12 ALASKA. 



to support herds of cattle throughout the year and have them 

 Tvithia control. 



Mount Saint Elias district.— Reachmg from Cross Sound to 

 Prince William's Sound is a second and clearly-defined region, 

 exhibiting a bald, bare sea-front, with scarcely an island or a 

 rock in its long stretch of over three hundred miles ; little belts 

 of spruce timber skirt the lowlands by the sea, while that which is 

 hilly and mountainous is almost bare ; grass and berries grow, 

 however, in great abundance. It is the most cheerless, but at 

 the same time the most interesting, portion of the Territory, not 

 from any other point of view, however, than that of the tourist 

 or geologist, who will find Mount Saint Elias the highest peak in 

 North America, and the superb mountains of Fairweather and 

 CiUon, and the country about them, covered, for miles and miles, 

 with mighty glaciers, a field of most instructive interest. An 

 immense mass of ice comes down into the head of Lyun Canal, 

 which, the Indians say, originates and travels from Mount Fair- 

 weather over fifty miles away. This glacier is some eight miles 

 wide where it faces the sea in the channel, and many hundred 

 feet in thickness, perfectly magnificent, and should be visited, 

 for, as yet, this region, like the most of our new Territory, has 

 , not been trodden by the foot of white man, and seldom even by 

 the savage. Its exceptional presentation of timber, its long 

 reaches of rounded, low, barren hills, and relative scarcity of 

 both birds and animals, make this section about as uninviting, 

 on economic grounds, as any in the Territory, and the paucity 

 of Indian life within its limits speaks definitely for its poverty 

 as to game and fish. 



CooWs Inlet district. — I refrain from giving the reports which 

 I received from this section, inasmuch as they are very contra- 

 dictory in many leading features ; though, in a general way, the 

 ideas given me are undoubtedly correct. They represent the 

 country similar to Kodiak, with more timber. 



The Peninsular and Kodiak Island. — This region , lying between 

 Iliamna Lake and the False Pass, between the head of the Pen- 

 insula of Alaska and contiguous islands, is the most valuable 

 section of the entire Territory, possessing the most equable cli- 

 mate, especially so at Kodiak, growing the best garden -sup- 

 plies of potatoes, turnips, &c., the only place where hay can be 

 made, enough for a few head of stock, with any thing likea certain- 

 ty, from season to season ; but the country comprised in this dis- 

 trict, which forms the southern and western half of the Peninsula, 



