170 THE SEA. 



the utmost a greater value than a few hundred dollars, now ran up to fabulous prices; 

 10,000 dollars was asked for a log house! Hotels, "saloons" i.e., bar-rooms a VAmericaine 

 German lager-bier cellars, and barbers' shops sprang up like mushrooms ; a newspaper- 

 office was opened, and everything reminded one of the sudden growth of mining -towns 

 in the early days of California. Alas ! everything else went up in proportion, excepting 

 salmon, which must be a drug on that coast for many centuries to come ; * provisions 

 greatly rose in price, and the competition for furs was so great that they became nearly 

 as dear as in San Francisco. The consequence may be imagined; there was an exodus, 

 and the following January the whole city could have been bought for a song. The 

 Russian officials, of course, left it shortly after the transfer, and most of the others as 

 speedily as they could. The "capital" has never recovered from the shock; for, although 

 organised fur-companies are scattered over the country, in one instance the United States 

 Government leasing the sole right that of fur-sealing, on the Aleutian Islands to a firm 

 which has a Russian prince as a partner, Sitka is not the entrepot it was ; everything in 

 furs is brought to San Francisco before being consigned to all quarters of the globe. The 

 value of Alaska to the United States is at present very small, but so little is known 

 about it that one can hardly form an estimate concerning its future. It possesses minerals, 

 but these will always be worked with difficulty, on account of the climate. Its grand 

 salmon-fisheries are, however, a tangible property; the cod in Bering Sea is as plentiful 

 as it ever was on the Newfoundland banks ; and there are innumerable forests of trees, 

 easily accessible, reaching down to the coast of pines, firs, and cedars, of size sufficient 

 for the tallest masts and largest spars, so that Alaska has a direct interest for the 

 ship-builder. 



By its acquisition, the United States not merely extended its seaboard for, say, 1,500 

 miles north, but it obtained Mount St. Elias, by far the largest peak of the North 

 American continent, and one of the loftiest mountains of the globe. "Upon Mont 

 Blanc," says an American writer, f " pile the loftiest summit in the British Islands, and 

 they would not reach the altitude of Mount St. Elias. If a man could reach its summit, 

 he would be two miles nearer the stars than any other American could be, east of the 



Mississippi As a single peak it ranks among the half-dozen loftiest on the 



globe. Some of the Himalaya summits reach, indeed, a couple of miles nearer Orion 

 and the Pleiades, but they rise from an elevated plateau sloping gradually upwards for 

 hundreds of miles. As an isolated peak, St. Elias may look down upon Mont Blanc and 

 Teneriffe, and claim brotherhood with Chimborazo and Cotopaxi." It acquired also one of 

 the four great rivers of the globe, of which the writer had the pleasure of being one of the 

 earliest explorers. The Yukon, which renders the waters of Bering Sea fresh or semi-fresh 

 for a dozen miles beyond its many mouths, is a sister-river to the Amazon, Mississippi, 

 and, perhaps, the Plata ; it has affluents to which the Rhine or Rhone are but brooks. 



The Kalosh Indians of Sitka live in semi-civilised wooden barns or houses, with 



* On many parts of the North-west Pacific coasts of America, from Oregon northwards to Bering Straits, 

 the salmon, in their season, swarm so that a boat can hardly make a way through their "schools." 

 f Harper s Magazine (New York), April, 1869. 



