Alaska

“ Alaska is, to be sure, a great free country!
To-day has been wonderfully mild and comfortable. From time to time the rain has fallen gently. Over the water the clouds have drooped, hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save for the long swell—and this more to be heard upon the beach than seen. Rockwell and I at dusk walked the shore out to the point between the coves. We saw the glowing sky where the sun had set, the mountainous islands to the southward, and our own cove and its mountain ramparts—beautiful in the black and white of the spruces and the snow. ”

“ In Alaska, at the head of Cook Inlet, it swings a sharp curve to the southwest and becomes Alaska's mountain axis. This sharp curve, for all the world like a monstrous granite hinge connecting the northwesterly and southwesterly limbs of the System, is the gigantic Alaska Range, which is higher and broader than the Sierra Nevada, and of greater relief and extent than the Alps. Near the centre of this range, its climax in position, height, bulk, and majesty, stands Mount McKinley. Its glistening peak can be seen on clear days in most directions for two hundred miles. ”

“ Nowhere else in all the world are there such wondrous tints as in Alaska. To appreciate the beauty of the land, however, one needs must be an early riser. To have seen the marvelous change which comes over the pure whiteness of the snow-crowned crests between the darkness and the dawn! ”

“ Wonderful is our latest American Continental possession—the rich territory of Alaska. Limitless are its resources, unmatchable its possibilities. One of its admirers thus sounds its praises: "In scenery, Alaska dwarfs the world. Think of six hundred and seventeen thousand square miles of landscape. Put Pike's Peak on Mount Washington or Mount Mitchell and it would hardly even up with Mount Logan. All the glaciers of Switzerland and the Tyrol dwindle to pitiful summer ice-wagon chunks beside the vast ice empires of Glacier Bay or mighty Malaspina. ”

“ Why pretend that Alaska is exceptional in this respect? The weather is not perfect, according to our estimate, anywhere. Finally the extended trip upon the boat was found to cover a little over two thousand miles in all, and was with us one of continuous pleasure, enlivened by as bright and cheerful weather as one experiences on an average elsewhere, winding among an immense archipelago of mountains, emerald islands, and land-locked bays, through narrow channels dominated by precipitous cliffs, and crossing broad, lake-like expanses as placid as the serene blue overhanging all. ”

“ The view from the summit of Sour-Dough Hill is unsurpassed in the interior of Alaska. Glacial creeks and roaring rivers; wild and fantastic canyons; moving glaciers; gorges of royal purple gloom; green valleys and flowery slopes; the domed and towered Castle [Pg 286] Mountains; the lone and majestic peaks pushing up above all others, above the clouds, cascades spraying down sheer precipices; and far to the south the linked peaks of the Coast Range piled magnificently upon the sky, dim and faintly blue in the great distance,—all blend into one grand panorama of unrivalled inland grandeur. ”

“ The numerous islands that skirt the coast of Alaska, the great plains of the interior, intersected by deep rivers, gigantic snow-crowned mountains, the active volcanoes and the mighty ice fields, with many other singular, beautiful and awe-inspiring gifts of nature combine to make the country of the new gold fields one of notable grandeur and wonder. ”

“ By some happy dispensation of the Creator every savage is so constituted that here in Alaska, at least, he believes in his own particular area of existence as the very best realm of the earth—he becomes homesick and refuses to be comforted if taken to California or Oregon, enters into a slow decline, and soon dies if not returned to the dreary spot of his birth—a sad illustration of fatal nostalgia. ”

“ The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and towering peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a comparison of Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere superficial area, wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North American continent. ”

“ Within half a dozen years, Alaska has been similarly assailed, and at this very moment there are bands of intrepid men camping here and there in that lonely interior, and calling upon the hitherto impenetrable forests and desolate tundras to deliver up the secrets they have held for untold ages. ”

“ The people of Alaska, a strong, large-limbed, and tall race, with flat faces, high cheek-bones, and small, bead-like black eyes, who delighted in disfiguring their lips and noses with pendent ornaments, seem to have stood in considerable awe of their visitors, and supplied them with game and fish in abundance during the first few weeks of their stay. ”

“ O my kind readers! when the Alaska Summer Hotel Company has stocked the nooks and corners of the archipelago with caravansaries, and good boats are filling them with guests who go to spend the season in the far Northwest, fail not to see that you are numbered among the elect; for Alaska outrivers all rivers and out-lakes all lakes—being itself a lake of ten thousand islands; it out-mountains the Alps of America, and certainly outdoes everything else everywhere else, in the shape of a watering place. ”

“ About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.
“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail. And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers, modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this new land be?
[20]
She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of France were not new to her. But Alaska! ”

“ Yet I am of opinion, from such opportunities to observe and compare as my constant travel has given me, that the quiet work of this gracious woman of the old school, with her dignity that nothing ever invaded and her poise that nothing ever disturbed, is perhaps the most powerful single influence that has come into the lives of the natives of interior Alaska. ”

“ First they must themselves live in accordance with those principles, then guide the people. Perchance, God willing, the lights of the most great guidance may illumine that country and the breezes of the rose garden of the love of God may perfume the nostrils of the inhabitants of Alaska. ”

“ In the far-distant corners, hidden away from the eyes of man, one will come upon the scattered missions of the various churches to reach which one must journey thousands of miles! So, whenever a man from Nome speaks of Alaska he means that part of it which he himself knows,—the Seward Peninsula. The man from Cordova, [39] or Valdez, talks of the Prince William Sound country and calls it Alaska! The man from Juneau speaks of Alaska, but all that he means is the southeastern coast. This is why so much that is written of the country is contradictory. In fact, Alaska is not one but many countries! ”

“ Alaska is not one country but many countries, and so widely do they differ from one another in almost every respect [xvii] that no general statements about Alaska can be true. The present author's knowledge of the territory is confined in the main to the interior—to the valley of the Yukon and its tributary rivers, which make up one of the world's great waterways—and nothing of his writing applies, with his authority, to other parts. ”

“ It has accomplished more than anything else in the way of dispelling the erroneous impressions which people have received of Alaska by reading the descriptions of early explorers who fancied that every drift of snow was a living glacier and every feather the war bonnet of a savage. ”

“ Until a few years ago the popular conception of Alaska was a vast country sealed against the efforts of civilisation by impenetrable barriers of snow and ice, presenting such a dismal outlook as to daunt the most intrepid spirits. ”

“ Hanging Valley and Waterfall, Fraser Ranch Some idea of the wealth of this scenery may be gained from the fact that the coast-line of Alaska is about twenty-six thousand miles long, more than twice as long as all the rest of the United States. The islands of the Alexander Archipelago, with the straits, channels, canals, sounds, passages, and fiords, form an intricate web of land and water embroidery sixty or seventy miles wide, fringing the lofty icy chain of coast mountains from Puget Sound to Cook Inlet ”

“ Alaska is widely different. From its mountainous, Alpine nature, living inland is out of the question; and the Indians seek the few narrow beaches and low points scattered here and there through the inland passage as the places whereon to build their little villages, and these are in as full view to the passing steamer as New York and Brooklyn are to a boat going up or down the East river channel. ”

“ Is it not a little singular that the lonely and monotonous course of the Yukon River, reaching as it does to the very limits of the pathless interior of a vast, unexplored region on either side, should be that one section of all others in Alaska the best known to us? ”

“ Alaska is not one country but many, with different climates, different resources, different problems, different populations, different interests; and what is true of one part of it is often grotesquely untrue of other parts. ”

“ The course of multitudes, guided by the natural instinct of selfishness, will be overruled by a higher power for the general good.
The very name of Alaska has to the popular ear a ring of glacier fields and snow-clad peaks, conveying a frigid impression of the climate quite 114contrary to fact. The most habitable portions of the country lie between 55° and 60° north, about the same latitude as that of Scotland and southern Scandinavia, but the area of this portion of Alaska is greater than that of both these countries combined. ”

“ You now have before you the general shape of the peninsula of Alaska, which lies in the northwestern part of North America.
The children of Alaska have a much more comfortable home than the little Greenlanders. Their shores, except in the far north, are not bound in ice the year around; the winters are not so cold and the summers are warmer; trees grow in thick forests over a great part of the country, and many flowers bloom there. ”

“ Alaska is one-third as large as the United States.
It is not an iceberg, but affords future homes for millions.
Alaska is in the same latitude as England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Russia.
Alaska has the greatest fisheries on earth. These fisheries are controlled by the beef trust. GRAFT!
Alaska has great beds of finest anthracite coal, now being gobbled up by the Pennsylvania coal barons. GRAFT! ”

“ Common opinion "outside" about Alaska seems to be veering from the view that it is a land of perpetual snow and ice to the other extreme of holding it to be a "world's treasure-house" of mineral wealth and agricultural possibility. The world's treasure is deposited in many houses, and Alaska has its share ”

“ Seven million two hundred thousand dollars for a field of stony mountain, icebergs and glaciers! Had Seward gone mad? Ah, no. He builded wiser than he knew. Alaska is nine times the size of the New England States and cost less than one-half cent per acre.
The northwest coast of Alaska was discovered and explored by a Russian expedition under Behring, in 1741. Russian settlements were made and the fur trade developed.
The climate is no colder than at St. Petersburg and many other parts of Russia. The warm Japan current sweeps the coast and tempers the climate. ”

“ Its remoteness from the centres of European settlement and from the lines of trade and travel, and its inhospitable climate made Alaska one of the latest regions to yield to the advances of the explorer, surveyor and settler. At a date when the colonies on the North Atlantic coast of America numbered millions of prosperous people, already preparing to take independent rank among the nations of the world, the very existence of this enormous country was unknown. ”

“ Alaska has a navigable river twenty-eight hundred miles in length, a reservation at the mouth controls the harbor and permits are issued for warehouses to two big corporations only, so Alaskans again have to stand for GRAFT! ”

“ The northern shore of Alaska is extremely shallow and sandy, great sand-spits being shoved up by the ice all along the coast. The beach is covered with drift-wood, which comes from the rivers emptying into Behring Sea. In conclusion, the Indians of Alaska have been reported as savage and treacherous. In my experience, I found the natives of interior northern Alaska the most kind and hospitable people in the world. ”

“ A few individuals are said to lurk in the meadows and high tablelands of Alaska; but soon they must rank with the mastodon.
I have had time to but touch upon the mysteries of our great Northwestern Territories. Little by little its marvels, its wealth, its beauties will unfold to modern research, and the schoolboy of a generation hence will look back with incredulous wonder upon the maps, the charts and the scientific works upon Alaska that alone are available to-day.
“I know who wrote that,” said Randolph, looking meaningly at the editor. ”