A prayer for a lighthouse at the entrance to Resurrection Bay was refused by the department, with the advice that the needs of commerce do not require a light at this point, particularly as there are several other points more in need of such aid. The department further advised that it would require a hundred thousand dollars to establish a light and fog signal station at the place designated, instead of the twenty-five thousand dollars asked.
Meanwhile, ships are wrecked and lives and valuable cargoes are lost,—and will be while the Alaskan coast remains unlighted.
Along the intricate, winding, and exceedingly dangerous channels, straits, and narrows of the "inside passage" of southeastern Alaska, there are only seven light and fog signals, and ten lights; but where the sea-coast belongs to Canada there is sufficient light and ample buoyage protection, as all mariners admit.
Is our government's rigid, and in some instances stubborn, economy in this matter a wise one? Is it a humane one? The nervous strain of this voyage on a conscientious and sensitive master of a ship heavily laden with human beings is tremendous. The anxious faces and unrelaxing vigilance of the officers on the bridge when a ship is passing through Taku Open, Wrangell Narrows, or Peril Straits speak plainly and unmistakably of the ceaseless burden of responsibility and anxiety which they bear. The charting of these waters is incomplete as yet, notwithstanding the faithful service which the Geodetic Survey has performed for many years. Many a rock has never been discovered until a ship went down upon it.
Political influence has been known to establish lights, at immense cost, at points where they are practically luxuries, rather than needs; therefore the government should not be censured for cautiousness in this matter.
But it should be, and it is, censured for not investigating carefully the needs of the Alaskan Coast—the "Great Unlighted Way."
Seward is situated almost as beautifully as Valdez. It is only five years old. It is the sea terminal of the Alaska Central Railway, which is building to the Tanana, through a rich country that is now almost unknown. It will pass within ten miles of Mount McKinley, which rises from a level plain to an altitude of nearly twenty-one thousand feet.
This mountain has been known to white men for nearly a century; yet until very recently it did not appear upon any map, and had no official name. More than fifty years ago the Russian fur traders knew it and called it "Bulshaia,"—signifying "high mountain" or "great mountain." The natives called it "Trolika," a name having the same meaning.
Explorers, traders, and prospectors have seen it and commented upon its magnificent height, yet without realizing its importance, until Mr. W. A. Dickey saw it in 1896 and proposed for it the name of McKinley. In 1902 Mr. Alfred Hulse Brooks, of the United States Geological Survey, with two associates and four camp men, made an expedition to the mountain. Mr. Brooks' report of this expedition is exceedingly interesting. He spent the summer of 1906, also, upon the mountain.