LAND OF SURPRISES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 12 August 1942, Page 3

LAND OF SURPRISES

Most people visualise Alaska as a country of perpetual snow, icc, and frozen wastes. Although a considerable portion lies within the Arctic Circle, and it contains some of the world’s largest and most spectacular glaciers, nothing could be more erroneous than that generalisation. Thanks to the warm Kuro Siwo current, part of which is deflected northward by the coast of British Columbia, south-eastern Alaska is temperate —in some parts winters are as mild as in England, and summers as hot as in Bombay or Brisbane, but only at midday. Juneau, the capital, is in the same latitude as Edinburgh, and is far warmer; the old Russian capital of Sitka is on the latitude of Copenhagen. Alaska has seasons when the sun shines at midnight—within the Arctic Circle—and winter days so dark that the electric light can be turned off only for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. The most important business of Alaska is its fishing industry. The United States is deriving an annual income six times as much as the purchase price of the whole territory from the fisheries alone. Of all the fish of Alaskan waters, salmon is the most important; salmon, “canned,” frozen, mild-cured, pickled, dried or sold fresh, amounts to hundreds of thousands of tons annually. By comparison, the several thousand tons of halibut, cod, and herring caught and sold by Alaskans appear merely as a sideline. Many “salmon kings" have made a fortune out of that obliging fish. During certain weeks of the year the salmon come in their thousands from the ocean into the fresh waters of the rivers to spawn. The surprising part of it is that the spawning grounds are often a thousand miles or more inland and the fish fight their way up the rocky beds of the mountain streams for that distance, to lay theneggs in suitable stretches, to bury them in the gravel, and to float back to the ocean, dead. Four or five months later the young hatch and soon make their way down to the ocean, where they slay for three to five years until they are ready to rush back to the fresh water like their parents before them. HUMMING JUNEAU Of Alaska s 80,000 inhabitants

almost half are Indians; ot tne remaining white population only about 3.000 live in Juneau, the capital, seat of the Governor. Nevertheless, Juneau is busier than many towns three times its size: it fairly hums with miners, fur traders, tourists, and these days—presumably—with soldiers. The town is right on the shore, and has a breath-taking background of a sheer mountain wall rising 2.000 feet covered by green vegetation. The city is partly cut out of the rocks, and partly built on piles. Consequently the streets run up and down hill, and as most of them are made out of planks the stranger feels as though he were on the << cl fa hip pitching in the wind. It is not very cold m winter—the thermometer seldom falls below zero —but the inhabitants complain about the prodigious amount of rainfall, often coupled with fogs. The rain, fog. and wind are the greatest obstacles to flying in Alaska as the U.S. airmen stationed in the territory well Juneau has only been the capital for 30 years and prior to 1912 the oldest town. Sitka, situated on Baranof Island, and facing the open Pacific, was the official centre of Alaska. Sitka lies among surroundings as beautiful as some of. the famous Norwegian fiords or New Zealand sounds.