556 ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 



Bureau. This, in addition to meeting a necessity, enabled tbe Com- 

 missioner to secure reliable information concerning the educational 

 needs of the principal centers of population among the civilized Rus- 

 sians, Aleuts, and Eskimos of southern and southwestern Alaska. 



With the commencement of the public agitation, which resulted in 

 securing schools for Alaska, the Commissioner had sought diligently 

 for reliable and explicit information concerning that unknown region. 

 When, in 1885, the responsibility of establishing schools in that section 

 was placed upon him, he more than ever felt the need of the information 

 that was necessary for intelligent action in the school work. An appli- 

 cation was then made to the honorable Secretary of the Navy, and he 

 issued instructions to the commanding officer of the U. S. S. Finta, 

 then in Alaskan waters, to take the general agent of education in 

 Alaska on a tour of inspection along the coast. A combination of cir- 

 cumstances prevented the ship from making the trii). 



The necessity which arose in the fall of 1886 of sending the teachers 

 furnished the long-desired opportunity of securing the needed informa- 

 tion. 



The schooner Leo, of Sitka, was chartered, because the terms were 

 lowest, and because the vessel had auxiliary steam i)ower, which ena- 

 bled it to get in and out of harl)ors and through the narrow channels 

 between the islands, where, without this auxiliary power, we would 

 have been delayed weeks. 



The cruise proved a stormy one, consuming one hundred and four 

 days. Passing through the equinoctial storms, we encountered the 

 early winter gales of that high latitude. We lost 2 sails, were stranded 

 on a reef of rocks, nearly lost a sailor overboard, while repeatedly great 

 seas washed completely over us. 



Taking on board of the Leo Mr. John H. Carr and wife, Mr. W. E. 

 Koscoe, wife and child, liev. and Mrs. James A, Wirth, and Rev. and 

 Mrs. L. W. Currie and child, together with their household effects and 

 provisions, also necessary school suiiplies, I sailed fi om Puget Sound 

 September 3. Visits were made to Kadiak, Wood Island, Spruce 

 Island, Afognak, Karluk, Akhiok, Ayakharalik, Kaguiak, IJnga, Bels 

 kofsky, Unalaska, Jackson, Klawak, Tuxikan, Sitka, Killisnoo, Hoo- 

 nah, Juneau, Douglas, Wrangell, Loring, and Port Tongass. At 

 Unga, on the Shumagin Island, I landed Mr. and Mrs. John H. Carr 

 with school books, desks, etc., for the establishment of a school. Mr. 

 and Mrs. W. E. Roscoe were similarly landed at Kadiak; Rev. and 

 Mrs. James A. Wirth were landed through the breakers at Afognak, 

 and the Rev. L. W. Cuirie and family were landed at Tuzikan, at all 

 of which |)laces schools were established. 



On the 1st day of July, 1880, a contract was entered into with Dr. 

 William S. Langford, secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Mission 

 Board of iSTew York City, by which Rev. Octavius Parker, of Oregon, 

 was appointed teacher and directed to establish a school in the Yukon 

 Valley. Being unable to reach his destination the first season, the 

 school was opened temporarily at St. JVIichael oti the coast. A similar 

 contract was made with the officers of the missionary society of the 

 Moravian Church to establish a school at the mouth of the Nushagak 

 River. Rev. Frank E. Wolff, of Wisconsin, accompanied by his family 

 and jNIiss Mary Huber, were sent as teachers to that place. These 

 schools, with the one at Bethel, 500 miles from each other, and central 

 to a population of from 10,000 to 12,000 uncivilized Eskimos in western 

 Alaska, were the entering wedges to the civilization of that whole 

 great region — the beginning of better things. Prof. S. A. Saxman and 



