104 The National Geographic Magazine 



Courtesy oi The Engineering Magazine 



Freight Boat on the Niukluk River — Carries 7 Tons 

 The horse tows it upstream, riding down in the boat 



vast as central Alaska, but it is perhaps 

 richer than either of them. 



Far to the northwest lies the Seward 

 Peninsula, suggesting on the map an 

 animal's head snarling across Bering 

 Strait at the nearby Siberia. By rivers 

 and sea it is almost wholly separated 

 from the mainland, and though compris- 

 ing but 3 per cent of the area of Alaska, 

 or 20,000 square miles in 600,000, it has 

 yielded for the last three years nearly 75 

 per cent of the gold output, in spite of 

 the increasing yield of the great quartz 

 mines of the southeast, near Juneau. 



Although the most distant region of 

 North America, 2,700 statute miles from 

 Puget Sound, it owes the rapid explora- 

 tion and development of its coast to the 

 fact that an all-water route was open to 

 its shores, and that freight still costitfg 

 a minimum of $70 a ton into Dawson is 

 being landed on the Nome beach for $10 

 a ton. Passenger rates, higher in the 

 first rush, have fallen to $40 and $50 

 first class and $20 or $25 steerage. 



Owing to the freedom from hardships, 

 as well as the low coast and shortness 

 of time required, impelled by stories that 

 were indeed true of rich golden beaches, 

 about 25,000 people and their chattels 

 landed on the low sand}' spit at Nome 

 and were left to the mercy of surf and 

 storm. The Eskimo, very numerous 

 along this coast, who have none of the 

 aloofness of the Indian, came in their 

 umiaks, big skin boats that can carry 

 fifty people and all their belongings, and 

 made camp with the whites; but the 

 Eskimo, needing no barometer, intui- 

 tivelj r flee several days before a storm. 

 Not so the whites, who every year have 

 been caught. In September, 1900, when 

 there were more than 12,000 campers 

 along the beach, the surf rolled in, 

 wrecked much of the shipping in the 

 offing, and destroyed about $1,500,000 

 of miscellaneous propertv on the beach, 

 and every year since, similar if not so 

 severe disasters have occurred. Drift- 

 wood, piled high landwards from Nome, 



