USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 11
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" On one part floated the ancestors of the T'linkits ; on the other, the parents of all other nations. The waters tore them apart, and they never saw each other again. Now their children are all different, and do not understand each
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other. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his sister Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon [The-woman-who-supports-the- earth]. Chethl [symbolized in the osprey ] called aloud to her, 'You will never see me again ; but you will hear my voice forever !' Then he became an enormous bird, and flew to southwest, till no eye could follow him. Ah-gish- áhn-ahkon climbed above the waters, and reached the sum- mit of Edgecumbe. The mountain opened, and received her into the bosom of the earth. That hole [the crater] is where she went down. Ever since that time she has held the earth above the water. The earth is shaped like the back of a turtle, and rests on a pillar ; Ah-gish-áhn-ahkon holds the pillar. Evil spirits that wish to destroy mankind seek to overthrow her and drive her away. The terrible battles are long and fierce in the lower darkness. Often the pillar rocks and sways in the struggle, and the earth trem- bles and seems like to fall ; but Ah-gish-áhn-ahkon is good and strong, so the earth is safe.
" Chethl lives in the bird Kunna-Káht-eth ; his nest is in the top of the mountain, in the hole through which his sis- ter disappeared.
" He carries whales in his claws to this eyrie, and there devours them. He swoops from his hiding-place, and rides on the edge of the coming storm. The roaring of the tempest is his voice calling to his sister. He claps his wings in the peals of thunder, and its rumbling is the rustling of his pinions. The lightning is the flashing of his eyes."
Even the whites have acquired some of the Indian super- stitions. There are credulous people who believe that croc- odiles once inhabited Alaska because a wooden nondescript exists which somewhat resembles one. So also because the snake is a favorite pattern for bracelets, they believe that snakes once existed in the land, when, forsooth, the first design was furnished by a chance visitor to a native silver- smith who began to manufacture them ; and when a San Francisco sharp discovered how great the demand was for them he sent seventy dozen pairs of California workman- ship to a trusty Siwash at Sitka on commission. Verily. when science overleaps itself, the tumble is precipitate. I do not take much stock in the mythological significance of the multifarious devices which are inseparable from Alaskan handiwork. Some of them are obviously the crude expres- sions of their primitive theology, but for the rest, they are the mere outcroppings of a genius of deformity, fable and incongruity, which is their inherent propensity. These natives are born caricaturists, manifesting their broad
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humor in every thing they do, or make, or say, so that all their domestic utensils, their ornaments and interior deco- rations, their boats and paddles, toys, dolls, masks, attire, and even their family escutcheons, are often of the most grotesque character. The images which they make are not all idols, nor worshipful. As for their religious zeal as Christian proselytes, it is related that some wicked wags induced the converted Indians of Sitka to demand a " potlatch " of 100 blankets from two Hebrew traders because, it had been told them, they had killed their " tillikum," the Christ !
INDIAN GRAVE.
ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH.
There is no doubt that in the early days of discovery and prospecting among the quartz ledges of southeastern Alaska there was more swindling to the square inch than in any other known location, but swindling was made easy because the "stuff" was there, the indications were there, and pay-dirt and bonanza-quartz were there. Officers of the army and navy who were on the station were the principal investors and chief sufferers, because nobody else had any ready cash. These confiding and intelligent gentlemen, who were on the spot and took the pains to examine for themselves, making interminable tramps through the wilderness to visit quartz ledges and placer diggings, eagerly "blew in" all they could spare each pay day, on the faith of their own investigations. I know of one officer who had no less than $2,500 so placed, and I myself had a considerable stake in the old Lake Mountain property, ten miles out from Sitka, neither of which has yet failed of its promise. Want of capital and absence of mechanical appliances made invest- ments unremunerative at the outset, but as soon as ever capital was forthcoming the mines declared themselves in metallic tones which no adverse clamor could down. The largest stamp-mill in the world, which has been in active operation on Douglas Island for twenty years and more, was one of these early properties. It is owned by San Francisco parties. The ore comes right out of the side of the mountain (which rises abruptly from the ocean) and is shot down an inclined plane to the stamp- mill, where it is treated; and vessels drawing twenty feet of water can lie right alongside the rocks of the natural shore and receive their freight not a hundred yards from the mill. The primitive forest clothes the slopes of the mountain from base to summit, and fuel is all around ir intimate proximity. No plant of such value was ever
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'ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH.
erected or operated at so cheap a cost. It is said the outlay was half a million dollars, and that $16,000,000 have been refused for the property. It is a low-grade ore, yielding $5 to $100 per ton of quartz. No stock is for sale. The first gold-brick came out in July I, 1885, and weighed 297 ounces. In August the output was equal to $60,000, and the mill is now reported to be running up to $100,000 per monthi, with improving pros- pects. It is said that Senator Jones, of Nevada, who was one of its principal stockholders, added $250,000 a year to his income from its output. Right alongside of this mine, in continuation of the same ledge or formation, is the Treadwell claim, also phenomenal, and also owned in San Francisco. Other early locations were on Wil- loughby Island, in Cross Sound ; the "North Star," near Juneau, at Kilisnoo, at Admiralty Island, and at Silver Bow Basin, just across the channel from Douglas Island, six miles back from the shore, and in the heart of the mountains. The estimated yield of this mine was $120,- 000 as early as 1884. These neighborhood mines made Juneau a metropolis at the start, and gave her at once all the appointments of civilization, including a news- paper, barber shop and bath.
About sixty miles from Juneau is the Chilkat country, which Captain Beardslee succeeded in opening to miners in 1880 through the instrumentality of a prominent chief named "Sitka Jack," whom he sent into the interior as plenipotentiary, arrayed in all the self-sufficiency and authority of a blue frock-coat, brass buttons, a colonel's stripes, a navy cap with gold band and device, and, I be- lieve, a sword. He remained all winter dispensing good cheer liberally from village to village, and when he re- turned in the spring, the up-country natives said it was "all right ; the white people might come ;" whereupon, in 1881, a schooner immediately outfitted at Sitka to start for Chilkat. Jack lived at Sitka in one of the best houses in the "ranche," white-painted, with windows, green blinds, porch and veranda.
Gold was early discovered on the Yukon, and Lt. Schwatka found miners at work on the Stewart River, a tributary, in 1883. Several hundred were there in 1886. Captain Beardslee, U. S. N., who was on the Alaska sta- tion during the years 1879-82, has given a complete his- tory of mining operations in the vicinity of Sitka during
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the Russian occupation, and up to the year 1880. Its publication was commenced in the Forest and Stream in 1879, while I was its editor, and continued throughout the year following.
It seems that reports of mineral and marble discov- eries were long ago brought in from time to time by the Indian fur hunters, but very little attention was paid to them until the year 1855, when the Russian government sent an engineer officer to examine and investigate into the mineral resources of the country. Although he was ostensibly engaged in this duty for a period of two years, the report is current that he put in the best part of his time at Sitka in "potlatch" and dancing ; and as he never visited the range of mountains on which are situated nearly all of the ledges which have since been discovered, his report was unfavorable; and from that date until the transfer of the territory to the United States nothing was done. In fact, the Russians were after fur, and not gol.l. The fur company itself was especially lukewarm toward prospectors and explorers, because, by the terms of their contract, the government had a right to take away from them the control of any lands in which mineral deposits were found.
The first discovery of gold in the vicinity of Sitka was made by a soldier named Doyle, in 1871. In 1872 string- ers of quartz were found at Indian River, one mile from town, and in the mountains, back of Silver Bay, ten miles from town, and the "Haley & Milletich ledge," the "Bear ledge," and the "Upper ledge" successively came to light. On December 9 of that year the first blast ever made in Alaska quartz was exploded, and from the rock thrown out and broken up by it, about sixty dollars worth of free gold was obtained. On Christmas day the "Stewart ledge" was discovered. The next year, in 1873, two min- ing companies were formed of army officers and citizens of Sitka. In 1877 the "Lower ledge" passed into the hands of San Francisco people, who organized the Baro- noff Island Gold and Silver Mining Company. Sitka is situated on Baronoff Island.
Coal was discovered at Kilisnoo and at Cook's Inlet, and places to the westward as early as 1886.
These were the auspicious beginnings. At the present day mineral prospects are spread over the whole region from the Pacific to the Arctic oceans. Interest has been
MUSHERS EN ROUTE
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diverted for the present from the upper Yukon, Forty- Mile Creek and Porcupine Creek diggings, and from the southeastern ledges, to the middle ground of the interior and the Seward Peninsula in the northwest. E. S. Har- rison, of Seattle, has published an exhaustive statement of this latter region, of which the very considerable city of Nome is the entrepot, giving full statistics of the au- riferous deposits and the aggregate output since the great strike ten years ago [this sort of a strike doesn't hurt], during which time it added $35,000,000 to the wealth of the country! It all came out of Uncle Sam's "Cache near the Pole." If the Seward Peninsula only had a climate like California its annual gold output would be from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars a year.
Mining in this part of the world is totally unlike what it is anywhere else. To get the gold out of the earth the miners plow and ditch. There are no surface indications. The tundra overlays the ancient channels of glacial streams, and these are discovered by digging holes in the ground. Ditches are made, and furrows are plowed from these ditches to a river. Water is turned into these furrows, and soon deep gullies are worn down to the pre- historic gravel beds, where the pay streaks lie. That is the way of it! Who would have ever thought that these sphagnum plains would be found to be the chief deposi- tory of the nation's wealth? This monograph of Harri- son's is of inestimable use to any one interested in this subject. So is his "Alaska Almanac" for 1908.
The Valdez Chamber of Commerce has also issued a book of information regarding the region tributary to it, and, of course, reliable. Valdez is the gateway to the Copper River country north and west of Cook's Inlet. Thousands of acres of low-grade gold placers are known of along Copper River. I quote :
"Along the coast from Kyak west is found coal and oil in abundance. In Prince William Sound on both sides from the ocean to Valdez are scores of copper properties. The Gladhaugh mine at Ellamar, about twenty miles south of Valdez, is the heaviest producer, having shipped some 40,000 tons during the past year. The Bonanza, on Latouche Island, is also a regular shipper, while many other properties, notably the Simonstadt group at Galena Bay, are being opened up. The copper ores of the coast are of the sulphuret variety, averaging about 15 per cent.,
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and carrying good gold values, and are all close to navi- gable waters. Gold and antimony also exist along the Sound.
Passing through Valdez to the Copper River valley there will be found located on the Kotsina and Chittyna rivers and their tributaries vast bodies of high-grade copper, such as bornite, glance and native copper. A short distance from this large deposits of tin have been recently located.
Across the range, on the upper Tanana, about seventy- five claims of free-milling quartz are located, and many copper properties.
The Yukon Railroad, now building from Valdez to Eagle, will traverse and open up the most extensive and richest copper district on earth. It will pass through and open for settlement thirty-five thousand square miles of rich agricultural lands. It will give easy access to the rich gold placer deposits of the Nizina, Slate Creek, Chisna, Tanana, White River, Shushitna, Bremner and Kaina. It will open up and make productive hundreds of placer deposits now inaccessible. It will increase the gold production of the United States ten million per year. These are pointers, sure and direct, to "OUR CACHE NEAR THE POLE." Furthermore, we are told that during the year 1900, after many hardships, a few men discov- ered Slate Creek and Miller Gulch with pay dirt, and brought back $15,000 worth of gold for a few days' work. In 1901 the same camp cleaned up $175,000. The year 1902 was still better, with a clean-up of $310,000 for probably ninety days' actual work. The year 1903 had more disadvantages, there being an unusually heavy snowfall. With all the disadvantages encountered, the output was $275,000.
The Nizina placer camp was discovered in the summer of 1902, and after all necessary arrangements had been made for opening the mines the output for the first year was $20,000. The second year, 1903, $135,000 was taken from the same place. Shushitna was discovered in the summer of 1903 by five prospectors, and for fifteen days' work they cleaned up one hundred ounces, or $1,750. This promises to be one of the richest of the camps tribu- tary to Valdez. Another new find was reported this year on Lowe River, only a few miles from Valdez. Copper is found everywhere, and in many places so rich in qual-
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ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH.
ity that the pure copper projects from the ground. The Nizina is full of high-grade ore that averages from 40 to 70 per cent. When adequate transportation facilities are provided Valdez will become the center of the smelting industry and the shipping point for the greatest group of copper mines in the known world.
Capt. Abercrombie, who claims to have traveled over more miles of territory in Central Alaska than any other white man, and has informed himself of the geological structure of the mountain ranges and their mineral de- posits, writes in the Seattle Mail and Herald the follow- ing words of encouragement to settlers other than miners :
"For a century past the great safety valve for the con- dition of the poor man in the crowded portions of our country has been the thought of 'free land in the west.' Adventurous spirits, finding themselves unable to get ahead in the older settled communities, have ever been free to dispose of their interests and move forward towards the frontier to avail themselves of new and broader opportunities for becoming independent. This pioneer movement has been the greatest of all factors in the wonderful achievements of our country.
"But the 'free land in the west' is about exhausted. There now remain but a few limited portions of the pub- lic domain in any of the western states which can be said to be fertile and productive. But what 'the west' has offered for the man desirous of bettering his condi- tion, ten, twenty, forty, or one hundred years ago, Alaska offers to-day. In the wonderful empire to the north there are thousands, yes, millions of acres of lands suit- able for agricultural purposes, capable according to the able authority of the special agent of the Agricultural Department, Prof. C. C. Georgeson, of sustaining an agricultural population of three millions of people, and open to-day under the American homestead laws to actual settlement.
"Owing to her manifold resources in this and other lines of development, the Copper River country offers greater opportunities for the man of moderate means desiring to make a home for himself and to become self- supporting, than any section of the Pacific states did twenty years ago. The development of the vast mineral resources, which has already begun on a large scale, pro-
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PEERLESS ALASKA.
vides a practically inexhaustible market for all the hay and garden produce that will be raised in the country for the next ten years at higher prices than can be secured in any market in the United States. A man making his home there can work his farm or garden during the farming season, and during the winter time can go to the streams for fish and to the hills for game, and thus keep himself supplied at little trouble with meat for the year round. At the seasons of the year when the farmer would ordinarily be unemployed he can go to the nearby mines where he can secure steady employment at excel- lent wages.
"A man with rudimentary ideas of agriculture, and with a knowledge of frontier life such as would enable him to rustle for himself in a sparsely settled country can go into the Copper River country in the vicinity of Copper Center, carry with him a few tools, a pocketful of seeds, and a supply of flour, salt and coffee sufficient to last him one season, and within a few years can by the exertion of his own efforts, become independent. The first year he can spade or plough up his garden ground and sow his seeds. He can then construct his own cabin from timber cut on the ground. He can kill his own meat, and he can catch any quantity of fish in the streams. He can, if he desires, work a portion of the summer season in one of the many mines, and when fall comes he will have, not only the money he has earned by his labor for others, but in addition will have his home and the produce of his garden as well. Or he can cut and put up for the winter season the wild grass hay which is sure to command a good price throughout the winter months at any point along the military trail.
"Once located, and particularly if Congress makes more liberal provisions in the matter of granting lands to settlers, as is probable, the settler will, upon the ad- vent of the railroad, find himself in possession, with a perfect title from the government, of a piece of valua- ble land, and a home and income sufficient to render him financially independent.
"Strangers who know nothing of the possibilities of the country may scoff at these statements just as thou- sands scoffed at similar statements concerning the agri- cultural possibilities of the country composing the great empire of western America. But to those who have been
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through the country these possibilities are too well known to require substantiation."
What the Captain says of the winters up there at the "Cache" comparing favorably with those of northern New York and Minnesota will be cheerful news to many who have been deterred from migrating into the gold re- gions by the bugbear of frigid conditions.
COMMERCIAL FISHERIES.
It has been my good fortune to enjoy unusual opportun- ities to investigate the inland and salt water fishes of Alaska, having coasted along a thousand miles of the shore line and visited nearly all of its fishing stations in company with pro- fessional fishermen, familiar with the Pacific coast. Knowl- edge of the habitat of deep-sea fish can only be obtained by feeling the bottom with repeated and laborious soundings, aided by that intuition which enables an experienced person to determine where they are by the color of the water and the configuration of the land. Codfish and some other species can be traced in part by following the bait fish upon which they feed and which appear upon the surface and in the bays and estuaries at certain seasons. Seafowls, seals and humpbacked whales are of great assistance to the investi- gator-indicating by their own presence the presence of the fish. Humpbacked whales and porpoises are often seen in large numbers in the land-locked waters of the Alaskan archipelago, sporting and spouting in basins so small that they seem hardly more than lakelets ; and it is proper at once to remind the reader that the entire mainland of our new possession is flanked by an outlying chain of islands, chiefly mountainous, with shores which drop abruptly into deep water ; and that there are few open-water reaches for a distance of fifteen hundred miles that are exposed to the full force of the ocean swell and the breakers.
From all indications I am convinced that some day in the near future the fisheries of Alaska will occupy as important a commercial place as those of Norway and the Hebrides and the North Atlantic. Already the canning of salmon has become an industry of considerable importance, and establishments have been located at all the principal points as far north as Sitka and considerably beyond, the proprie- tors preferring the services of the native Indians to those of the irrepressible Chinese-the favorable difference between the two races compensating for the many obvious inconven- iences of a location so remote from a market.
An evidence of the value to which these fisheries have
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COMMERCIAL FISHERIES.
attained even now in their infancy is shown in the statis- tical statement that in 1884 the territory shipped 10,101 cases of four dozen 1-lb. cans, and 1,527 barrels of salted salmon, each barrel containing thirty fish. The cannery near Sitka put up 700 barrels. There were also shipped large quantities of halibut, herring, cod, rock cod and her- ring oil, and the year 1885 would have shown still better results but for a depression in prices which made the labor unprofitable. Notable among other establishments is the Chilkat cannery, situated in 59 deg. 13 min. north latitude, which is well up toward the frigid zone, but warmed like the rest of the Alaskan coast by the Japan current, or Kuro- Siwo, which corresponds to the gulf stream of the Atlan- tic. I dare say that no commercial company in the world ever found its way to a nook of earth so ineffably roman- tic; for the grandeur of the surrounding scenery is supreme. Parallel ranges of snow-capped mountains of majestic height inclose a narrow strait, whose waters are deep and green, and seldom disturbed by the storms which beat the outer wall. High up in the bluest empyrean the glittering peaks flash to each other the reflections of the noonday sun, and where the silvery summer clouds rest upon the summits the eye can scarcely distinguish the fleecy vapor from the spectral snow. Below the timber line their sides are clothed with fir and hemlock, and in the dark waters under the shadow of their confronting but- tresses the salmon are continually tossing the spray, so that the surface fairly boils. Through one of the clefts of the mountains the sparkling Chilkat River leaps over the obstructing rocks in a succession of pools and rapids, and upon the point of rocks at its mouth the cannery stands. Perched upon a ledge so narrow that the wharves and fish- ing stages can scarcely keep a foothold above the tide, it looks out toward a long vista of headlands, whose clear-cut outlines are set against the sky in graduated shades of blue, as they recede and overlap each other. And out of another great rift the famous Davidson glacier presses toward the sea, filling a valley four miles wide; and the masses of ice, which are successively pushed to the front and break off, float away with the recurring tides, and chassez up and down the landlocked channel until they finally melt away or drift out into the ocean. On a beach near by is a village of Indian employés, with the usual adjuncts of half-dried salmon spread on the rocks, rueful dogs, and log canoes drawn up on shore and carefully pro- tected from the weather by boughs and blankets when not
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in use. Gray and white gulls fill the upper air, or sit on the drifting icebergs and scream, while large wisps of sand- peeps flit constantly from point to point, feeding on the land-wash. In hours of toil the foreground is active with the movements of the canoes and boats hauling seines. This location is also known as "Pyramid Harbor."
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