the natives could boast of a twenty-ton schooner, built by their 
own hands with wood from their own forests. At Kodiak five 
small vessels were owned, and sailed as coasters from this port. 
The revenue steamer “ Rush ” in a single summer boarded thirty- 
five trading vessels in Alaskan waters. The Alaska Commercial 
Company employed a fleet of four steamers and twelve or fifteen 
sailing vessels for trading in various parts of the Territory. The 
Northwestern Trading Company had also a number of trading 
posts, and employed several small vessels in their trade with the 
natives. 
At a point not distant from Sitka and in the Aleutian Islands 
are found mineral and hot springs surpassed by few, if any, in 
the United States. The tonic and alterative properties of the 
first were tested by several white residents, and highly commended. 
Others extolled their virtues in constitutional diseases of a specific 
character. 
Alaska’s geographical position—her whole northern coast bor¬ 
dering the Arctic Ocean—would seem to forbid that fertility of 
soil so essential to wealth and permanency of population, and ap¬ 
pears to justify a not unusual impression that the Territory is almost 
a desolate and frozen waste. That the climate has been the great 
impediment to early and rapid development cannot be questioned, 
but that the Territory throughout is destitute is denied. In a 
Territory so vast, extending in latitude due north and south four¬ 
teen hundred miles, and in longitude nearly forty degrees, or about 
two thousand, two hundred miles—a variety of climate must prevail; 
hence deception ensues if the meteorology of one section is ac¬ 
cepted as applicable to another remotely situated. Not until the 
cold of Alaska has abated and its rainfall diminished can we ex¬ 
pect it to be voluntarily selected as the permanent home of wealth 
and culture ; but, in the meantime, it is more than probable that 
capital and labor will expand her industries, and be well rewarded 
with her now justly suspected treasures. Then may additional 
factories and mills be established at suitable places, and the Ter¬ 
ritory become the home, temporarily at least, of the laborer and 
skilled worker in metals and woods. 
A curious discrepancy is observed in the statements, oral and 
published, regarding the probable capability of the soil to produce 
