Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland - Frank G Carpenter

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Chapter one of Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland.

This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter.

Chapter one, Just a Word Before We Start.

Of all the countries I have visited, our polar wonderland is among the most interesting.

Lying as it does at the northwestern end of the continent, so close to Asia that one might fly from Alaska to Siberia within fifteen minutes, and so near the North Pole that an airplane might make the trip between breakfast and dinner.

It forms a part of our union with British America, tying us, as it were, to Europe and Asia, and hooking us onto the topmost peak of the world.

Alaska is truly a land of surprises.

In some parts, the winter are as mild as those of Virginia, and in others as severe as in Sakhalin or Kamchatka.

It has summers as hot at midday as Bangkok and Rangoon, and so cool at night that one welcomes blankets.

It has seasons when the sun shines at midnight, and winter days so dark that the electric light can be turned off in the schools and the homes only from eleven to one.

It is a land of jungles that vie with the Himalayas in their dense vegetation, and of scanty mosses springing from desert beds of perpetual ice.

It has gorgeous wildflowers, mighty forests, vast glaciers, mountains capped with snow, and valleys out of which spout by the thousands the vents of volcanoes.

It is beyond conception among the grandest of all nature's wonderlands.

A most interesting feature was the virgin newness of all my surroundings.

I traveled for days through the wilds, seeing hardly a cabin.

I sailed on the rivers through long stretches where not a vestige of man could be seen, and I could easily imagine myself a Columbus or a Hernando de Soto discovering a world.

When I crossed Bering Sea on the edge of the winter, I felt like an Arctic explorer, and in the Aleutian Islands, the perpetual mists chilled my soul with the fear that I had on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland when the foghorn blew day and night.

The talks of this book are the notes made during my travels.

They were written on steamer and on train, on foot and on horseback, now in motor cars riding from one mining camp to another, now on the top of glacier-clad mountains, and now in tunnels where men were getting out gold from under the earth.

They represent chats with the hardy pioneers of our farthest north, men who of all our citizens are the most patriotic Americans, men who can see straight and shoot straight, the survivors of stampedes to many a faraway camp, true men and strong men.

The weaklings have died on the way.

Indeed, I met no one in my journeys who, to use an Alaskan expression, had a wishbone where his backbone should be.

When I started north, I had a stomach and lungs and liver and lights.

All seemed to be ailing as I climbed the gangplank of the ship at Seattle.

I lost them that night, and for four months and more, as far as I knew, they had no existence.

I ate buckwheat cakes and sourdough and bear meat and fat pork in the heart of midsummer.

I breathed champagne in the air of the mountains.

My liver worked like a seventy-horsepower automobile, and as for my lights, whatever and wherever they are, they were dormant.

Our north land is undergoing a change.

The government is adopting a more liberal policy as to the territory.

The forest and oil fields are being exploited.

The fisheries are protected and the catch will increase.

Fox farming is rapidly becoming a substantial industry, with over a hundred farms, the majority of which are on islands along the coast.

The railway from Seward to Fairbanks has opened vast areas of arable land to the homesteader, and the best of hard wheat is now grown and milled in the Tanana Valley.

I rode through grasslands where the spears on the ends of the stalks tickled the ears of my horse, ate strawberries on the Arctic Circle, and at Skagway saw dahlias as big as a dinner plate.

In the gardens along the Yukon and Tanana, I dug potatoes of twenty-seven varieties, cut off cabbages as big as the head of a bull, and pulled up turnips that would surprise the best soil of the temperate zone.

I visited several successful dairies near Fairbanks, and on Kodiak Island found a government experiment station where they are raising fine cattle and sheep.

Near the mouth of the Yukon I saw hundreds of reindeer, and at Nome visited packing plants where they were being killed and frozen for export to the markets of our larger cities.

At the same time new mineral areas are being prospected.

Iron of good grade is known to exist, and the coal deposits cover a region almost as big as the mine fields of Pennsylvania.

The nickel of Chugachoff Island is supposed to surpass that of Canada or New Caledonia, and high-grade tin is being mined on the Seward Peninsula near Bering Strait.

The government geologists and others are finding new wells of petroleum.

The coal beds opened up by the railroads promise a new supply of fuel for the fleets of the eastern Pacific.

The copper output is now worth tens of millions of dollars a year, and rich silver mines are being worked just over the international boundary near the Portland Canal.

There are still fortunes in gold underlying the beds of prehistoric ice, and more quartz gold is being discovered.

Indeed, the future of Alaska is bright.

End of chapter one.

Chapter two of Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland, by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter two, Ketchikan.

I am in Ketchikan, the first port at which our steamers call in entering Alaska.

It is at the southern end of the Panhandle, the strip of islands and mainland at the lower end of our territory that seems to be cut out of British Columbia.

The Panhandle begins just above Skagway, near the pass over the mountains to the Klondike and Dawson, and extends south for more than three hundred miles.

It consists of many large islands and a strip of mainland about thirty miles wide, which runs from the Pacific Ocean to the crest of the Coast Mountain Range, the whole making a territory as big as South Carolina.

This district is known as southeastern Alaska.

It has its own climate, its own vegetation, and its own peculiar products and resources.

It is covered with green from one year's end to the other and differs from the great Alaskan interior as much as Maine differs from Florida.

I shall be traveling within it for some weeks to come.

The town of Ketchikan lies not far from the international boundary.

It is only forty miles north of the canal and within six hours' sail of Prince Rupert, the terminus of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and the port which the Canadians are developing as the gateway to the shortest route to Japan and the Orient.

Ketchikan is as far north of Seattle as the distance between New York and Toledo.

After leaving Seattle, I sailed for more than five hundred miles through Canadian waters before I came to the edge of Alaska, and from there made my way in and out among the islands to Revilla Gigedo, on the shores of which lies Ketchikan.

The trip took me over two days.

I despair of giving you any idea of the beauties of this voyage.

They are so many and so varied.

The route from Seattle to Skagway is known as the Inside Passage.

It is a winding in and out among half-submerged mountains.

It is floating through great lakes studded with islands.

It is traveling along and within fjords like those of West Norway.

Now you have the wonders of the Swiss lakes, now those of the inland sea of Japan, and now scenery like that on the coasts of New Zealand.

There are all sorts of combinations of sea and sky, of evergreen slopes and snow-capped mountains.

There are ever-shifting color effects and marvelously beautiful sunsets.

These are the characteristics of southeastern Alaska.

The whole district between the Portland and Lynn Canals is composed of islands covered with evergreen trees, many of which are four or five feet thick.

A number of the islands have snow-capped mountains whose green walls rise almost straight up from the water.

Most of the mainland is also one mighty wall of green.

The islands, which are all of shapes and sizes, float upon sapphire seas.

When the tide is low, and the tide here rises and falls to the height of a two-story house, these islands seem like floating gardens.

Then vegetation does not begin until fifteen or twenty feet above the water, and there are only precipices of black rock below.

The islands are bedded upon the rocks, and as the water falls, the living earth seems to be lifted up.

The forests sit aloft on pedestals of stone, and mountains of green and white tower above their rocky bases.

Here bold cliffs, brown and gray walls several hundred feet high, rise sheer from the blue waves.

There the bare rocks thrust out from the growth of pines on the hillsides.

As you sail on to the northward, the channels vary.

Now they widen into great lakes.

Now they are rivers as narrow as the Hudson or the Rhine.

Sometimes the way lies through gorges between the islands and the mainland.

In places the waters are a thousand feet deep.

In others there are great rocks as steep, as high, and as sharp as the Washington Monument, which come within twenty or thirty feet of the surface.

These are the terrible pinnacle rocks that rip open the hulls of the steamers.

They are constantly being searched for and marked with buoys by the wire drag of our Coast and Geodetic Survey.

Indeed, the seas about Alaska are so dangerous that they are sometimes called the Graveyard of the Pacific.

The commerce of the territory is rapidly increasing in importance.

Yet fifty years after our purchase, the United States Coast Survey admitted that ninety-two percent of its waters were unsurveyed and that it would take two vessels fifty-nine years to complete a first survey of the exposed areas, in addition to the wire drag and inshore parties necessary in the sheltered portions.

The government ships are keeping everlastingly at it, however, and I have been out with one of the wire drag boats and have seen how the needle-tipped peaks of the Panhandle coast are detected.

A wire cable with buoys attached is slung between two ships and set at a fixed depth.

As the vessels sail along, the buoys are pulled under like a fish line bob when the wire strikes a hidden rock, which is then marked by a float and its position recorded.

Over a thousand pinnacle rocks, terrible menaces to navigation and undiscovered by the ordinary survey methods, have been found by the use of the wire drag.

But let us come back to Ketchikan.

The town is situated on the southern shore of Revillagigedo Island, in a region where the salmon come in great hordes every summer and near banks from which are taken most of the halibut sent from Alaska to the United States and to Canada.

Revillagigedo is about one-third as large as Puerto Rico.

It is fifty miles long and twenty miles wide and is made up of mountains which for much of the time have their heads in the clouds.

Ketchikan lies right on the water against a background of towering green mountains crested with snow.

The harbor is the shape of a half-moon, protected by islands.

It has no beach to speak of, and the business district rests upon piles.

The streets are plank roadways built upon posts, and much of the freight is carried about on trucks and carts pushed by men.

Horses are unpopular, for their shoes roughen the planks, and they shake the town as they trot through the streets.

So they are being replaced by automobiles and motor delivery trucks.

The residential section of the city clings to the sides of the cliffs higher up.

It is so steep that one has to climb stairways to reach some of the streets, while others have winding roadways of boards upon which slats have been nailed to keep one from slipping.

The Ketchikaners make one think of tree dwellers who climb ladders to get to their homes.

The best houses, which are high on the cliffs far above the harbor, seem to grow out of the rocks.

Nevertheless, nearly every home has its little lawn with shrubs and flowers and a tiny garden patch, although the soil has to be sprinkled with gold dust to make them.

In this connection, the captain on my steamer coming up told me a story of a Ketchikan man who sailed with him last month.

This man was sitting at the captain's right hand at dinner.

During one meal, he was in a brown study.

Course after course passed, and he ate but little.

At last, he burst out in an agonized soliloquy.

"I knew I'd forget it.

I knew I'd forget it.

I knew I'd forget it." "What?" said the captain.

"Have you forgotten something your wife told you to bring back from outside?" "Yes, I have," was the reply, "and I knew I'd forget it.

She made me promise to bring seven sacks of good soil to lay on the rocks and make her a garden, and now I've forgot it." Some of the Ketchikaners raise vegetables and berries.

In the garden of H.C. Strong, I saw raspberry bushes as high as my shoulder, which for more than two months during the summer give him all of that fruit he can eat.

The berries, which are large and of a fine flavor, never become mushy when ripe.

Ketchikan also raises currants, salmon berries, and many beautiful flowers.

There is so much moisture that the plants will grow on the rocks with very little soil.

It has been raining steadily ever since I arrived, and today during a downpour, I asked one of the citizens, "Does it never stop raining in Ketchikan?" He replied with a laugh, "I hardly know.

I have lived here only fifteen years." The city really has rain for more than two-thirds of the year and an annual precipitation of over thirteen feet.

The leaves of the trees drip almost as steadily as those of the famous forest sprinkled by the mist of the Zambezi Falls in Central Africa.

Indeed, the southern coast of Alaska is one of the rainiest parts of the world.

Juneau, the capital, is much like Ketchikan, while on some of the Aleutian Islands, a day of sunshine is a rarity.

But the people go about regardless of the wet.

They wear oilskin hats and rubber coats or slickers, and if they tramp up the mountains, they put on rubber boots reaching to the waist.

Some of the ladies even have slicker suits consisting of skirts and jackets.

No one thinks of staying away from a party or tea on account of the weather, and women go visiting clad in oilskins covering dresses fit for a party in New York or Washington.

Some people here tell me, however, that Ketchikan has many bright days and that its climate is unsurpassed by any other part of our country.

The inhabitants are healthy.

The children have bright eyes and rosy cheeks.

They play about everywhere, notwithstanding the rain.

In the winter, they coast down the board roads, which in places run for more than a mile up and down the hills.

The town has but little snow at any time of the year.

But then the frosts are so heavy that there is splendid sledding until nine or ten o'clock in the morning.

If there is not enough frost, the roads can be sprinkled at night and will be covered with ice in the morning.

Many people of the United States think of all Alaska's winter as bitterly cold.

Their idea of the country is expressed in Bret Harte's Arctic Vision, where the short-legged Eskimo waddles in the ice and snow, and the playful polar bear nips the hunter unaware.

Ketchikan has neither Eskimos nor polar bears, and there is little ice and snow.

The thermometer seldom falls to zero, and the climate is as mild as that of Atlanta or Richmond.

The stores here are excellent.

Most of them are on the waterfront, built upon piles that rest on the rocks.

The shops have plate glass windows, and the goods are well displayed.

In one window, I saw a full line of electrical apparatus, including electric irons, toasters, and heaters.

Another shows a large supply of thermos bottles and baby carriages.

The butcher shops have quarters of red beef just in from Seattle, and the fruit stores sell raspberries and strawberries grown in Alaska, oranges and figs from California, and apples from Oregon and British Columbia.

The supply of eatables is quite as good as that of the provision stores in the States, and the prices are not much higher.

Indeed, I believe one can live almost as cheaply in Ketchikan as in Cleveland, Kansas City, or Kalamazoo.

I have a room and bath at the Revilla Hotel, one of the two leading taverns.

The Revilla is a three-story frame building within a stone's throw of the sea.

The hotel office is a loafing place and pool room as well, and the guests and outsiders are knocking the billiard balls over the tables at all hours of the night.

As the hotel serves no meals, I have to go out to the restaurants.

I am eating at the Poodle Dog Grill, where I sit on a stool at the lunch counter and eat my ham and eggs or other meat from a great oval platter.

The Poodle Dog advertises these hot platters as its specialty and serves food in no other way.

The town has an excellent and abundant water supply from a lake high up in the mountains.

Anyone who wants a drink of pure mountain water has only to fit his mouth over the little porcelain bowls of the sanitary drinking fountains at every street corner and take in all he will.

In addition to the lake, Ketchikan has a rushing stream flowing in cascades and rapids right through it.

In the salmon season, this stream is one pink and silver mass of fish.

The fish come by the thousands and swim up the stream to spawn, toiling their way through the rapids and jumping the falls.

At that season, anyone may have fish for the taking, and quantities are caught for the canneries.

This stream furnishes the city its electric power and runs the streetlights and telephones.

It gives electric heat to some of the houses.

During my stay, I have had dinner with one of the leading citizens whose home is a beautiful house of ten rooms lighted and heated by electricity.

The cooking is done on an electric stove, and hot water is supplied in the same way.

Yet he tells me that his fuel and light bills, even in midwinter, are not more than eighteen dollars a month.

End of chapter two.

Chapter three of Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland, by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter three, The Town of the Good Indians.

On Annette Island, just south of Ketchikan, is Metlakatla, the seat of one of the most remarkable experiments in the civilization of the red man.

This is the town of the good Indians, established by Father William Duncan, whose wonderful work with these natives justified his title of the Apostle of Alaska.

Father Duncan began life as a commercial traveler in England, and at twenty-one was well on his way toward a salary of five thousand dollars a year.

He decided, however, to give up his work and become a missionary.

He went to college expecting to be sent out to India, but instead he was ordered to the western coast of British Columbia to work with a tribe of Indians known as the Tsimpeans.

These Tsimpean Indians were then among the most barbarous of any on the North American continent.

They believed in witch doctors and practiced cannibalism.

They were hunters and fishers and clothed themselves in the skins of bears and wolves.

In their weird dances, they put the skulls of bears on their heads.

Their medicine men wore hideous masks and tried to frighten off disease with horrible noises.

If the demon of disease did not leave, the witch doctors would hack away the sore places with their knives or suck or burn away the ailing flesh.

Anyone they pointed out as possessed of evil spirits or as a witch was killed by his tribe.

The Tsimpeans had also curious ideas regarding the treatment of their women.

Young girls approaching womanhood were confined far away in isolated cabins, and when brought back were supposed to have dropped down from the moon and to be ready for marriage.

On such occasions, there were great feasts at which the youths of the tribe were initiated into dog eating, cannibalism, and devil dancing.

The Indians believed in spirits and the transmigration of souls.

When Father Duncan arrived in Victoria on his way to this work, he was told by the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company that if he went, he would beyond doubt be killed.

When Duncan still insisted, he said, Well, my good man, if you are to be killed and eaten, I suppose you are the one most interested, and we shall have to let you do as you wish.

With this permission, Father Duncan was allowed to go to Fort Simpson in British Columbia, not far from Prince Rupert.

On his way up the beach to speak to the officer in charge at the fort's stockade, he came to a place where the remains of a number of human beings were scattered about, and was told that the bodies he saw had been hacked to pieces and thrown on the sand in a fight between two parties of savages a few days before.

At that time, many of the tribes along the coast of British Columbia were cannibals, and Father Duncan actually saw a band of Indians on the beach eating a boy who had died of tuberculosis, and he had every reason to believe that a woman he saw killed was disposed of in the same fashion.

Here is his own account of the latter incident.

I had heard of the cannibalism, and one day an officer of the fort ran into my house and told me that the Indians were about to kill one of their women.

He warned me to keep indoors and said that I would surely be killed if I attempted to interfere.

A moment later, another man rushed in and said that the woman had already been killed.

We went out to the beach where there was a crowd of Indians.

They were divided into two bands, each led by a stark naked brave.

All were howling horribly.

They had killed a woman and cut her in two, and each of the nude Indian leaders was carrying half of the woman's body by his teeth.

As we came up, the bands separated, each gathering around its leader.

They sat down on the sand so crowded together that I could not see.

When they got up, not a vestige of the woman was to be seen.

What became of the flesh I do not know, but I believe it was devoured.

I doubt, however, whether it agreed with them, for the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company fort nearby told me that it was the custom of the Indians after every such cannibal feast to come into the post the day following and buy large quantities of Epsom salts.

In those early days, there were several attempts to kill Father Duncan.

On one occasion, a tribal chief demanded that the mission school be closed because his beautiful daughter was just about to drop down from the moon to be married.

The chief said that she had gone away and would come back in great state.

She would drop from the moon into the sea and would rise out of the water with a bearskin over her shoulders and thus appear to the people.

At this time, there would be many ceremonies that would prevent the school being kept open.

Father Duncan refused to close the school, and the chief persisted in his demands.

At last, on the day before the feast, he sent two men with long knives to kill the missionary, whose life was saved by a friendly Indian who had taught him the native language.

The school was kept going.

The missionary kept steadily at his work until he had converted eight or nine of these tribes to the Christian religion and made them about the most law-abiding and civilized people of the Indian race.

To belong to Father Duncan's community, the Indians did not have to promise to become Christian, but they did have to agree that they would drink no liquor, that there should be none of the performances of the medicine men over the sick, and that they would do no work on Sunday.

They had their own council and governed themselves.

They had their own boats, and they established a canning factory and put up salmon for shipment.

They learned to make ropes and brushes, to weave and to spin.

Father Duncan went to England and brought back musical instruments, and they established a brass band.

They had a schoolhouse and a church with an organ, which some of them were able to play.

They had their market house, their shops, their carpenters, tinners, coopers, and other mechanics.

What it has taken ages to accomplish with other uncivilized peoples, these Indians under Father Duncan achieved in less than 30 years.

Then the Church of England began to meddle with Duncan's mission, sending a bishop to rule over him and the Indians.

Finding that his work was being undone, Father Duncan asked the United States to allow his Indians to settle on our territory.

That was in 1887.

The matter was much agitated in the United States.

Father Duncan was supported by Henry Ward Beecher, Phillips Brooks, and others, and through their efforts a territory was allotted to him and his Indians on the northwestern side of Annette Island.

They came in August, and the first thing they did was to erect a flagpole and hoist the Stars and Stripes.

They had speeches by the United States Commissioner of Education and by Father Duncan, and later on divine service consisting of song and praise in the Simpsian language.

The next day a portable sawmill was unloaded, and the people began at once to clear the forests and erect buildings for their new homes.

They built a cannery and year by year added to their structures until they had a town hall, a church, a schoolhouse, a store, a public library, and the other buildings necessary to a civilized community.

The settlement was called the New Metlacatla, and since then the Indians have been known as the Metlacatlans.

In 1891 Annette Island was set aside by Congress as a reservation for them, and it was provided that it should be used by them in common under such rules and regulations as might be prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior.

Annette Island is one of the most beautiful parts of southeastern Alaska.

It is 15 miles long and 10 miles wide, and is formed by a long wooded mountain on the backbone of which are a number of beautiful lakes.

About the harbor of Metlacatla the land slopes gently down to the sea.

Here the trees have been cut away and a few hundred acres have been cleared and divided up into town lots.

On the left of the harbor, a silvery cascade tumbles down the side of the mountain.

It comes from Lake Chester, a short distance inland and eight hundred and fifty feet above the sea.

The most conspicuous building in Father Duncan's settlement is a great white framed structure with two towers.

This is the Westminster Abbey of Metlakatla.

It is Father Duncan's church and was built by the Indians at a cost of twelve thousand dollars.

It is the largest church in Alaska and seats five hundred people.

On the left of the church is the public school erected by the United States, and still farther away are Father Duncan's twelve-room guest house, his office, his school, and the great store he built to supply the needs of the people.

Right at the dock is a salmon cannery with a capacity of about a million cans a year, which has at times been a very profitable undertaking, giving work to all the people and bringing in a good revenue to the colony.

Connected with it is a box factory which turns out the twenty thousand cases or boxes used for shipping the fish.

At times, as many as ten thousand salmon have been handled in a day.

One of the striking buildings of the new Metlakatla is the library and jail.

This is painted in the colors of the American flag.

The first story is bright red.

It is the jail.

The second story is snow white.

It is the library.

The cupola on the top is blue.

Close to the beach and running back from it toward the public buildings are the homes of the people.

There are several hundred of them all built by the Indians with money earned in the community enterprises established by Father Duncan.

The houses are cottages of one and two stories.

They have glass windows, porches, and comfortable surroundings.

Each has a lot about eighty feet front and ninety feet deep, and every family has its garden.

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The community has its own preachers and public speakers.

Some of the sermons in the Tsimshian language are full of eloquence and beauty.

Here, for instance, is one urging the people to believe that the Savior will take care of them.

"Brethren and sisters, you know the eagle and its ways.

The eagle flies high.

The eagle rests high.

It always rests on the highest branch of the highest tree.

We should be like the eagle.

We should rest on the highest branch of the highest tree.

That branch is Jesus Christ.

When we rest on Him, all our enemies will be below and far beneath us." Another preacher, who had formerly been vicious and high-tempered, speaking of himself, said, "I will tell you what I feel myself to be.

I am like a bundle of weeds floating down the stream.

I was going down with all my sin like the weeds covered with earth and filth, but I came to the rapids when, lo, there was a pole stuck fast and firm in the rock, and I clutched at the pole, and there I am now.

The stream is passing by and washing away my filth.

Christ to me is the pole.

I hold to Him and am safe." I might cite other quotations to show the civilization, intelligence, and piety of the Metlakatlans.

They are far above the average of their race, and they are now aspiring to a higher education, to full United States citizenship, and to ownership of land in severalty.

Under the regulations fixed by the Secretary of the Interior, the Indians govern their colony through a council of twelve, elected annually, and their church is directed by twelve elders, also chosen by vote of the people.

From reading the following translation of the Lord's Prayer into Tsimshian, one gets some idea of what it means to work with these Indians in their own language.

The following paragraph, which is a translation of the Lord's Prayer into the native dialect, will not be read.

End of chapter three.

Chapter four of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter four, Alaska's Golden Fisheries.

During the last two weeks, I have visited several fishing centers of southeastern Alaska and have gone through many of the canneries where they are putting up salmon for shipment to all parts of the world.

There are more than seventy-five such canneries in southeastern Alaska alone and nearly twice that number in the whole territory.

I've also gone through the cold storage plants at Ketchikan and elsewhere, where they are freezing salmon for export, and have seen the various processes of mild curing and smoking and pickling the fish for the market.

But few people appreciate what Uncle Sam is now getting out of the waters of this territory.

The fishing industry is the most important business in Alaska.

So far, the seas have proved almost as valuable as the land.

Including the operations of the seal fisheries, we have realized more than half a billion dollars from them.

We are now getting almost six times as much annually from Alaskan fish as the sum we paid for the whole territory when we bought it from the Russians, and we have received more than seventy times that amount since the purchase was made.

If the industry is properly protected and fostered, it should produce at that rate for all time to come.

Indeed, the waters of Alaska have to be reckoned among the big sources of our food supply.

They produce hundreds of millions of pounds of food every year, and the canned salmon alone is enough to give ten meals to every family in the United States and still leave some for export.

The fresh salmon sold in a year runs upward of three million pounds, while the salmon frozen, mild cured, and pickled comes to fifteen million pounds.

The annual halibut export amounts to about seven million pounds and the codfish to ten million.

In addition to this, there are many other kinds of fish in these waters that will eventually be caught and shipped so that in some respects the industry is at its beginning.

In the water divisions which the United States Bureau of Fisheries has made of the territory, southeastern Alaska is known as Fishing District Number One.

It is by far the most important of the water regions of our territory, having something like ten thousand men engaged in fishing.

This district has great halibut banks off its many islands and is the seat of the fresh fish industry of Alaska.

The fishing investments there amount to something like thirty million dollars, most of which is in salmon.

The second fishing district is known as that of central Alaska.

This begins at Yakutat Bay and includes the great Gulf of Alaska and all of the waters south of the mainland and along the Aleutian Islands, which run almost to Asia.

The ocean bed of a great part of this enormous district is paved with fish.

The bulk of the catch is salmon, but there is also an annual export of cod amounting to millions of pounds from the extensive cod banks south of the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands.

These banks compare with those of Newfoundland.

Some of them are one hundred and twenty miles long and of great width.

They are so situated that the Arctic and the Japanese currents bring them a great deal of fish food, and the cod come there by the millions to eat.

The third district, western Alaska, includes banks swarming with cod.

It embraces Bristol Bay, where the salmon run into the streams by the tens of millions a year.

The deltas of the Kuskokwim and the Yukon Rivers, as well as the coast of Norton Sound and all the waters along Seward Peninsula to Cape Prince of Wales at Bering Strait.

We have also an island in the middle of the strait about which some fishing is done.

As far as its fisheries are concerned, western Alaska is next in importance to southeastern Alaska.

There is a fairly well-authenticated story of how one of the salmon kings started his fortune in the fish industry on the basis of the then despised light-colored salmon.

This man had put up his cannery at a location past which the fish came in great numbers on their way in to spawn.

He was right in his selection of a site, and the salmon were caught in vast quantities.

They were all, however, of the light pink variety, and the fisherman was in despair.

At that time, no light-colored salmon had been shipped, and the demand everywhere was for salmon of an almost red hue.

The man canned his catch and sold it by means of a label which implied that it was the only sanitary fish on the market.

The label read, "This salmon is warranted not to turn red in the can." Most of the catch went to the southern states, and the drummers selling it did their business so well that in some of the towns in that part of the United States, to this day, you can hardly sell a red salmon.

The people think it is spoiled and has therefore turned red in the can.

In interior Alaska, both whites and natives are indirectly dependent on dried salmon for their very existence during the winter.

One of the most important phases of the salmon industry is the fact that dried salmon is the best food for the husky or Alaskan team dog.

Of the seventy million dollars invested in the fishing industry of Alaska, sixty-two millions are devoted to catching, canning, and shipping of salmon.

There are four species of this fish, all of which are delicious.

The largest and most valuable is the king salmon, which has an average weight of twenty-two pounds and sometimes weighs as much as one hundred pounds.

This is found in southeastern Alaska in all months of the year.

And in May and June it runs up many of the rivers to spawn.

The next in size is the sockeye or red salmon, which is about a yard long and has an average weight of five pounds.

It is found all over Alaska and runs chiefly from June until the middle of August.

The silver or coho salmon is not so valuable on account of the paleness of its flesh.

It weighs on an average about six pounds and runs later than the sockeye.

The humpback is the smallest of our salmon.

It is caught by the millions in southeastern Alaska, and many of the canneries depend upon it.

It weighs up to eleven pounds.

In addition to these four species, Alaska has the dog salmon, which is good for freezing, salting, and smoking, but poor for canning, and is shipped largely to Japan.

Catching the salmon and bringing them to the canneries is a great industry by itself.

There are certain weeks or months of the year during which these fish come from the ocean into the fresh waters of the rivers to spawn.

The spawning grounds are often a thousand miles or more inland.

I have seen the fish fighting their way up the Yukon two thousand miles from its mouth at Bering Sea, and they may be found in great numbers climbing over the rocks of the streams that flow down the mountains of the coast into the Pacific.

When they are four or five years old, the instinct to spawn sends the salmon up into the inland creeks and rivers.

There seems to be something in the contact with the fresh water coming down into the ocean that causes the fish to run toward it.

Usually they pair off.

When they have gone far enough from salt water, the male, with his tail and snout, digs a broad, shallow nest in the gravelly stream bed in which the female deposits her eggs.

After they have been fertilized by the milt of the male, the pair cover them up with sand and gravel, then float down the stream tail first, never swimming or making any effort to get back to sea.

In a few days both the male and female die.

Four or five months later, the young hatch and soon, guided by some instinct, make their way down to the ocean where they stay until they are ready to rush back to fresh water, spawn and die like their parents before them.

In the spawning season the salmon come upstream in such hordes that they can be caught in traps both stationary and floating, in nets fastened to posts and stakes in the rivers, and in sands which are brought from the beaches and the boats.

They are caught also by fish wheels moved by the currents of the river in such a way that the nets of wire or cord attached to the wheels scoop up the fish as they swim against the current and fairly shovel them down into the boats.

Fish wheels of this kind are to be seen here and there along the coast, and there are hundreds of them owned by the Indians along the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers.

The business of the Alaskan canneries is enormous.

The one I went through in Ketchikan covers several acres.

It will put up seven and one-half million cans of salmon this year besides freezing hundreds of thousands of pounds to be sent to the east.

When the fish are brought in by the boatloads and dumped out by the thousand, they are still alive and flopping, and they are hardly dead as they start into the iron chink, a machine which cleans each fish, cutting off its head, tail, and fins, and taking out its insides within the time of a watch tick.

This work used to be done by hand, and Chinese hands at that.

When the machine was invented to take the place of the Chinaman, it was nicknamed the iron chink, and so it is known to this day.

The inventor was a cook of Seattle named Smith, who made a fortune out of his invention.

His machine will clean 30,000 fish in ten hours, or as much as was formerly done by 50 of the most expert Chinese.

Nevertheless, the whole thing is not much bigger around than a flower barrel, and not more than eight feet in height.

It consists of a number of knives so arranged that as the fish flies in, one knife cuts off the head, and at the same time another chops off the tail.

As the fish moves on, a third knife rips up the belly, and other knives take off the fins.

At the end, the fish has been split, the backbone taken out, the blood removed, and the salmon is ready for the can.

Before being put into the can, however, it is carefully inspected by men who watch the fish as they make their way over endless belts to the chopper.

The chopper automatically cuts the fish into pieces of the right size for the can, in such a way that each can gets its own share of the several parts of a fish.

There must be some from the back and some from the belly in order to supply the streak of lean and the streak of fat, which, as in bacon, are necessary to make the can of salmon just right.

The machine puts into each can just 16 ounces.

As the cans move onward, they pass through an automatic weighing machine, which drops out any that are underweight.

After this, the cover of the can is fitted on by machinery in such a way as to allow the steam to escape, and the tins travel on in a furnace or exhaust box where the temperature is 212 degrees.

Next, another machine makes the tops tight without acid or solder, and the cans are moved on into great retorts where they are cooked for an hour and a half in a heat of 254 degrees.

When they come out, they are ready to be labeled and packed into boxes for shipment to all parts of the world.

The halibut is one of the most interesting fish that swims the seas.

It is the largest of the flat fish.

I have seen many which, if stood upon their tails, would reach high above my head, and some which I venture are over three feet in width.

The average halibut weighs about one hundred pounds, but some have been caught weighing as much as three hundred.

Halibut fishing has nothing gamey or sporting about it.

Long lines are dropped into the sea until the baited hook rests on the bed of the ocean.

Sometimes the lines are so long that when loaded with fish, it takes the steam engine on the fishing vessel the better part of a day to wind them up.

They're divided into sections, each section having a float or buoy that rides on the surface and is marked by a flag in the daytime and by a light at night.

Some halibut fishing is now carried on direct from the ship.

A few years ago, it was all done in dories or small boats, which were taken out in large vessels.

The men would go out in the dories to set the lines and later bring the halibut back to the vessel.

The fishing parties usually stay out from ten days to three weeks.

They carry ice with them, and the moment the fish are taken from the hook, they are cleaned and packed in the ice.

When they reach the cold storage plant, they are washed and shipped in cold storage cars direct to the markets.

If they are not to be shipped immediately, halibut are put into freezers where they remain for twenty-four hours at a temperature of ten to twenty degrees above zero.

Next, each one is dipped four or five times in fresh water until it becomes entirely encased in a thin sheet of clear ice.

It can then be held in cold storage at a temperature of four degrees below freezing.

Finally, the fish get another coating of ice, are wrapped separately in vegetable parchment paper, packed in paper-lined boxes of seventy-five pounds capacity, and sent eastward in the cold storage trains.

I have gone through some of the big freezing establishments, both in Prince Rupert and in Ketchikan.

Each town has its cold storage plants where halibut and salmon are frozen.

The largest one I visited has a capacity of fourteen million pounds of fish.

Its buildings are right on the harbor, and the fish are frozen stiff as soon as they come from the wharves.

I went into the freezing chambers, the walls and pipes of which were covered with frost.

The temperature is far below zero.

The smell of the ammonia used to produce refrigeration almost overcame me as I walked between the great masses of fish laid one upon another like so many sticks of cordwood.

I took up one of the smaller fish and let it drop on the floor.

It was as hard as stone, and the noise of its fall was like the crack of a pistol.

I examined the fish, but there was no bruise or dent in the flesh.

I stood it on end, resting the tail on the floor, and it did not bend in the least.

A great deal of halibut is salted and put in hogsheads for shipment.

Each hogshead holds about eight hundred and fifty pounds, and when full is worth around a hundred dollars.

The halibut intended for salting is dressed before it is packed.

It is hung by the gills to a hook, then sliced in two, the back and the front forming great slabs of snow-white meat.

The backbone is cut out.

The front or belly has no bones.

After cleaning, the slabs are sprinkled with salt and put into the hogsheads in layers, with a layer of salt between each two layers of fish.

Some halibut is smoked, in which form it may be bought in almost any grocery store.

Herring, the halibut's favorite food, are found in nearly all the waters of Alaska.

They move about in great schools, some of which cover several square miles.

Twice a year, when they swim to the shores to spawn, they come in such large schools that they can be scooped up from the water right into the boats.

One way of catching them is by driving nails into a board so that they stick out several inches.

The boards are then dragged through the schools, and the fish catch between the nails and are pulled by the board full into the boats.

In one year, more than a million pounds of herring were caught at Prince Rupert alone and frozen by the cold storage plants to be sold for bait.

A large proportion of the herring catch of Alaska is used for manufacture of fertilizer and oil, but at that, statistics show an output of more than eight million pounds annually cured for food.

There are also large cod fisheries in Alaska, and the cod are said to be equal to those caught on the banks of Newfoundland.

Much of the cod fishing is about the Aleutian Islands, and there are many vessels and stations devoted to the industry.

The amount of cod caught annually runs to more than twelve million pounds.

In addition to the ordinary cod, there are black cod, a fish of about the same size as the ordinary cod, but darker in color.

The flesh, which is much richer in oil, may be prepared in such a way that it is delicious.

It has been eaten for many years in Alaska and has latterly been shipped to Seattle, where the restaurants make a special feature of barbecued black cod.

This consists of the backs of the fish, which are kippered or smoked after being salted, served with drawn butter.

There is a prospect that an extensive industry will sometime arise in the shellfish of Alaska.

There are oysters on the southern coast as large as saucers, and there are many places among the Alaskan islands where you can catch crabs as big as dinner plates.

There are clams large and small, delicious little butter clams, and others good to eat the size of a man's hand.

I am told, however, that one has to be very careful as to the source of his clam supply.

Some of these bivalves feed in the water near the copper deposits, and the copper poisons their meat.

The captain of one of our coast survey steamers, in speaking of this recently, told me how his life was saved by a pussycat.

Said he, "It was a narrow escape.

I had bought a fine mess of clams and was just about to eat some of them raw when I decided I had better test their edibility by giving one of them to my cat.

The pussy ate it, and a moment later she rolled over and went into convulsions.

She kept on kicking until every one of her nine lives had departed.

End of chapter four.

Chapter five of Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland, by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter five, The Story of Seward's Icebox.

Come with me for a walk through the old town of Sitka.

It was founded in 1799, at about the time that George Washington was dying at Mount Vernon, and was a thriving manufacturing center, building ships and making bells, plows, picks, and spades when the Indians were still hunting deer on the site of Chicago.

For more than 100 years, it was the capital and commercial center of Alaska.

Situated here in the Panhandle, 150 miles northwest of Ketchikan, and about as far north of Seattle as Minneapolis is north of New Orleans, it was selected by the Russians as the seat of their government, and as the chief home of the officials and traders sent out by the Tsar to what was then Russian America.

Sitka was the capital of Alaska when we bought the territory, and it was here that the country was formally transferred to the United States.

After that, it remained the capital for almost 40 years, until the seat of government was transferred to Juneau in 1912.

Looking at Sitka as it is today, one does not wonder that the Russians chose it as their chief place of residence.

The town has a climate as mild as that of Baltimore or Richmond, and its surroundings are so beautiful that it must sometime be a summer resort in place of permanent residence for retired capitalists.

It is situated on Baranof Island, within a short distance of the open Pacific.

It lies on a little bay at the mouth of a fast-flowing river in the arena of an amphitheater of snow-clad mountains.

The waters in front of it have scores of small wooded islands, while all about the hills rise to the clouds.

One of the mountains is known as the Holy Cross, from a figure of the cross in perpetual snow, which gleams out near its summit.

This is Mount Verstovia, which has a mantle of white throughout the winter, but in the summer the snow disappears, with the exception of this gigantic cross painted by the hand of God upon a background of green.

Another mountain is Edgecomb, on the island of Kruzoff, over the way.

Mount Edgecomb is an extinct volcano, as regular and as beautiful in its outlines as Fujiyama in Japan.

It was one of the first of the landmarks discovered by Captain Cook when he sailed through these waters in 1776.

On the hill at one side of the town was the site of the Baranof Castle, where the Russian governor lived, and there today is the headquarters of the Agricultural Experiment Station.

To the left of the cliffs at the entrance of the harbor are the wharves, with the main business street, named after President Lincoln, running back from them, and farther down the cove is a long row of two- and three-story houses, with many flagstaffs rising above them.

That is the Indian settlement.

The town has altogether something like 1,000 Indians, and we shall see Indians everywhere as we move through the streets.

It has also about 500 whites.

In Sitka, modern residences of Americans and log buildings more than 100 years old, put up in the days of the Russians, stand side by side.

There is one great wardhouse of logs so carefully fitted together that you could not put a knife blade between them.

The logs are each two or three feet in diameter.

That building, which was a warehouse when we took over the territory, frequently had a million dollars' worth of furs stored in it.

At the time of the sale to the United States, it contained 30,000 seal skins, which then sold for less than $3 apiece.

A little farther up the street is a log building covered with the moss of many decades, and still farther away, near the Russian cemetery, is a Russian blockhouse bearing the scars of the wars with the Indians.

The Sitka of today has a number of fine churches and a large missionary school.

There is an Episcopal church built of stone with the residence of the Bishop of Alaska behind it, and there are the half-dozen large buildings of the Sheldon Jackson School belonging to the Presbyterians.

These buildings include industrial departments and dormitories for both Indian boys and girls.

The children are clean and well-dressed, and the school has done a great work with its practical educational methods.

At Sitka is also the old Pioneer's Home, where aged and dependent men and women who have spent their years assisting in the development of Alaska are well cared for by the territorial government.

The most prominent church building in the town is the Russian Cathedral.

It stands at the end of the main street coming up from the wharves on the site of a church that was built here more than a century ago, when Baranoff was governor.

The present building dates far back in the Russian occupation, but it was in use until the Bolshevik regime in Russia suspended the activities of the Russian church in Alaska.

The Russians did a great deal of mission work here.

They had mission stations on many of the Aleutian Islands and others scattered over the territory, even to the mouth of the Yukon.

The Russian Cathedral at Sitka is a museum of interesting pictures and jewels.

Many of its paintings were brought around Cape Horn or across Siberia, and some of them are by famous artists.

One is an icon bearing the face of the Lady of Kazan.

It represents a Madonna and child and is of great beauty.

I am told that the church refused an offer of $25,000 from J. Pierpont Morgan for this single painting.

Of late years, Sitka has lost its commercial importance.

The removal of the capital to Juneau took away about all the United States offices, and there is now no more quiet town in the territory.

The place is away from the main lines of travel and is reached only by a small steamer or by the tourist boats in the summer, which bring sightseers here on account of Sitka's beauty and historic interest.

It is well worth a visit.

The history of Alaska covers just about 150 years, and roughly speaking, it may be divided into three periods of 50 years each.

The first 50 was the period of exploration and discovery.

The next 50 was the time of the Russian occupation, and the last half century covers the time since we purchased the territory.

Alaska was discovered by the Russians during the 18th century, but very little was known about it until almost the beginning of the 19th.

It was in 1711 that Peter Popoff sailed from Siberia around through Bering Strait and brought back rumors that a continent existed on the other side of Asia.

Seventeen years later, Peter the Great of Russia, who had heard of these stories, sent Vitus Bering from Kamchatka to find out if they were true.

Bering went through the strait which now bears his name, but it must have been foggy, for he did not see the American shore or even the Diomede Islands, which lie in the middle of the strait.

So he came back and reported that he had found nothing.

He tried it again nine years later with a similar result, and it was not until 1741 that he saw the American continent and discovered the Shumagin Islands.

At that time, he anchored near the mouth of the Copper River and went on back through the Aleutians to the island of Bering, a part of Siberia.

He was wrecked on that island and died there of scurvy.

Some of his sailors who made their way back to the mainland carried the story of the existence of Alaska and of the wonderful furs of the Aleutians.

From that time, the Russians made many expeditions to the Aleutians.

Their glowing reports attracted the attention of other navigators, especially Britons and Spaniards, who made many voyages of exploration along the Alaskan coasts.

It was in 1774 and 1775 that Juan Perez was sent by the King of Spain from Mexico to the north.

He reached Dixon Entrance, our international boundary, in 1774, and the year following came to Sitka Sound.

Captain Cook sailed from Plymouth, England, at just about the time that Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence.

It was he who established the fact that there was no land connection between America and Asia, and he surveyed a part of the coast, outlining the chief features through more than 12 degrees of latitude.

He then went south to Hawaii, where he was killed by the natives.

Later still, there were other explorations by the Russians, who formed trading companies, and there were independent fur traders from England and from our Atlantic coast.

Five ships from New England came to Alaska in the latter part of the 18th century to buy furs.

One of these, commanded by Captain Gray, took his cargo of furs to Canton, China, where he got a cargo of tea, which he carried on around the Cape of Good Hope to Boston, making the first voyage of an American vessel around the world.

He landed in Boston August 10, 1790.

Meanwhile, the Russians had been gradually staking out their claims to Alaska, and about the beginning of the last century, they made treaties with England, which conceded to them the Alaskan coast down to 54 degrees, 40 minutes of north latitude.

At that time, it is said that Russia had a great ambition to control the Pacific, and that it was her aim to grab the whole of California and the Hawaiian Islands as well.

Baranoff, the Russian who founded Sitka, had fur trading stations as far south as where San Francisco now is, and actually owned the farm which later came into the hands of John Sutter, on which gold was first discovered in California.

Eight years before our national capital was moved from Philadelphia to Washington, Baranoff established at Kodiak the first Russian colony.

Among the settlers were a number of convicts, of whom he made fur traders and farmers, controlling them with an iron hand.

He was small in stature, but he had the qualities of a Napoleon, and it was due to his management and organization that Russia got such a foothold on our continent.

He had many fights, not only with the Indians, but also with his own people.

At one time, when one of the colonists attempted to assassinate him, he grabbed hold of the hand holding the weapon, and then strangled the man to death with his own hands.

In 1799, he moved his headquarters to Sitka, and three years later, while he was absent, the Indians massacred the Russians, killing all of the officers and 30 men.

Only five Russians escaped.

The Indians built a fort of logs and defied the Russians, but Baranoff came back with a gunboat and starved the Indians into submission.

Baranoff then moved the site of Sitka eight miles to where the town now is.

About the time he came to Sitka, there was formed the Russian Fur Company, a monopoly backed by the government, the czar, and the empress, and many of the nobility.

Baranov continued to manage the territory until 1817, when, through political trickery, he was deposed.

He left Sitka and died on his way home at Batavia, Java, in 1819.

During the time of Russia's ownership, much of the Alaskan coast was explored.

The Yukon River was opened up as far as the mouth of the Tanana by Lieutenant Zagoskin, and Kotzebue went through Bering Strait and discovered Kotzebue Sound on the Arctic Ocean, north of the Seward Peninsula.

The delta of the Kuskokwim became pretty well known.

Likewise, the southern coast, including the Panhandle, the Gulf of Alaska, the Alaskan Peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands.

Complications, however, were arising with the British, who, under the Hudson's Bay Company, were pushing their trading stations from the Mackenzie River onto the Yukon.

Russia became anxious lest her American holdings should fall into the hands of Great Britain.

At the time of the Crimean War, she offered to sell us Alaska, but President Pierce refused to become a party to the transfer.

The matter was again taken up when Buchanan came in, at which time an offer of five million dollars was made by us and declined by the Russians.

The negotiations were continued, but the Civil War was then brewing, and the pro-slavery element would not agree to the purchase of any more territory that was likely to be non-slaveholding.

The subject was dropped until after the close of the war.

It was in 1863 that the Western Union Telegraph Company planned to build a landline across North America to Asia, and a little later they sent exploration parties down the Yukon and over the Seward Peninsula to Bering Strait and into Siberia.

They explored the Yukon Valley and brought forth much new information regarding Alaska.

They were about ready to push their line through when the Atlantic cable proved successful.

Meantime, an increased interest had sprung up regarding Alaska.

The negotiations for its purchase were resumed, and, to cut short a most interesting story, Russia offered to sell the territory to us for about two cents an acre.

The actual figure was seven million dollars, with an extra two hundred thousand to settle the claims of the Russian residents and to pay the cost of the transfer.

Late one night, Baron Stokle, the Russian ambassador at Washington, came to the house of William H. Seward, our Secretary of State, and told him that he had just received dispatches from the Tsar authorizing him to sell Alaska.

Secretary Seward was playing whist at the time, and the ambassador said that he would come to the State Department on the morrow to make the treaty.

Secretary Seward replied, Why should we wait until tomorrow, Mr. Ambassador? Let us make the treaty tonight.

But the Department is closed, replied the Russian.

You have no clerks, and my secretaries are scattered about the town.

Never mind that, said Secretary Seward.

I can easily get the necessary clerks, and if you can bring together your legislation by midnight, you will find us awaiting you at the Department, and we will settle the business.

To this the ambassador consented.

They met at twelve o'clock at the Department of State, and by four in the morning the treaty was engrossed, signed and sealed, and ready for transmission to the Senate.

Within a month it had been approved, and Alaska was ours.

Up to that time the territory had been known as Russian America.

It needed a new name, and all kinds of ridiculous titles were suggested.

One was the Zero Islands, another Andy Johnson's Polar Bear Garden, another Seward's Icebox, and a fourth Walrussia.

The treaty was called the Polar Bear Treaty, and the senators who favored it were dubbed the Eskimo Senators.

The name Alaska was finally chosen at the instance of Charles Sumner, who said that it was the title which the natives used.

Translated, it means the Great Mainland.

The ceremony of taking possession of Alaska was performed here at Sitka on Friday, the 18th of October, 1867.

Two hundred American soldiers under General Jefferson C. Davis took their position on the east side of the flagstaff near the castle, and an equal number of Russian soldiers were lined up opposite them.

It was 3.30 o'clock in the afternoon when the Russian captain ordered his men to haul down the Russian flag.

The men tried to do so, but it had caught in the ropes and would not move.

A Russian soldier climbed up to bring down the flag.

He tried and failed.

Another man tried and did not succeed.

A third soldier climbed up and got it, but it slipped from his hands, was caught by the wind, and fell on the bayonets of the Russian soldiers.

The incident was so affecting that the Princess Moksutov, who was present with the Russians, wept, and the soldiers were visibly moved.

Following this, Old Glory was hoisted, and the American gunboats in the harbor and the Russian battery on shore fired salutes.

Prince Moksutov, the Russian commissioner, then stepped forward and said to General Rousseau, the American commissioner, By the authority of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the territory of Alaska.

Prince Moksutov then handed over the insignia of his office as governor, and General Rousseau made a speech accepting the transfer.

That was all.

With less than 200 words, Alaska's allegiance was changed, and a new empire was added to Uncle Sam's domain.

Let me tell you briefly what we got for that investment in land at two cents an acre.

Alaska is a world in itself, an unknown world at that to most of us, though every man, woman, and child in the United States is a part owner.

The territory, which has an area of nearly six hundred thousand square miles, contains more than one-sixth of all the land under the American flag.

If Alaska could be lifted up and dropped down upon the main body of our country, with its eastern end touching the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, the westernmost end would be in the Pacific beyond Los Angeles.

Beginning not far west of Los Angeles, the territory extends Uncle Sam's dominions almost to Japan.

Nome is three thousand miles west of San Francisco, and the mainland of Alaska is less than forty miles from Siberia at Bering Strait.

The island of Attu, at the end of the Aleutian Chain, is not far from Asia.

From north to south, Alaska reaches almost as far as the distance from Canada to Mexico.

This mighty territory is a world in the variety of its lands, its resources, its climates, and its waters.

It is a country of seas, lakes, and rivers, and of almost as many islands as the Empire of Japan.

It has a vast continental mainland with mountains and valleys, rolling plateaus, and great lowland plains.

The navigable waters of its rivers reach many thousands of miles.

Alaska has the highest mountains on the North American continent.

It has some of the greatest glacial fields upon earth, and scores of its peaks never lose their snow.

McKinley, which kisses the sky at over twenty thousand feet, is the tallest mountain north of the Isthmus of Panama.

A little farther east is Mount St. Elias, which is eighteen thousand feet high, and about Mount Wrangell, in a territory not three-fourths as big as Massachusetts, there are ten snow-clad peaks twice as high as Mount Washington, and two which are higher than Mont Blanc.

The Alaskan range runs around the whole southern coast and has a width here and there approximating eighty miles.

The range has several low passes, and one of these, Broad Pass, is only twenty-seven hundred feet above the sea.

It is from six to eight miles in width, and it forms an easy way for Uncle Sam's new railroad into the great central valley.

Like the senators who ridiculed Secretary Seward when he purchased Alaska, we are apt to think of it in terms of the North Pole, of mountains of ice, and of perpetual snow.

We have read of the terrible cold, where the thermometer falls to seventy degrees below zero, of the reindeer and dog teams flying over the snow, and of the Cimmerian darkness of the long winter nights.

The truth is, Alaska is a world in its climates.

Only one-fourth of the country lies inside the Arctic Circle.

Parts of it are as tempered as Tennessee or Kentucky, and southeastern Alaska, a region larger than Maine, has a winter climate milder than that of Washington City.

The great Yukon Valley, a land of rolling plains and plateaus, has winters like those of Montana and northern Dakota, and the summers of the whole territory are not far different from those of Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia.

In midsummer I found the whole land covered with a dense vegetation, and it seemed to me that if any part of it could be set down into the main body of the United States, the change would not be recognized.

There is such crass ignorance concerning the climate of Alaska that I shall say a little more about latitude.

Take the city of Seward, the terminus of our new railroad.

That town is no farther north than Petrograd, and it is not nearly so cold in winter.

Juneau, the capital of Alaska, is in about the same latitude as Edinburgh, Scotland, and is, I venture, by far the warmer.

The same is true of Sitka and Copenhagen.

The whole Scandinavian peninsula is within the latitudes of Alaska, and some of the Aleutian Islands are farther south than Birmingham, England, Berlin, Dublin, or Warsaw.

Ketchikan and Moscow are on about the same parallel.

End of chapter 5.

Chapter 6 of Carpenter's World Travels, Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland, by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter 6.

The Tlingits and the Haidas.

The Alaskan Indians are of half a dozen different stocks.

Those I have seen most in my travels in southeastern Alaska are the Tlingits, an Indian family scattered throughout the whole of this part of the country.

There are four or five thousand of them, divided among a dozen or more tribes, including the Auk, the Chilkat, the Cake, the Sitka, the Stikine, Tongass, and Yakutat.

The Klukwans are Tlingits, and so are the Hoonas.

These people are semi-civilized, and nearly every tribe has its own church and school.

And then there are the Haidas, numbering five or six hundred, and the Simpseans of Metlacatla.

The Athapaskans, who number about four thousand, are divided into twelve tribes, and may be seen all along the Yukon and Tanana rivers.

The Aleuts, of whom there are about fifteen hundred, are closely allied to the Eskimos.

They live in the long island chain extending from southwestern Alaska almost to Asia, and are fishers and hunters.

The finely woven baskets made by their women show that they have some artistic ability.

The Indians of Alaska look far more like the Chinese and Japanese than like the red men of the States.

They have yellowish or light brown complexions.

Their eyes are a trifle slanting, and their cheekbones are as high as those of the Mongols or the inhabitants of Tibet.

When they are dressed like white men, it is difficult to tell them from the Japanese, who come north to work in the fish canneries, and it is a question whether they did not originally come from Asia, crossing from Kamchatka in their canoes to the Aleutian Islands, and making their way to the Alexander Archipelago.

Bering Strait is only fifty or sixty miles wide, and there are two islands in the midst of it, so that it would have been easy for the Chukchi and other Mongolian tribes to cross over from Asia to the mainland of this continent.

Some of the Indian customs here are the same as those that prevailed in Japan before it adopted Western civilization, and it is not hard to imagine that these customs may have come down from their Mongolian ancestors.

For instance, when I first visited Japan, every widow shaved her head as smooth as a billiard ball to show that she was mourning for her husband.

She also stained her teeth black to make herself unattractive.

The widows of the Tlingits shaved their heads the same way until the missionaries taught them better, and they even painted their faces black as a sign of mourning.

The black used was a watercolor, and if this were streaked with tears, it brought the widow respect because of her grief for her dead husband.

Cremation is common in Japan.

It was for years practiced in Alaska.

The Chinese will undergo any privation to have a good funeral.

The Alaskan Indians do likewise.

In southeastern Alaska, I have seen many of the Tlingits.

These Indians are found on the coast and in the islands of the Panhandle, their settlements extending as far north as Prince William Sound.

They are the Indians best known to the tourists, and their totem poles, or tribal emblems and coats of arms, although gradually disappearing with the advance of civilization, are still to be seen in the villages.

The Tlingits always build their villages near the shore.

Since nine-tenths of their support comes from fishing, they like to live right on the beach.

Nearly every family has its boats, while some families even own gasoline launches.

Their houses are usually scattered about without regard to any fixed plan.

It is only lately that any of them have had gardens.

In the past, the buildings were made of rude slabs and bark thrown together over pole rafters.

No house had a chimney or window, and the smoke passed out through a hole in the roof.

Now, most of the houses are shingle-roofed, comfortable frame dwellings with windows and chimneys.

Some of them are sealed, and some are papered and painted.

The Indians have become good carpenters and use modern tools.

The newer buildings show some regard for sanitary requirements, and a few of their towns have plank sidewalks and electric plants.

In Klukwan, the Indians have piped the water from the mountains and established a municipal water system.

Klukwan is a village of the Chilcats on the Chilcat River not far from Skagway.

The town is said to be 300 years old and to have once had a population of a thousand souls.

Its people were traders, exchanging dried fish and oil for furs with the Athapaskans of the interior.

The Chilcats are great trappers.

They have divided their hunting grounds among the various families, and the hunting rights descend from generation to generation.

They have been noted for their skill in the various industries.

They wove blankets a century ago.

They also forged copper and did beautiful carving.

Much of this skill departed upon the advent of civilization, but they now make moccasins and cut out miniature totem poles and other things for the tourists.

The settlement of Klukwan has a flourishing cooperative store, which is so good that it gets much trade from the whites, and it is said that the Indians come a distance of a hundred miles to buy there.

The town has its men's club, which holds meetings every week when matters of town interest are discussed.

The government is trying to induce these Indians to go into canning, and some canning machinery has been sent there.

The school teachers advise that a sawmill be installed.

They say that the boys are quick to learn carpentry, and they are now making chairs, tables, and sleds in the school shops.

Recently, they began to work in sheet metal and to make airtight stoves.

The work of civilization among the Indians has been promoted by both missionaries and school teachers.

The missionaries came first.

They established schools, industrial and otherwise, and converted the Indians to Christianity.

After the missionaries came the United States Bureau of Education, which has taken charge of the natives of Alaska.

Beginning with the establishment of schools in all of the villages, it has added many other kinds of social service work to its activities.

The teachers are now instructing the adult Indians in sanitation and civil government.

They are inducing them to establish stores and to engage in all possible self-sustaining industries.

So far, the most remarkable progress has been among the Haidas, a tribe of five or six hundred Indians on Prince of Wales Island.

On the government reservation there, they have built a town called Heideburg, which is perhaps the most advanced Indian community of the world.

The natives have organized a cooperative trading company, paying big dividends to the stockholders.

In 1911, when the settlement was first organized, the par value of a share in the Heideburg Trading Company was ten dollars.

Ten years later, the accumulation on each share, including the stock dividend and the purchase dividend each year, amounted to almost two hundred and fifty dollars.

The company now owns, besides its store, a sawmill, a cannery and dock, a moving picture outfit, an automobile truck, and equipment for electric lighting.

Nearly every family in Heideberg has stock in this trading company, and the people are rapidly growing well-to-do.

Many have gasoline launches, and all have comfortable homes.

The town elects its own officers.

It has a mayor and councilmen, and the business of the place is transacted in English.

One of the first cooperative works was the building of a sidewalk.

There was no money in the village treasury, but the young men brought in the proceeds of their season's fishing, and the Indian girls had a basket social.

Two hundred and ninety dollars were realized from the food sold.

This bought the lumber, and the men gave their labor for nothing.

That sidewalk is the best in southeastern Alaska.

It is ten feet wide and more than half a mile long.

Since then, the citizens have erected a municipal dock four hundred and forty feet long with a front of fifty-five feet.

The cooperative store has created a hunger for business training, and business methods are taught in the school.

The village has town meetings at which all matters of public interest are discussed, and the popular vote determines what shall be done.

The Haidas are not Tlingits.

They belong to a different Indian family, and for a long time their only home seems to have been on Queen Charlotte Island off the coast of British Columbia.

Later, some of them moved to the West Coast, and about two hundred years ago, according to their traditions, they drove the Tlingits out of a part of Prince of Wales Island and settled there.

They have always been considered superior Indians and have had the reputation of being the best painters, carvers, and canoe builders of southeastern Alaska.

In the past, they hollowed their canoes out of single logs of cedar and built houses of cedar beams and planks, which were worked out with adze of stone.

At one time, there were something like eight thousand of them, but during our possession of Alaska, the number in the United States territory has never been more than six or eight hundred.

Among the other movements to better the Indians of Alaska is that of school farming.

Both children and adults are shown how to make gardens, and some of the villages are growing vegetables and berries of various kinds.

One of the teachers reports that he has supervised the making of seventeen native gardens inside the Arctic Circle.

The government is doing all it can to improve the sanitary conditions among the Indians.

The teachers are cleaning up the towns, and the doctors and nurses of the Bureau of Education go from village to village and give directions for the care of the sick, as well as instruction in how to keep the well healthy.

It is estimated that thirty percent of the natives have consumption in some form or stage and that eight percent of the deaths are due to tuberculosis.

Of late, a number of the squaws have taken to feeding their infants from the bottle.

Since they know nothing about the preparation of this baby food, many of the children come out of the nursing stage feeble and scrawny.

The schoolchildren are examined for trachoma, adenoids, and other diseases.

They are taught to take care of their teeth and are warned against the use of tobacco and alcohol.

Alcohol has been the curse of the Indians of Alaska.

It is said that before the coming of the Russians, they knew nothing of liquor in any form, but they soon acquired the art of brewing and drinking, first the Russian kvass and later American whiskey.

Its sale to the Indians has long been forbidden, but there have always been some whites willing to make money by supplying the natives with whiskey.

The Alaskan Indians try to imitate the whites in many ways.

They are now dressing much the same except that they delight in brighter colors.

During my trip, we have had a number of Indian men and women with us on the steamers.

The other day, a young squaw sat down at the table opposite two traveling salesmen from Seattle.

As the meal went on, they noticed that the girl's orders were the same as their own.

She was pretending to study the menu, but they concluded that she could not read and that this was her first experience with a white man's victuals.

Thereupon, one of them ordered for his dessert a slice of custard pie and winked at his friend to do the same.

The squaw in her turn gave a similar order.

When the pie came, one of the traveling men seized the ketchup bottle and sprinkled a liberal allowance of hot tomato sauce over his pie.

His friend followed suit and then shoved the ketchup across the table to the copper-skinned girl.

She did the same, only more so.

The men stopped eating to watch the agony of the Indian.

The fair squaw, however, heroically finished her pie without winking, and as far as anyone could see, the joke was on the salesman.

End of chapter six.

Chapter seven of Carpenter's World Travels.

Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Recording by Betty B.

Chapter seven, Totem Indians and Their Customs.

In southeastern Alaska, a curious survival of the old Indian customs is seen in the totem poles, which the natives used to put up before each house and often covered the graves of the chiefs and heads of families.

These totem poles are neither tombstones nor idols, and they were never regarded as such by the Indians.

They are tribal crests or coats of arms, of which the natives are as proud as are the nobility of Europe of their emblems of heraldry.

The Indian can read the story of a totem pole as easily as we read a newspaper.

He knows just what each sign means and where the tribal sign ends and the individual signs begin.

The totem in front of a house tells him not only who lives there, but also the story of the owner's ancestors.

Similar crests are used on baskets, on moccasins, and in carvings of wood, stone, and copper.

If a native had a letterhead, he would probably print some of these signs on the top of the sheet.

One of the former curators of the Sheldon Jackson Museum at Sitka says that the totem pole was invented by the Haida Indians and that it was of three different kinds.

One kind was erected in front of a house.

This had the figures of different animals and represented the totems of a family and their relatives.

Another was called the death totem.

This was often a hollow mortuary post which contained the ashes of the dead and was sometimes erected over the grave.

A third class of totem poles was put up by the Haidas to memorialize remarkable events.

These totems were historical records and their story was told by series of carved figures, a sort of picture writing.

The Haidas were divided into three classes, the rich, the middle classes, and the slaves.

The slaves were never allowed to erect poles in front of their dwellings, and the higher the pole, as a general rule, the richer and more aristocratic the owner.

The totem poles about the dwellings of the Indians range in height from that of a man to that of a four-story house.

They are carved out of solid tree trunks and some of the larger ones are valued at several thousand dollars apiece.