ALASKA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 65, Issue 5502, 24 July 1942, Page 4

ALASKA

AMERICA’S WONDERLAND A VAST LAND DEAL

(By

J.P.P.)

“ By the authority of His Imperial Majesty Ahe Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska.” With these words, uttered by Prince Maksutoff, then the Tsar’s commissioner in what was called “ Russian America,” one of the greatest land deals of modern history was completed. The 200 Russian and 200 American soldiers facing each other at Sitka stood to attention, the Russian shore battery and the United States gunboat in the harbour fired salutes, the Tsar’s flag was hauled down, and “ Old Glory ” hoisted Up the mast. Alaska, one of the world’s richest areas, became Uncle.. Sam’s property for., the paltry sum of 7,200,000. dollars, or a little less than two cents—about one penny at that time - per acre. That deal was completed with the handing over of the governor’s insignia by Prince Maksutoff to General Jefferson C- Davis on lSth October, 1867.; thus within a few months Alaska will celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its becoming American.

TWO CENTS AN ACRE • Uncle Sam made a good deal when he invested in Alaska at two cents an acre. The territory is a world in itself, though unknown to most Americans. It contains nearly 600,000 square miles, or about one-sixth of al? the land under the American flag; it is almost twice as large as New South Wales. This mighty land is unique in the variety of its resources, its. climates, its soil, and its waters; It is a country of seas, lakes, and rivers and almost as many islands as the empire of Japan. It has a vast continental mainland with mountains —the highest in North America—and valleys, rolling plateaux, and great lowland plains, and navigable rivers of many thousands of miles.

Few people, even in the United States or Canada, realised the military importance of Alaska- As recently as 1935 the late General William Mitchell, of the United States Army, warned his..countrymen that Alaska Was the most important strategical place in> the world.” Despite his foresight the garrison of the whole territory of Alaska at the outbreak of the' war in 1939 consisted of 300 soldiers- There was not a single military airfield up. to .1940, and even to-day there is no through road from the United States to Alaska, although it is being rapidly completed with the co-operation of the Canadian defence authorities. In the current financial year, at last, 150,000,000 dollars have been ear-marked for the defence of Alaska, and airfields have been constructed with that American speed and thoroughness to which we have recently become accustomed.

Alaska was discovered by the Russians during the eighteenth century, but very little was. known about it for a full one hundred-years after Peter Popoff sailed through Bering Strait in 1711 and reported to the Tsar that a..continent existed on the other side of Asia.” Seventeen years later Peter the Great sent out the Danish navigator Vitus Bering to investigate; but it must have been very foggy, for Bering, though he went through the strait now bearing ..his .name, did not see the American shore or even the Diomede Islands in the middle. However, he tried again later, and was successful. He anchored near the mouth of the Copper River. Later Captain Cook explored that region, and charted some of the coast-line. The King of Spain also sent a navigator, and several American trading ships visited Alaska toward the end of the eighteenth century- Strangely enough, neither of these explorers thought of claiming the territory for their respective countries, and thus the Russians could undisputedly stake out their claims. At that time Catherine the Great and her grandson, Alexander 1., had a great ambition to control the Pacific, and it is recorded that they wanted to grab the whole of California and the Hawaiian Islands as well. LAND OF SURPRISES Most people visualise Alaska as a country of perpetual snow, ice, and frozen wastes. Although a considerable portion of the territory lies within the Arctic Circle, and although 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, southeastern Alaska is a temperate land. In some parts the winters are as mild as those in England and the summers as hot as those in Bombay or Brisbane; but only at midday.. Juneau, the capital, is in the same latitude as Edinburgh, and is far warmer. Alaska has seasons when the sun shines at midnight—within the Arctic Circle—and winter days so dark that electric light can 1 be turned pff only for a I

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 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. In comparison, the several thousand tons of hailbut, 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 one thousand miles or more inland, and the fish fight their way up the rocky beds of the mountain streams for that distance, to lay their eggs 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 stay for three to five years until they are ready to rush back to the fresh water like their parents before them.

The salmon come upstream in such hordes that they can be caught in traps, nets, or peculiar “ fish-wheels,” veritableb shovels moved by the current which scoop up the fish and land them in the boat. The business of the canneries is enormous; they produce tins by the million, and all the machinery used'for cleaning and dressing the fish is automatic. One machine, doing the work formerly handled by Chinese, was invented by a cook from Seattle, who made a fortune out of his invention;Ht will clean 30,000 fish in ten hoursHUMMING JUNEAU Of Alaska’s 80,000 inhabitants almost half are Indians; of the remaining white population only about 3000 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 2000 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 up the deck of a ship pitching in the wind. It is not very cold in 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 United States airmen stationed in the territory well know. HUB OF ALASKA Fairbanks, the northern terminus of the Alaskan railway which leads inland from Seward, might be called the hub of Alaska. It lies on the Tanana River, which is navigable for some distance above the town, and its valley has millions of acres of potential agricultural land. Some experts have estimated that Alaska could easily carry a population of ten million people. Experimental farms have grown vegetables and fruit twice the size of those coming from California, and the dairying industry is making rapid headway. Fairbanks is also the centre of the mining industry. Beside fish, and furs, Alaska’s third staple industry is mining, particularly gold and copper, and it is here that the miners going up to the camps of the Yukon, Tanana, Koyuyuk, and Innoka rivers purchase their clothing, stores, and equipment. Fairbanks is the most typically “ Alaskan ” town, different from the international, hustling Juneau.

On Seward Peninsula, westernmost extremity of continental America, stands Nome, the “ City of the Galden Sands,” so named after the gold-bear-ing sand which lines its seashore over a distance of forty miles. When the “beach mining” craze; was at its height at the turn of the century, a million dollars’ worth of gold was washed out of the sands in less than two months.

The Indians and Eskimos of Alaska are rapidly diminishing in numbers, which is a pity, for they are intelligent and industrious hunters, fur trappers, and fishermen. But the white man’s day in Alaska is only just beginning. The gold-rush cities of yesterday, the strategic centre of to-day, may become a great agricultural and industrial land’ to-morrow.