48 SCIENCE. LVol. VII., No. 154 



St. Petersburg, and thus civilization is carried to 

 the oldest of the Aryan tribes. 



The Russian merchants are opening warehouses 

 along the line of the railroad, and supplying the 

 inhabitants of the desert on the north, to Khiva, 

 Bokhara, and Samarkand, and the Persians to the 

 south. They have established entrepots at Merv 

 and Pendjeh, which are already supplying the 

 inhabitants of Herat with Russian manufactures 

 and stores. 



In America the locomotive carried with it the 

 emigrants who inhabited and cultivated the land. 

 In Asia the locomotive is retracing the paths 

 which the human race trod in its early days, and 

 carries with it all the wonders that the race has 

 gathered up in its long journey ings. This desert 

 was once the garden of the world ; but first wars, 

 and then constant incursions of the Turkomans, 

 have devastated it. The character of the Turko- 

 mans we learn from Vambery, who says in one of 

 his books that they " have the well-deserved repu- 

 tation of sparing nobody, and would even sell the 

 prophet himself into slavery if he should fall into 

 their hands ; " and in another that they have a prov- 

 erb which says, " If you see a party attacking the 

 house of your father and mother, join them in 

 the plunder and robbery." Now brigandage and 

 slavery have been to a large degree suppressed, 

 and under the Russian rule the old irrigating 

 canals will be re-opened, and this great desert, 

 rich when watered, will be as densely populated 

 as in the early ages. Thus the railroad will 

 become the civilizer of the old world, as it has 

 been of the new. Gardiner G. Hubbard. 



GEOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



Late news from Alaska. — A weekly news- 

 paper, the Alaskan, has been started at Sitka. It 

 is a neat quarto, and intended to gather informa- 

 tion about the territory, and promote its develop- 

 ment. It is the fourth newspaper which has 

 actually been printed in Alaska, though several 

 periodicals treating of Alaskan matters have been 

 issued at San Francisco in past years. The Alaska 

 times, a large quarto, edited by T. G. Murphy, 

 appeared in May, 1868, and existed about two years 

 during the military occupation. Some of the 

 numbers were printed on brown paper for want 

 of other material. This was followed in 1875 by 

 a little folio sheet printed on the press of the 

 single military company then left at Sitka, and 

 named the Alaska bulletin. About seven fort- 

 nightly numbers appeared ; and in October, 187G, 

 a similar issue, under the name of the Sitka past, 

 was begun, and terminated with its fourteenth 

 Dumber, on the final removal of the troops from 



Sitka. The present publication is of a more 

 serious character than its predecessors, and the 

 seven numbers which have reached us contain 

 many items of interest which might otherwise 

 have been lost. A weekly summary of the 

 meteorology is furnished by the local signal officer. 

 On the 12th of December, the editor notes that 

 the temperature was stationary at 45° F., and he 

 received a cabbage, cut that week in one of the 

 local gardens, untouched by frost, and of which 

 the solid head measured about fifteen inches in 

 diameter. A canoe express took the weekly issue 

 from Sitka to Juneau in three days, the distance 

 being about 180 miles. A new town, to be called 

 Ed wards ville, was going up near the mines on 

 Douglas Island. The Tread well mine, though 

 somewhat hampered by a scarcity of water, turned 

 out $75,000 in bullion in the last month, and the 

 owners were enlarging its facilities. The Silver 

 Bay mines near Sitka had been taken in hand by 

 a company of capitalists. The oil-works at Killis- 

 noo were running to their utmost capacity, and 

 sent down by the last steamer 300 tons of herring- 

 oil. M. E. Hess, writing from Fort Reliance, 

 says that the natives . make portages from that 

 place to the Tananah River in eight days. From 

 the head of the latter to the Copper River they go 

 in from four to seven days. The Tananah heads 

 so near the White River that the Tenan Kutchin 

 Indians cross with their furs, and build a raft, on 

 which they descend the White River to the Yukon, 

 and the latter to Fort Reliance, where they trade, 

 thus drifting about four times the direct distance 

 from their homes to the fort. Mr. Hess had con- 

 cluded to winter on the White River. He reports 

 gold in placers and in quartz in several places, and 

 also what he supposes to be nickel ore. The pro- 

 spectors on the Lewis River made from $200 to 

 $500 per man on the bars of that river during the 

 short summer. They report the climate as re- 

 sembling that of Montana. 



The Sakeis of Malay peninsula. — The last 

 annual report of the British resident at Selangore, 

 Malay peninsula, contains some notes on the curi- 

 ous tribe called Sakeis, of whom there are about 

 eight hundred persons. They are divided into 

 nine sections, whose chiefs are called Batins. 

 They live chiefly by collecting rubber and other 

 products of the jungle. They have no formal 

 religion, but are very superstitious, believe in 

 good and bad auguries, consider certain birds 

 sacred, and abandon any settlement where one of 

 them dies. They tattoo the arms by way of orna- 

 ment, but the tattooing has no tribal or totemic 

 significance. Nothing capable of being eaten 

 conies amiss to them: even scorpions and snakes 

 are acceptable. They kill game by darts, poisoned 



