Mountains of Unimak Island, Alaska 



99 



way across the valley, with the water 

 making a great bend around the foot of 

 it. Examined through a telescope, it 

 seems to consist of a jungle of sharp- 

 cornered rocks, like gigantic pieces of 

 broken glass, of a dull gray color, slop- 

 ing very gradually toward the north- 

 east. 



The sand beach ends against the table- 

 land about 350 feet high, projecting in 

 an east-southwest direction from the 

 mountain mass behind it, and forming 

 at its extremity a small semicircular 

 cove not quite half a mile across and 

 open toward the north. We noticed 

 two small houses in the cove, apparently 

 close under the bluff, and also a small 

 sloop, hauled out of the water beyond 

 the reach of the surf, near them. There 



are some rocks close under the extremity 

 of the point. Applegate has anchorages 

 marked on either side of this point, I 

 believe, and I have been informed that 

 vessels have anchored in both places. 

 The cove to the northward of the point 

 is much more protected, and I have 

 learned from a shipmaster well known 

 to me that he has anchored there and 

 had protection from southerly winds, 

 but not from the swell which rolls around 

 the point. The bottom is sandy and 

 shoaling toward the beach very grad- 

 ually. At the southern end of the 

 broader bight, to the southward of the 

 point, there is a high table-land, 540 feet 

 above the sea, and with an ocean face 

 of one mile in length in an approximate 

 northwest and southeast direction. 



OPENING OF THE ALASKAN TERRITORY* 



By Harrington Emerson 



THE West, the old West of bound- 

 less natural resources and path- 

 less solitude, to yield homes for 

 millions yet unborn, is not exhausted. 

 Governments and peoples do not realize 

 it, but it lies thereto reward the pioneer 

 with greater and quicker returns than 

 have been given by any part of western 

 Europe or of temperate North America. 

 The new and unsubdued West today is 

 Alaska, almost to a mile one-half larger 

 than the thirteen original American col- 

 onies, very nearly twice the size of Cali- 

 fornia, Oregon, and Washington, as large 

 as Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, 

 Norway, and the German Empire, and 

 with a better climate and greater natural 

 resources than an equal area of northern 

 Europe supporting 10,000,000 inhab- 

 itants. 



The Yukon, the fourth largest river 



in the world, navigable for more than 

 2,000 miles above its mouth and run- 

 ning in a great semicircle from south- 

 eastern to northwestern Alaska, forms 

 a natural highway. All this was known 

 long ago, but it was not known that the 

 interior contained thousands of square 

 miles of farming lands and almost limit- 

 less areas of the richest mineral lands in 

 the world. It is in this unsubdued coun- 

 try that thousands of miles of railroad 

 must be built, that great areas will open 

 for settlement, absorbing and keeping 

 bus}' 2,000,000 workers as fast as they 

 choose to go. 



Had it not been for the natural sum- 

 mer highway of the Yukon, there never 

 could have been such a camp as Dawson. 

 The head passes of the Yukon and the 

 river itself were at that time the only 

 possible direct road to the Klondike. 



* This article was published in The Engineering Magazine for February, 1903, and is re- 

 printed here in somewhat curtailed form by courtesy of the editors of that magazine. 



