AGRICULTURE IN THE YUKON VALLEY 189 



correlated facilities. The success has been complete. The colony 

 has maintained itself, some of the Indians have become share- 

 holders, and the canning business has yielded a good profit. The 

 evidence of this is overwhelming and includes the testimony of 

 almost every disinterested person who has visited the colony. 

 Even the scoffers admit that as a business enterprise the mission 

 is a great success. Its very success has become a source of danger. 

 Business competition is nowhere sharper than in Alaska, because 

 the ordinary safeguards of public opinion and well enforced law 

 are not available in restraint of greed and sharp practice. Most 

 of the canneries are included in a trust, and outsiders have scant 

 consideration and must fight for their interests unceasingly and 

 at great disadvantage. Nothing which might hurt the sensitive 

 feelings of the trust can be found in the published reports of the 

 official salmon inspectors ; yet it is the common opinion that the 

 law is violated systematically, except during the visits of the 

 inspectors for a few hours during the whole season. 



Like all the Alaskan islands, Annette island contains a few 

 quartz veins. There is good reason to think that none of them 

 is of any great value, and no development work, such as is re- 

 quired by law, has been done on any of them. Under the reser- 

 vation of Congress the prospectors could not acquire any rights, 

 at any rate. But an attempt is now being made to induce Con- 

 gress to bolster up a speculation in these undeveloped leads by 

 rescinding" the reservation act, so as to cutoff from the colony 

 its waterworks, its mill and cannery, and to a large extent its 

 fishery rights, and thus leave the people without resources and 

 open to the vices of the mining camp and rumseller, to the in- 

 evitable destruction of all that has been hitherto accomplished. 



The bare statement of the facts carries its own commentary. 

 The friends of justice, and of the Indian's right to work out his 

 salvation, and eventually to take his place among the citizens 

 of our common country, should make themselves heard before 

 it is too late. Wm. H. Dall. 



AGRICULTURE IN THE YUKON VALLEY 



In a brief preliminary report on the agricultural and horti- 

 cultural conditions in the Yukon valley, Dr Sheldon Jackson 

 mentions having found at the Roman Catholic mission at Kos- 

 erefski, 338 miles from the mouth of the river, and at the Protest- 



