Progress in the Philippines 



THE RETURNS FROM ALASKA 



WE are getting more gold out of 

 Alaska each year than the ter- 

 ritory cost us in 1867. In 1904 $9,000,- 

 000 of the yellow metal were shipped to 

 the United States from Alaska. Of this 

 sum $6,000,000 were from placer de- 

 posits and the balance from lode de- 

 posits. Big as is the present output 

 from the gold placers, Mr Alfred H. 

 Brooks, of the Geological Survey, esti- 

 mates that the amount will be doubled 

 in a few years. The Cape Nome fields 

 are still in the lead, but the Fairbanks 

 district is being developed very rapidly. 



The great need of the territory at the 

 present time is some roads. There are 

 not more than 50 miles of road in 

 Alaska, and these were built by private 

 enterprise. The expenditure of $1 ,000,- 

 000 in constructing a few trunk lines 

 would be many times repaid in increased 

 gold production. Many of the fields 

 cannot now be worked profitably be- 

 cause of the cost of transporting ma- 

 chinery and provisions. 



A hundred feet of 8-inch 16-gage hy- 

 draulic riveted steel pipe costs in Fair- 

 banks $175. On Fairbanks Creek, 20 

 miles away, the same 100 feet of pipe, 

 with freight at 20 cents per pound, costs, 

 if transported in summer, $301, repre- 

 senting a freight charge of $126. In 

 the Klondike, where the topography is 

 nearly the same, the same pipe would 

 be landed on a claim 20 miles from Daw- 

 son for a freight charge of $9.45.* 



Already over 300 miles of wagon road 

 have been built by the Canadian gov- 

 ernment in the Yukon territory and the 

 Atlin district of British Columbia, while 

 over 600 miles of sled roads have been 

 made in the Yukon territory. The fact 

 that in the summer wagons and vehicles 

 of all descriptions, and even bicycles, 

 may be seen daily about Dawson, the 

 Klondike creeks, and Atlin, in British 



* Gravel and Placer Mining in Alaska, "C. W. 

 Purington, Bull. 263, U. S. Geological Survey, 

 Washington, 1905, p. 227. 



Columbia, while the winter roads in 

 Canadian territory afford continuous 

 easy routes for horse sleds down the 

 Yukon to Dawson, is evidence of the 

 success of the Canadian road-building 

 enterprise. 



Four important reports on the mineral 

 resources of Alaska have been recently 

 published by the U. S. Geological Sur- 

 vey : ' ' Mineral Resources in Alaska in 

 1904" (Bulletin 259), by Alfred H. 

 Brooks, C. W. Purington, F. E. and 

 C. W. Wright, Arthur C. Spencer, 

 Arthur J. Collier, George C. Martin, 

 Iv. M. Prindle, and Ralph W. Stone. 

 The bulletin describes progress in de- 

 veloping the gold, coal, petroleum, 

 and tin resources. "Fairhaven Gold 

 Placers, Seward Peninsula" (Bulletin 

 247), by Fred H. Moffit, with two large 

 new maps (one geologic and one topo- 

 graphic) of northeastern portion of 

 Seward Peninsula. ' ' Gold Placers of 

 Forty-Mile, Birch Creek, and Fairbanks 

 Regions" (Bulletin 251), by Louis M. 

 Prindle, with a reconnaissance map of 

 the Yukon Tanana region. " Methods 

 and Costs of Gravel and Placer Mining 

 in Alaska" (Bulletin 263), by C. W. 

 Purington. 



PROGRESS IN THE PHILIPPINES 



THE Report of the Philippine Com- 

 mission for 1904, which has just 

 been published by the War Department 

 in three volumes, gives an interesting 

 account of the operations of a steam 

 rice- thrasher which the insular govern- 

 ment installed on the experimental farm 

 in 1904. During the rice season the 

 thrasher covered 125 miles and proved 

 so popular that, in spite of the moder- 

 ate toll charged, nearly $500 were 

 cleared after paying all operating ex- 

 penses. The natives obtained so much 

 more grain by steam-thrashing that 

 some of the ignorant thought that there 

 was a devil in the machine, or that there 

 must be some trickery in its operation. 

 The people in tramping out rice with 



