84 



The National Geographic Magazine 



shines, are St. Matthew and Hall Isl- 

 ands, buttressed by cliffs, above which 

 are undulating slopes of tundra, grassy 

 and gay with flowers, and beyond them 

 St. I^awrence, a mountain island fringed 

 by a boggy plain. 



The Alaska coast of Bering Sea is 

 mainly low and marshy, rising A^ery 

 gently inland, and consisting almost en- 

 tirely of tundra. The Yukon, the great 

 river of Alaska and one of the great 

 rivers of the earth, ends its long journey 

 seaward in an enormous delta, which 

 covers thousands of square miles. 

 Through this great area of low level 

 land its distributaries meander slug- 

 gishly to the sea, bringing from the in- 

 terior mud and gold and driftwood, to 

 be spread along the coast by the cur- 

 rents. 



Such is the Alaska coast : where it 

 faces the Pacific, bold, rugged, and 

 bordered throughout by a mountain bar- 

 rier ; where it faces Bering Sea, low, 

 tundra-clothed, and affording easy ac- 

 cess to the interior by means of its great 



THE INTERIOR 



Of the interior of Alaska we know 

 much less than of its borders. Not only 

 did the early explorers confine their at- 

 tention almost entirel^^ to its coasts, but 

 the inhabitants, both natives and Euro- 

 peans, owing to the difficulties of land 

 travel in the interior, have alwa5''s lived 

 upon the coast or upon the larger 

 streams, and have made their journeys 

 by the water routes. It is only in re- 

 cent years that definite geographic in- 

 formation concerning the interior has 

 been obtained, and at present, through 

 the extensive explorations carried on by 

 the U.S. Geological Survey and officers 

 of the U. S. Army, such information is 

 rapidly increasing. 



The primary slope of the land is 

 toward the west and southwest, as is 

 indicated by the courses of the great 

 rivers of the Territory — the Yukon, 



Kuskokwim, Koyukuk, and others. 

 The trend of the mountain uplifts, on 

 the Pacific side, swings around from 

 northwest to southwest, thus following 

 the general course of the coast. Of the 

 great features of the Territory this chain 

 forms the southernmost, and is the key 

 to the structure of the country. Suc- 

 ceeding it on the north is the great 

 valley of the Yukon, which is separated 

 from the Arctic coast by ranges of low 

 mountains and broken country, proba- 

 bly nowhere exceeding 5,000 or 6,000 

 feet in altitude. 



The Cordillera attains its greatest 

 breadth and altitude between longitudes 

 142° and 152°. Here are many sum- 

 mits reputed to exceed 12,000 feet in 

 height, with Mount Wrangell, said to 

 be 17,500 feet, and Mount McKinley,* 

 so far as known, the highest summit on 

 the North American continent, rising to 

 an altitude of 20,464 feet. In this por- 

 tion of the mountain system are the 

 sources of many large rivers, the White, 

 a branch of the Yukon; the Copper, well 

 named on account of the enormous de- 

 posits of copper ore found near it ; the 

 Sushitna, flowing into the head of Cook 

 Inlet ; the Tanana, another branch of 

 the Yukon, and finall^^ the Kuskokwim, 

 which, heading in the western part of 

 this group, flows southwest into Bering 

 Sea. In the region north of the Yukon 

 Valley originate many streams, includ- 

 ing several large branches of the Yukon, 

 as the Porcupine and Koyukuk ; other 

 streams, as the Noatak and Kowak, flow 

 into Kotzebue Sound, and still others, 

 as the Colville, flow northward into the 

 Arctic Ocean. 



The country is intersected by- a net- 

 work of rivers and lakes navigable for 

 canoes, although navigation is much in- 

 terrupted by rapids and falls. The great 

 highway of the Territory is the Yukon 

 River, w^hich, heading in British Co- 

 lumbia, flows northwestward through 

 a succession of lakes and rapids, and 



* Longitude 149°, latitude 63°. 



