The royalty and reserve additions to this, made since the recent discoveries and on account of them, are as follows:
1. A royalty of 10 per cent will be collected for the government on all amounts taken out of any one claim up to $500 a week, and after that 20 per cent. This royalty will be collected on gold taken from streams already being worked, but in regard to all future discoveries the government proposes
2. That upon every river and creek where mining locations shall be staked out every alternate claim shall be the property of the government.
These regulations, say the Canadians, are made with the purpose of developing a country, which, as elsewhere shown in this pamphlet, is capable of supporting a large permanent population and varied industries. Whether they can be enforced remains to be seen, and difficulties will certainly attend the collection of a royalty on gold-dust. The effect of these regulations, it is believed by the authors, will be to encourage permanent settlement and the treatment of mining as a regular industry and not simply as an adventurous speculation. Another effect, undoubtedly, will be to cause immigrants, including Canadians themselves, to prospect and mine on the United States side of the line, whenever they have an equal opportunity for success.
The boundary dispute does not as yet seriously affect the question or rights and privileges in the new gold regions, as the disputed part of the line, southeast of Alaska, runs through a region not yet occupied, and practically the whole of Lynn Canal is administered by the United States, and the Canadians act as though it were decided that their boundary was farther inland than some of them pretend. From Mt. St. Elias north, the 141st meridian is the undisputed boundary, and this has been fixed by an international commission, crossing the Yukon at a marked point near the mouth of Forty Mile Creek. Nearly or quite all of the diggings upon which are written Alaskan territory, as also are the valuable placers on Birch and Miller creeks. It will be a matter of extreme difficulty along this part of the boundary to prevent smuggling, to discover and collect Canadian royalties, and to capture criminals except by international coöperation.
CLIMATE, AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH.
The Weather Bureau has made public a statement in regard to the climate of Alaska, which says: "The climates of the coast and the interior of Alaska are unlike in many respects, and the differences are intensified in this as perhaps in few other countries by exceptional physical conditions. The fringe of islands that separates the mainland from the Pacific Ocean from Dixon Sound north, and also a strip of the mainland for possibly twenty miles back from the sea, following the sweep of the coast as it curves to the northwestward to the western extremity of Alaska form a distinct climatic division which may be termed temperate Alaska. The temperature rarely falls to zero; winter does not set in until Dec. 1, and by the last of May the snow has disappeared except on the mountains.
"The mean winter temperature of Sitka is 32.5, but little less than that of Washington, D. C. The rainfall of temperate Alaska is notorious the world over, not only as regards the quantity, but also as to the manner of its falling, viz.: in long and incessant rains and drizzles. Cloud and fog naturally abound, there being on an average but sixty-six clear days in the year.