“ In May the rivers open, the cleared land thaws out, and by June the miner is again at work. Summer is quickly in full ascendancy. In May and June the sun shines from eighteen to twenty hours and diffused twilight fills the rest of the day. ”

“ The Soil of Alaska seems to be in itself rich, and quite capable of agricultural development; the great impediment to this is in the briefness of the summer. Contrary, however, to the once universal belief, the experiments of the department of agriculture of the United States have definitely proved that hardy vegetables in great variety can readily be produced in the coastal region and at various stations in the Yukon valley; and presumably, therefore, all over the interior S. of the Arctic circle, save along Bering Sea ”

“ The summer is relatively dry, the autumn and winter wet. The vapour-laden sea air blowing landward against the girdle of snow and glaciers on the mountain barriers a few miles inland drains its moisture in excessive rain and snow upon the lisière, shrouding it in well-nigh unbroken fog and cloud-bank. Only some 60 to 100 days in the year are clear. In passing from the Sitkan district westward toward Kodiak and the Aleutians (q.v.) the climate becomes even more equable, the temperature a little lower and the rainfall somewhat less ”

“ The natives have adopted many customs of white civilization, and on the Aleutians, and in coastal Alaska, and in scattered regions in the interior acknowledge Christianity under the forms of the Orthodox Greek or other churches. The rapid exhaustion in late years of the caribou, seals and other animals, once the food or stock-in-trade of the Aleuts and other races, threatens more and more the swift depletion of the natives. ”

“ From 1893 to 1895 the United States expended $55,000 to support the natives of the Fur Seal Islands. This policy threatens to become a continued necessity throughout much of Alaska. There is a small government Indian reservation on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. The white population is extremely mobile, and few towns have an assured or definite future. The prosperity of the mining towns of the interior is dependent on the fickle fortune of the gold-fields, for which they are the distributing points. ”

“ The fishing grounds extend along the coast from the extreme south-east past the Aleutians into Bristol Bay. Herring are abundant, and cod especially so. There are probably more than 100,000 sq. m. of cod-banks from 22 to 90 fathoms deep in Bering Sea and E. of the Alaska Peninsula. Salmon are to be found in almost incredible numbers. Of marine mammals, whales are hunted far to the N. in Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, but are much less common than formerly, as are also the walrus, the sea otter and the fur seal. ”

“ The thick peat moss or tundra of the undrained lowlands covers probably at least a quarter of Alaska; the reindeer moss grows both on the lowlands and the hills. [7] Sedges available for forage grow in the tundra. In August berries are fairly abundant over the interior; one of them, the salmon or cloud berry, preserved in seal oil for the winter, is an important food of the natives. The grasses are killed by the frosts in September. The western timber limit is on Kodiak Island. The Aleutian Islands (q.v.) are almost destitute of trees, but are covered with a luxuriant growth of herbage. ”

“ Timber, however, is fairly abundant along the entire course of the Yukon above Anvik (about 400 m. from the mouth) , along the great tributaries of the Yukon, and, so far as explorations have revealed, along every stream in central Alaska; and the woods of the interior consist almost entirely of spruce. On the Yukon flats it grows in a vast forest impenetrably dense. [6] The timber line, which in the Panhandle and along the southern coast of the continental mass runs from 1800 to 2400 ft., frequently rises in the interior plateau even to 4000 ft. ”

“ By the middle of September snow flurries have announced the imminence of winter, the smaller streams congeal, the earth freezes, the miner perforce abandons his diggings, and navigation ceases even on the Yukon in October. All winter snows fall heavily. The air is dry and quiet, and the cold relatively uniform. In midwinter in the upper valley the sun rises only a few degrees above the horizon for from four to six hours a day, though very often quite obscured. ”

“ All nature responds in rich and rapid growth to the garish light and intense heat of the long, splendid days. But the Alaska summer is the uncertain season at times the nights are cold into July, at times snow falls and there are frosts in mid-August ”

“ The walrus is now found mainly far N.; the sea otter, once fairly common throughout the Aleutian district, is now rarely found even on the remoter islands; the fur seal, whose habitat is the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, has been considerably reduced in numbers by pelagic hunting. There are half-a-dozen species of hair seals and sea-lions. The number of fur-bearing land animals is equally large. ”

“ The destruction of the wild caribou has threatened to expose the Indians to wholesale starvation, hence the effort which the United States government has made to stock the country with domestic reindeer from Siberia. ”

“ The glaciers of the Panhandle and throughout the rest of the Pacific region are most remarkable—extraordinary alike for their number and their size. They lie mainly between 56° and 61° N. lat., in a belt 1000 m. long, of which the central part, some 350 or 500 m. long and 80 m. to 100 m. wide, has been described as one great confluent névé field. Thousands of Alpine glaciers from one to fifteen miles long fill the upper valleys and canyons of the mountains. More than a hundred almost reach the sea, from which they are separated by detrital lowland or terminal moraines. ”

“ On the Yukon at the international boundary the mean of the warmest month is higher than that of the warmest month at Sitka, 500 m. southward. At some points in the Upper Yukon valley the range of extreme temperatures is as great as from −75° to 90° F. [3] The mean heat of summer in the upper valley is about 60° to 70° F., and at some points in the middle and lower valley even higher. ”

“ Of the two great affluents of the Yukon, the Tanana is for the most part unnavigable, while the Koyukuk is navigable for more than 450 m. by river steamers, and for more than 500 m. above its mouth shows no appreciable diminution in volume. A low water-parting divides the Yukon valley from the Kuskokwim, the second river of Alaska in size, navigable by steamers for 600 m. Torrential near its source, it is already a broad, sluggish stream at its confluence with the East Kuskokwim. The tides rise 50 ft. near its mouth and the tide-head is 100 m. ”

“ The gold product of the Canadian Yukon territory from 1896–1903 was about $96,000,000, as estimated by the Canadian Geological Survey. In 1905 the product of gold from Alaska was valued at $15,630,000 (mines report) ; and from 1880 to 1906 the production of gold, according to the estimate of A. H. Brooks, was more than $100,000,000. The gravest problem of mining in the interior country, even graver than that presented by the climate, is transportation ”

“ The last is not confined to this part of Alaska, but is the characteristic and universal tree. It is of primary economic importance to the natives, who use it for the most various purposes. On the islands of the Alexander Archipelago and on Prince William Sound it grows to gigantic size; even on the Koyukuk and the middle Yukon it attains in places a diameter of 2 ft. In 1902 a forest reservation comprising the largest part of the Alexander Archipelago was created by the United States government. The separation of the coast and interior floras is almost complete ”

“ The whale fishery also has greatly fallen off; there is no profit on the oil and the whales are sought for the baleen alone; they are much less numerous too than they once were, and have to be sought farther and farther north. ”

“ This effort made under the direction of the Bureau of Education has been eminently successful, and in the future the reindeer seems certain to contribute very greatly to the food, clothing, means of shelter and miscellaneous industries of the natives; and not less to the solution of the problems of communication and transportation throughout the interior. It is, however, the fish and the fur-bearing animals of its rivers and surrounding seas that are economically most distinctive of and important to Alaska. ”

“ The inter-insular straits are carried up into the shore as fjords heading in rivers and glaciers. Thus the Stikine river continues Sumner Strait and the Taku continues Cross Sound. The Stikine, Taku and Alsek rivers all cross the mountains in deep-cut canyons. Everywhere the evidences of glacial action abound. ”