II— THE BOUNDARY SOUTH OF FORT YUKON 



BY 

 J. E. 'McGRATH 



The address of Dr Mendenhall having satisfactorily described 

 the duties which called our party into the interior of Alaska, I 

 shall confine myself to a plain statement of the most prominent 

 points of interest connected Avith the people and country that 

 came under my observation during a two years' stay in our 

 great northwestern possession. It may not be amiss to call atten- 

 tion to a few salient facts about this vast territory, whose remote- 

 ness from the rest of the country has caused but little attention 

 to be paid to its ]>ossibilities and character by the people at large 

 until the rights of certain of its old-time inhabitants to peaceful 

 occupation of some favorite summer resorts of theirs on a few 

 small islands off its coast had been rudely interfered with. 



Alaska has an area of nearly 580,000 square miles. Its shore 

 line exceeds in length the combined lengths of the Atlantic, 

 Pacific and Gulf coasts belonging to the United States by 7,239 

 miles. The ocean that freezes along its northern coast is the 

 resort of the greatest whaling fleet in the world. Its islands of 

 Saint Paul and Saint George are the breeding places of the fur 

 seal, for hunting which a company jjay the United States gov- 

 ernment a royalty which equals (Avhen the maximum catch is 

 allowed) about ten per cent on the cost of the whole of Alaska ; 

 in the archipelago which extends about the national domain and 

 nearly 8° of longitude into the eastern hemisphere are the haunts 

 of one of the most highly prized of all fur-bearing animals, the sea 

 otter ; on the banks oS the Alaskan peninsula the Fish Commis- 

 sion steamer Albatross has found those very valuable food fishes, 

 the cod and halibut, in such numbers as to make these seas 

 compare favorably with the rich fishing banks of Newfoundland ; 

 along the southeastern coast a large mining population is profita- 

 bly employed, and at the great Treaclwell mine on Douglas 

 island "(near Juneau) the largest stamp mill in the world is 

 engaged in crushing Alaskan ores : along every favorable bay 

 and stream on the southern coast salmon canneries are to be 

 found, and the importance of this industry may be appreciated 

 when it is considered that the season's pack for 1889 amounted 



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