more powerful station at Valdez. When the entire scheme has been carried out, government and private business may be carried on at all limes by the world with Alaska by wireless. The wireless link with the outside world will be an assurance ol communi- cation, as at no time could it be expected that the Canadian land line, the Paciiu cable line and the Wireless would be out of service at the same time. The expense in erecting and keeping in repair long lines of land wire throUj;!i an uninhabited country, the awful exposure, and the delay in case of bre.^ks will be avoided by the wireless. The thanks, congratulations and admirations ol the world arc due to the men doing the work and the department having it in charge. The patronage pays well for the investment, but as the country justihvs, the United Wireless follows with its system and the government generously tur'is over the paying private business to it. 1 he United Wireless Company lias its instruments on land along the coast and on ships at sea. At the present time almost every boat on the ocean, engaged in Alaska trade, is equipt wi»h wireless. 85 SEWAKI) PENINSULA. I.vcry one inleresled in this peninsula should obtain a copy of E. H. 1 larrison's Nome and Seward I'eninsula. which is the best publication existing ( oncerning the vicinty of Nome. First, the Russian traders and missionaries, then the whalers, followed by the Western Union Telegraph Company, broke the unnumbered, undisturbed and unimportant years of monotonous I'.squimaux possession of Seward I-*eninsula. There were small native settlements here and there at the most protected points, but nothing extraordinary happened until September, 1 898, when E. O. Lind- blom, John Byrnteson and Jafet Lindberg discovered gold in paying quantities on Anvil Creek, a dozen miles back of Nome. I he whole world had the gold fever because of the fabulously rich strikes in the Klondike, and the reports of this discovery caused the rush of Skaguay, Valdez and Dawson to be repeated or excelled at Nome in 1 900, when it arose from a pile of ice to a tent city of twenty thousand unorganized, bewhiskered stampeders. Although Nome has no harbor, yet the ocean commerce of that port from June to October is tremendous. Gold has been found in the sea, on the shore, in the creek beds, on the benches and everywhere. More claim jumping, bribery, and perjury occurred around this camp than any other of the kind in the history of the world. The court records, involv- ing clients, attorneys, judges, marshalls and receivers, present the blackest picture in the history of the common law. Few of the wrongdoers received legal punishment, but many forfeited their lives, or gambled their ill-gained fortunes away, and it is seriously hoped that the others will purchase nothing but misfortune with theirs. A very large per cent of those having courage enough to face danger and death in search of claims were Scandinavians, than whom there are no more honest and hard work- ing people on the face of the earth, nor are there any who so feebly defend their own rights. These were usually the victims. Their only shame is that some of their own race helped to rob them. The combmed flames of Hadeas would not be hot enough for a just punishment to the human devil who robbed or attempted to rob an honest, hard-working, good-natured Swede. Jack London and Rex Beach may exaggerate some features of Alaska, but they could not do this one justice. The list of disgraced and discharged officers, court records and informa- tion of clients and friends, convinces me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not overstating the case. The Guggenheims may pay less than some of their is worth, but they can feel proud that they did not steal any of it or cover the court records with perjury for it, as has been charged to some others. Enough gold has been taken from Anvil Creek alone to repay the purchase price of Alaska, and every year enough is taken from this peninsula to repay the purchase price of Alaska. In all approximately fifty millions of dollars in gold has been taken out, and but a scratch has been made. Some of the most valuable mines were discovered in the least expected places, and so in the future any one may find millions under the water-soaked tundra. The gold is practically all placer. The future will reveal its mother lode. It contains a very little sil- ver. Some soft coal is found, and prospects of tin at York and Teller. Cape Mountain and Ear Mountain are granite intrusions, in which tin has been located, and if the tin locations depend on similar formations they will be confined to these mountains for the reason that such intrusions are very infrequent here; however, the geological agents of the government advise a further search in the slates. Perhaps a hundred thousand dollars \vorth of tin has been mined and the prospects are now fair for American tin. Along the beach are a number of villages consisting of a half dozen shacks, and a mission (and at one time a native town hall), including Shishmaref, i ork, 86 \f ALASKA Lkm; I-KAM I ellei, Tin City, Cheenik, Bluff, Dickson, and, inland. Council C ity, C andle City, D?hl, Noxapaga, Hot Springs, Igloo and a large number of mining camps. Many of these places are numerously populated in the active season. Nome iias about five thousand in winter and ten thousand population in summer, i here are many gigantic undertakings in this district. In 1902-3 the Co'. r.cil City & Solomon River Railway, and Seward Peninsula Railway were commenced. The former, starting at Nome, has been e.xtended to Lamb's Land- ing, about seventy miles, and the latter up Solomon River, half that distance. Ditches, almost as long, carrying water over divides, around mountains, from one stream to another, wind like threads all over the land and furnish the greatest assistance for procuring the gold. Titanic steam shovels, dredges and hydraulic lifts, horse scrapers, common sluice boxes, long toms, rockers and hand panning add their share. In winter, during the long night, light and water is not needed by those burrowing deep into the earth by a process of fire thawing or steam thawing, and the dirt is piled high at the mouth of the tunnel or shaft, to be washed with the first available water in the spring. Mil •.MCI ri' SIX .\v .\lii III- Ouna rna Ecossee Te-tiiM La AiM-otoko We Wiii-^riit r-ajrul Seyr Nakii-hun Voll Illrpil U.let She Spit l>ale-n Aliata M:iii lllllcl An^ut Tenolo Tin-ji K-thii-ca Otiiko Woin:iIi AclKiniik Arnak Salturn 1 Tin-jah Tar-link Dja-ata Onna Day Alil.Mik rt,)lk K'lut Drin Sen Mi Sun Sicknnynk Sckkink S'o 1 Drinnszih Shi nor I)zi(IIg-t>e Water Iniuk Iniek Too Chnn Mnka-muk Cand-l Mizn Snow Kaiiik Kaniik Xootaga Zah Madem Viiki Ice Seko Sikko T'nn T"nui Gal Kori IIcii.l Neaknk l\iakuk Se-woiyer Ti-chih Na-shuk Katse Atania Face Keeiij Ilk Kciiak Sen nil 1 Chiiieh lie Ka.. Month Kannk KaiiiM'k S"aIlotte 1 Che zhik Ira-luk guetl-e Kni'lii Teeth Keentik Kifrnl it S"nwyer t"ha-Koh W-dit Wonil Kiishnk Kessiik K'ant Ta-eluiin Mo-riik Tlk-vaii Ki 1 'nil...- Oliiciik O.H.Miiak Mi'tMiii TTih Its lia Tl..\v K..l.ini.- )ee page 80. 88 DIVISION III THE GREA I INTERIOR OF ALASKA. Here is a domain so large that whole mining states like Colorado, and agricultural states like Minnesota can and will in time be carved out of it. It is a country of magnanimous proportions — the longest night and day, largest mountam, largest moon, most beautiful sun, coldest temperature, umold wealth and many other superlatives. THE YUKON. If it IS true that a man six leet tall may look over the level plain hiteei, miles at which point the horizon will meet it, then the ^ ukon, in many places, is more than fifteen miles wide, and at springtime it is a real ocean with num- erous bays and islands. It is one of the largest rivers in the world. The ^'ukon heads in Canada, known as Lewes river and has a length of 2,044 miles, the whole of which with every creek and tributary forms a system of commercial highways for the interior. Much of the country is low, the banks muddy, and the mud is washed about forming islands and mud banks and changing the course of the channels (of which there are many) and a lot of it goes to fill up the Bering Sea. The mouth is about a hundred miles wide, the Aphoon or northern mouth, being the channel used for commerce, the entrance to which is 75 miles southward from St. Michaels, the present fort and wireless station. For years it was the most important Russian post in northern Alaska, the rem.iins of which are still to be seen. Between Norton Sound and the ^ ukon was, and is, a numerous native population who have many advantages over their Arctic kins- folk, because of the wood obtainable for numerous uses and abundance ol fish and game and less rigorous climate. Small villages, missions and trading stores are numerous, the same being true of the Yukon as far at least as Nulato. So much has been written of this district and it is so well known that I forgoe a re- petition of its interesting history. IHE KOYUKUK. The Koyukuk, a river rising near the northeast corner oi Alaska, has been overlooked since the days of the Russian and Hudson Bay trapper, until about a year ago. Numerous reports of paying gold in placer and quart/ have re- cently been made. The annual production is about $150,000. Last summer I met a large number of miners on their way in to Coldloot, Betlles. Allakakal and other points on the river, some of them a thousand miles by the way ol the river and trails from the confluence of the Koyukuk and ^ ukon. Boats run up as far as Bettles and poling extends to Coldfoot. I his is not the only un- developed river, to the north of it are many large rivers flowing to the Arctic yet unmapped. And to the west the Noatak and Kobuk empty into Kot/eliuo Sound, all heading in the EndicotI range. to which the iiexl stampede ma\ be made. THE KUSKOKWIM. The activity on the Kuskokwim was also well repaid last year, and fl.itlerinv reports are awaited from those who wintered on the river. The western side of the Alaska range is drained bv its tributaries through a country wild, unknown and abounding in game. 89 c:handai.ai< kivi-.k III 1907 another "rush" was made, this timi- to Big Creek, about 75 miles over the divide from (oldfoot. Big Creek is one of the upper branches of the Chandalar river. In winter about a hundred men work by means of steam l)()ilers and in summer jierhaps two hundred others are added, the annual output may be $100,000. Boats from ^ ukon ascend the Chandalar a hundred miles, from which the camp is easily reached. One of the first to take a boiler into that country, in telling me his experience said: "It was so cold in winter that he was required to remove the water from the boiler as soon as he stopped firing, and that the water would freeze and burst the boiler if he filled it before he started the fire. But if he built the fire first he would burn the boiler, consequently he was obliged to build a slow- fire and fill the boiler as the fire started. PORCUPINE RIVER. 1 his affluent of the ^'ukon is one of the oldest trails in Alaska. The natives, Russians and Hudson Bay trappers passed over it winter and summer as the highway between Ft. McPherson on the Peel, and Ft. Yukon. At the present time there are several trappers and indians along the river in winter, perhaps twenty-five, but no miners. Whalers and traders from Herchel come down the Porcupine by the way of Dease river or Rat river and La Pierr's House, 600 miles to Ft. Yukon. INNOKO RIVER. The tale of the rush to the Innoko, 1906-7, from Fairbanks over 300 miles of winter snow by I 200 miners, less than half of whom reached the diggins. IS frequently told by the participants, and is exciting enoug w-ithout adding exageration. The Innoko has two mouths emptying into the Yukon sixty miles apart. The gold is coarse and a half million dollars is expected out of the spring cleanup. Transportation is the difficulty in the way of success, hreight charges are $400 per ton. Flour is now $25 for a hundred pounds. This is a peculiar country, the bed rock is from four to forty feet from the surface, the banks of the rivers are low and a boat drawing eighteen inches of water can not get within two hundred miles of the mines on Gains creek and up the Deetna. Perhaps the most convenient route would be up the Kuskoquim crossing a portage of less than ten miles between James Creek and the Innoko. Small boats push up the Innoko on the spring freshets, but to step off with a ton or more of freight upon the mud flats among the misquitoes, would require the last ounce ot the bravest miner's courage. Poling up the remainder of the way over the tortuous course would consume so much time that the better part of the season would be over before work could be started. In winter the camp can be reached in a three day's "mush" from Kaltag. A large number remained on the river last winter and the cleanup now will be eagerly watched. The rocks of the country are slaty and the formations are very different from those of the Yukon, Tanana and other river camps. A road for winter and summer use should be made at once. The rushes or stampedes to Forty Mile, Sixty Mile, Dawson and Atlin are closely related to Alaskan history, likewise the river and trails from the coast range passes to Eagle, but inasmuch as the one hundred pages, to which we are limited, are far insufficient for the briefest possible histor\- of Alaska, we must omit all outside territory and much of interest within our boundary. TANANA. The gold output ol the Tanana, ^ukon district, now approximates fifty million dollars, of which the vicinity of Fairbanks produces two-thirds. 90 The gold seems to originate in two formations, one of metamorphic schists. the other in greenstones. The elements of ages have been collecting the particles in the creek bottoms, benches and gorges from which the placer miner has taken about all the gold produced. In this territory, as in all others, the mother lodes are sought after the placers have been worked, and paying rock has already been located. In a country so rich it may be expected that modern machinery, like Treadwell, will soon be at work here. Boats in summer almost daily go up the I anana, and with the aid of a railroad, supply the mining district from the boast on the ^'uLon. Fairbanks and Chena are busy places all the year through, the former named in honor of Vice-President Fairbanks, of Indiana, who has done more than any other one person for Alaska. Ex-President Harrison and Senator Beverage, also of that state, have the honor of being loyal advocates of Alaska's needs in the past. Alfred H. Brooks and his able assistants in the department of geological surveys have blazed the rocks pointing out the gold and mineral prospects in new districts, just as plainly as Major Richardson has blazed the trees alon« the trails leading to them. To all unsinted praise should be given. The laws, government and administration of Alaska affairs and its courts have been unsatisfactory in general, and at limes neglected, abandoned or fraudulently applied. Fhe smae difficulty may be again and again expected as long as Alaska is governed from Washington, D. C. Alaska has always been a kind of "football" kicked about by the Hudson Bay Company, Russian American Fur Company, Alaska Commercial Com- pany and various departments at Washington, without any regard for cen- serving its resources, but rather for getting all out of it possible and putting nothing back in return. The congressional delegation ol the Stale of Washington, and the commer- cial organizations of Seattle, have assumed the leadership in the attempt to ob- tain relief in the matters of governmental improvement, and already increased appropriations and attentions have been extended. The products of Alaska have approxmiated $300,000,000. Its exports for 1908 were $36,000,000. Its total trade with the states $46,000,000. It possesses more undeveloped Gold, Coal and Copper than any olher state or country; its climate is superior to Northern Asia or Europe; i( has fish enough for the whole world, and its agricultural possibilities are great. FOR r ^'UKON. Fort Yukon was located in 1847, on Russian territory, at ihr coiitluniK- of the Porcupine with the Yukon by the Hudson Bay Company, lor which it paid rent to the Russian Fur Company. 1 he Fort was destroyed by the Indians once, and has been moved and rebuilt several times. It is a hundred miles farther north than Nome. Here the Alaska traveler is north of the Arctic circle. an opportunity rarely enjoyed by tourists. Volumes have been written con- cerning the experience of the Hudson Bay Company, Russian .American Fur Company and Western Union Telegraph Company from Ft. Selkirk to the mouth of the ^ ukon. Going down the river from Ft. Selkirk. Ugilvie. at the confluence of the famous Sixty Mile creek, Dawson, the metropolis of the Klon- dike, about one-third as large as in the boom days. Eagle on the line. Forty Mile on the gold creek by that name, Circle. Ft. ^'ukon. Ft. \ lamlin. Rampart. Tanana, Ft. Gibbons. Nulalo, Klaltag, Anvil, Holy Cross. Ikogmul. .Andreafski are the important stations, more than half ol which have been known for two- thirds of a century. 91 INDEX Admirally Island 25 28 Agriculture 24. 36. 63. 66 Alaska. Boundary of | (^ 24 Alaska, Discoveries of 3 7. 41. 73. 76 Alaska. Maps of 4, 3 Alexandrian Archipelago | 8 Alaska Peninsula 65 Alert Bay 14 Alaska Steamship Co I8 Aleuts 63 Aleutian Islands 65 Anvil Creek 86 Arctic Coast 69 Aurora Borealis 80 Baranov 1 2, 34 Baskets 48 59 Bella Bella ' | 5 Berries 36 Beners Bay '. /6 Behm Canal 21 Bering Sea 69, 72. 73 Bering 41. 72, 76 Bristol Bay 65. 69 Brady, Rev. John G 41. 42 Bogslof Island Created 68 Canoes 49. 53 Cape Prince of Wales 73 Cape Suckling . 41 Cape Fenshaw 25 Cable _ o4 Cassair 23 Chilkoot Pass 29 Chirkoff 37 Chilkat Blanket 60 Chinook 49 Chandlar, R "......".90 Chicagof Island 36 Chena V I Cleveland Peninsula 21 Clarence, St 21 Copper Center 43. 63 Copper Mine River , 73 Copper 41. 42. 43 Copper River Country 41 to 44 Copper Mountain 22 Coal .12. 25. 41. 44, 66 Coronation. I.. 25 Commerce 9, 91 Comptroller Bay 41 Cordovia , ^\ 92 Cooks Inlet Country . 44 Crater Lake 31 Cross Sound 37 Dalton Trail 2tt Devils Thumb 24 Dixon Entrance T5 to 18 Discoveries on Pacific 9. 10. il. 12, 13. 14. 15. 28. 39. 37. 40. 41 Discoveries Among Aleutian Islands 70 Discoveries in Arctic Seas 72 to 77 Discoveries on ^ ukon 77 Dionmede, I., 72, 77 Douglass, I., 26 Duncan Canal 24 Dora 45 Dyea 29 East Cape 73 Elemar 44 Esquimault 16. 34 Esquimaux 73 to 80 Fairbanks 91 Farragut, B. 24 Fish and Fur 7. 9. 14. 48. 62. 66. 71 Eraser, R 10 Frederick Sound 24. 25 Fort Yukon . 91 Gold 9, 21, 23, 25. 26, 28, 36. 42, 86. 89. 90, 91 Gold Creek 26. 28 Georgia Gulf II. 12 George Inlet 21 Glaciers 24, 25. 28. 30. 37, 39 Gravana, I., 2 1 Hadley 22. 23 Haines . 29 Hamilton Bay 21 Helm Bay 21 Hecta. St 13 Hawkan . ll Hoonah 37 Hudson Bay Co. 16. 23 Innoko 90 Indian Wars .. 8, 19, 25. 28. M, 37 Indians on Canadian Coast I 4 Indians on Prince of Wales Island - I Indians on Pacific Coast .40, 45 to 6! Indian Chiefs 8. 19. 34. 46 Indian Population 46.50 Indian Legands. Slaves. Music. Marriages. Religion. Canoes. Burrials, Feasts. Totems. Baskets. Blankets, etc.. see 50 to 61 Icy Cape 37 Inside Passage . •*. / Iskut. R 21 95 Japanese Current 65 Jaun dc Fuca, Slr.iils 9 Juneau 26. 27. 28 luiii-.ui (iold licit 26 kales Needle 24 Kalalla 4! Kayat r. 41 Kenai 44 Kelcliikan IH Killisnoo L^ King I., 72 Knight's I.. 44 Kot/ebue Sound 69 Kui I '. 25 Koykuk -: 89 Kupreanof I., 25 Kuskokwim 89 La Perouse 39 Latouche 44 Lake Linderman 31 Lituya. B 39 Loring 19 Lynn Canal 28 Mackenzie, Alexander 10, (5. 73 Mackenzie. R 73 Marble ^ ^ 11 Metlakathla • .19 Missions 19. 35, 36. 46 Mt. Baker 10. 1 I Mt. St. Augustine 37 Mt. Fairweather 5l Mt. Crillion 37 Mt. St. Elian 37. 38 Mt. Edgcomb 35 Mt. Sumdum 25 Mt. Iliamma 37 Mt. Wrangell 37 Mt. McKinley 37 Mountains ,. 37. 67. 69, 86 Nanaimo .12 Navigation 62 Norton Sound 77 Nome .86 North West Passage 40, 44, 73 to 77 Nootka 12. 16 Oil 41. 46 Porcupine R.. 90 Potlatch 54 Port Etches . .44 Population 44. 50. 65, 78 Port Clarence , 77 Port Townsend .9 94 Point Barrow 73 Prince Rupert 13 Prince of Wales Island 21 Prince Williams Sound 41 Priblof Islands 69 Puget Sound . 9 Queen Charlotte Sound and Islands 13 Railroads 33. 40. 41 to 44. 87 Ravens 36 Reynolds 42 Rivallagigedo and other Islands 20 Rocks 25 Russians 23. 34. 40. 41. 44. 70 Russian American Fur Co 23 Salmon 9, 10, 17. 18. 19.67 Seal - 70. 7 I Sea Lion 71. 72 Seward Peninsula 86 Seward, Ft. William H 29 Seward 43 Seward City 28 Seattle 3. 7. 8 Seattle, Chief 8 Sheep Creek ^6. 28 Shamen 34 Schools 61 Sitka 34 to 37 Skaguay 32 Skeena River 21. 25 Sledge I.. 72 Snettisham 2() Sopy Smith 32 St. Lawrence »'2 Stephens Pass 24 Stikine, R 21. 23. 24. 25 Sports :>6 Sussitna R., 44 Tanana ''" Tattoosh I.. ^^ Taku R.. 21. 25 Teslin 23 Tides 44 Timber 62 Tm 8(, Thorn Arm ... 20 Tongass Narrows ^ 1 . 24 Totems 12, 55. 56, 37 Trials . 2\, 28. 28 Treadvvell 26. 27. It*' Tyee 13 Unuk R.. 21. 23 ^5 Vancouver, CJror><«' Vancouver Island Valdc/ Victoria Volcanoes Walrus Western Union I el. Co. Scheme White Pass & Yukon R. R. Whale Windham Wireless Telegraphy Wrangell and Wrangell Narrows Yakulat ^ ukon Zarembo 23 42. 43 10 37 72 77 20. 31. 33 13 23 64, 77. 85 23. 24 39 89 % 9 6 9 S "^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THF I I NIVF P?<^!TV I IDD/VDV UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los^pigeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 9<^ T^ 7-4 4.-0 4 ;i;8 > S 1968 11951 hURL m 75 i ■Q7q .^^ .2 198Q 315 t- - I "^ LOS /. UBftAh Ill 1 1 IIWI 3 1158 00536 01%' 1 UC SOUTHERN Rf GIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY lllllllllll ll HI III I lllllll I'lilllllllll ll I AA 001 161 515