FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. XIX 



feed the coasts and islands of the Pacific, and the vigorous climate will breed a race 

 of hardy adventurers to repeat on the Pacific, softened by Christian civilization, the 

 deeds of the Norse Sea-Kings on the Atlantic. 



As a lover of my country, anxious for the growth and prosperity and strength and 

 virtue of the nation, I should value Russian America, its fisheries and mines, beyond 

 the hot plains of Mexico or the fertile plantations of Cuba. 



I trust that no effort needed to secure this great acquisition will be omitted. The 

 execution of the treaty will crown our generation with the praises and thanks of 

 future ages. 



In ''A memorandum description of the Russian Imperial system of 

 Russian America," transmitted to Secretary Seward by the American 

 minister at St. Petersburgh, November 21, 1867, it is stated as follows : 



The Aleutian Islands may attract transient traders, but no permanent settlers. To 

 inhabit them one must be an Aleut, and if it were not for the sea surrounding the 

 islands, this country, owing to its unfavorable climatic conditions and the sterility of 

 its ground, would have never been inhabited at all. 



In the summary of the products of Alaska furnished the State Depart- 

 ment by Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, he says : 



Animals. — Furred animals, such as sea-otter, river otter, sable furred seal, mink, 

 foxes, black, silver, red, etc., abound in great numbers. Red deer are on the south and 

 reindeer on the north side. 



Fish. — Herring, salmon, halibut, and codfish abound in exhaustless numbers. In 

 Bering Sea great whales are very numerous. 



On the 2d day of September, 1867, Mr. W. W. Miller wrote as fol- 

 lows: 



I have watched anxiously for the proceedings of the House to appropriate the pur- 

 chase mouey to carry into execution that treaty. The sum our Government is to pay 

 is a mere pittance for that vast region and its many substantial benefits which must 

 acrue from its acquisition. » * * 



The privilege of fishing on those banks, with Sitka as a free port in perpetuity, is, 

 of itself, worth the price we are paying for the whole territory with all its incidents. 



Mr. Charles Brewer, who was, during the years 1826, 1827, 1828, first 

 officer o£ tlie American brig Ghinchella, trading between the Sandwich 

 Islands, Sitka, and China, writes under date of December 16, 1867, as 

 follows : 



The coast of Alaska abounds with fish of various kinds, such as salmon, halibut, 

 and codfish, and I think the fisheries of that territory are of more value to our pos- 

 sessions of California and Oregon than those of Newfoundland to New England. 



In the years 1826 to 18'28 we sold our cargoes direct to the Russian Government, 

 and received our pay entirely in fur-seal skins, which skins were all taken upon the 

 northern part of that coast and the adjacent islands, as also large quantities of ivory 

 (walrus teeth) and walrus skins, and brought into the port of Sitka in the vessels 

 of the Russian-American Coropany. 



The committee cite these documents because they were transmitted 

 to the House of Representatives, with many others of a like character, 

 by the President under a resolution of the House, December 19, 1867, 

 " calling for correspondence and information in relation to Russian 

 America," to enable the House to take proper action on the pending 

 bill appropriating the purchase money ; but chiefly because it seems to 

 the committee to have been taken for granted that by the purchase of 

 Alaska the United States would acquire exclusive ownership of and 

 jurisdiction over Bering Sea, including its products— the fur seal, sea- 

 otter, walrus, whale, codfish, salmon, and other fisheries ; for it is on 

 account of these valuable products that the appropriation of the pur- 

 chase-money was urged. 



The extracts above quoted in reference to these products are empha- 

 sized by the fact that the fur-seal fisheries alone have-already yielded 



