CHAPTER I. 



THE CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY. 



THE TEEEITOEY OP ALASKA. 



So much has been said pro and con as to tlie natural wealth 

 and advantages of our new acquisition, the Territory of Alaska, 

 that the widest possible diTergence of opinion has arisen upon this 

 subject ; on the one hand, we hear that here is a country no more 

 rugged or uninviting than is Sweden or Norway, where a high 

 civilization exists, with just as much natural adaptation for the 

 home of advancing humanity, with vast forests of the finest 

 ship-timber, with iron, copper, coal, and possibly rich gold and 

 silver mines, with valleys and plains upon which sheep and cattle 

 can be bred and raised without more than ordinary care, so abun- 

 dant is the grass and other vegetation ; that the climate is ex- 

 tremely mild on the seaboard, no more damp and foggy than 

 on the coast of Oregon, &c.; while, on the other hand, we are 

 as gravely told that it is an area of total desolation ; that it is 

 locked up in the grasp of winter's frosts for eight or nine mouths 

 in the year ; that icebergs and snow fill the sea and drift in 

 fathomless rifts; that it is bare and barren, only moss and 

 swale grass ; that even the inhabitants there drag out a miser- 

 able existence on seal-meat, oil, and like food ; and that it will 

 never become the home of white men, because there is no object 

 in the land that will draw them there save the small fur- trading 

 interests. 



^ There is truth in both declarations, but no such thing as a 

 happy medium can be struck between the two views ; a fair, 

 dispassionate statement in regard to this matter, however, at 

 the time of the transfer of the Territory, could hardly have been 

 made, no citizen of the United States having the means or the 

 opportunity to form a proper judgment. The Russians did not 

 live here as a people, but as a company of fur-traders only, 

 with a single eye to the getting of skins ; and the matter of 

 their subsistence while so doing was comparatively of little 

 importance; but it should be said that at all of their posts 

 throughout the Territory they fully tested the capabilities of 

 soil and climate for garden-products, and at many of them 



