The Sitkan district is essentially one of rugged inequality, being mountainous on the mainland to the exclusion of all other features, and equally so on the islands. It is traversed here, there and everywhere by broad arms of the sea and their hundreds and thousands of lesser channels.
Land travel is simply impracticable. Nobody goes on a road; savages and whites all travel by the water. Perhaps the greatest humidity and the heaviest rainfall in the Alaskan country occur here. The equable and hot rigorous climate permits of free navigation at all seasons of the year, and it is seldom, indeed, that the little lakes and shallow lagoons near the sea-level are frozen so firmly as to allow of a winter's skating.
The Aleutian and Kadiak districts are quite as peculiar in themselves and as much individualized by their geological age and formation as is the Sitkan division. They hold within their boundaries a range of great fire-mountains—grumbling, smoking, quaking hills; some of these volcanic peaks being so lofty and so impressive as to fix in the explorer's eye an image superb and grand, and so magnificent as to render adequate description impossible. Like the Sitkan district, the Aleutian and Kadiak regions are exceedingly mountainous, there being very little low or level land compared with the sum total of their superficial area; but in that portion extending for 1,100 miles to the westward of Kadiak, nearly over to Asia, bare of timber, a skeleton, as it were, is presented to the eye and strikes one with a sense of an individuality here in decided contrast with that of the Sitkan country. The hills not clothed with timber are covered to their summits in most cases with a thick crop of circumpolar sphagnum, interspersed with grasses, and a large flora, bright and beautiful in the summer season. To thoroughly appreciate how much moisture in the form of fog and rain settles upon the land, one cannot do better than to leave the ship in the harbor, or the post where he is stationed, and take up a line of march through one of the narrow valleys near by to the summit of one of the lofty peaks. He will step upon what appeared from the window of the vessel a firm greensward, and sink to his waist in a shaking, tremulous bog, or slide over moss-grown shingle, painted and concealed by the luxuriant growth of cryptogamic life, where he expected to find a free and ready path.
"Passing from this district," says Mr. Petroff, "a very remarkable region is entered, which I have called the Yukon and the Kuskokvim divisions. I have during two summers traversed the major portion of it from the north to the south, confirming many new and some mooted points. This region covers the deltoid mouth of a vast river, the Yukon, and the sea-like estuary—the Amazonian mouth of another—the Kuskokvim, with the extraordinary shoals and bars of Bristol Bay, where the tides run with surprising volume. The country itself differs strikingly from the two divisions just sketched, consisting, as it does, of irregular mountain spurs planted on vast expanses of low, flat tundra. It is a country which, to our race, perhaps, is far more inhospitable than either the Sitkan or Kadiak divisions; yet, strange to say, I have found therein the greatest concentrated population of the whole Territory. Of course, it is not by agricultural, or by mining, or any other industry, save the aboriginal art of fishing and the traffic of the fur trade that the people live; and, again, when the fur-bearing animals are taken into account, the quality and volume of that trade are far inferior to those of either of the previously named divisions, and we find the natives existing in the greatest number where, according to our measure of compensation, they have the least to gain.
"This country, outside of these detached mountain regions and spurs, is a great expanse of bog, lakes, large and small, with thousands of channels between them, and sluggish currents filled with grasses and other aqueous vegetation, indicated to the eye by the presence of water-lilies.
"The traveler, tortured by mosquitoes in summer, blinded, confused and disturbed by whirling 'purgas,' snow and sleet in winter, finding the coast rendered almost inaccessible by the vast system of shoaling which the current of the great Yukon has effected, passes to the interior, whose superficial area comprises nearly five-sixths of the landed surface of the Territory.
"Here is an immense tract reaching from Behring Strait, in a succession of rolling, ice-bound moors and low mountain ranges for 700 miles, an unbroken waste, to the boundary line of British America. Then, again, from the crests at the head of Cook's Inlet and the flanks of Mount St. Elias northward over that vast area of rugged mountain and lonely moor to the east—nearly 800 miles—is a great expanse of country, over and through which not much intelligent exploration has been undertaken. A few traders and prospectors have gone up the Tennanah and over the old-established track of the Yukon; others have passed to the shores of Kotzebue Sound overland from the Koyukuk. Dog-sled journeys have been made by these same people among the natives of the Kuskokvim and those of the coast between Bristol Bay and Norton Sound. But the trader as he travels sees nothing, remembers nothing, but his trade, and rarely is he capable of giving any definite information beyond the single item of his losses or his gains through the regions he may traverse. We know, however, enough to say now, without much hesitation, that this great extent which we call the interior is by its position barred out from occupation and settlement by our own people, and the climatic conditions are such that its immense area will remain undisturbed in the possession of its savage occupants."
The fur trade, which is at present the most important Alaskan industry, consists of two general branches, the trade in land furs and that in the furs of marine animals. The former has not, in late years, decreased in volume, though a decline has been noticed in the supply of certain sections. The land furs now exported from Alaska consist of the skins of bears, brown and black, three or four kinds of foxes, including the very valuable silver and blue foxes, otters, martens, beavers, minks, muskrats, lynxes, wolves and wolverines. The sea-otter and the fur-seal supply the pelagic furs, the seal being by far the more important of the two. Indeed, at present the fur-seal constitutes wholly one-half of Alaska's natural wealth. The value of the seal-skins shipped from the Territory and sold in European markets during the twenty-three years of American occupancy down to 1890 aggregates about $33,000,000. In the same period the value of other furs was $16,000,000, and of all other exports only about $14,000,000. The canned salmon product, which dates only from 1884, has amounted to nearly $7,000,000, and the value of the cod-fish taken since 1868 has been fully $3,000,000. The supply of fish of various kinds in Alaska is practically inexhaustible, but the stores lavished upon the natives of that country by bountiful nature could not be more wastefully used than they are now. Any development in the fishing industry must necessarily be an improvement, causing a saving in the supply. The proportion of Alaskan fish brought into the markets of the civilized world, when compared with the consumption of the same articles by the natives, is so very small that it barely deserves the name of an industry of the country. The business, however, shows a decided tendency to increase in magnitude, and within the last few years the shipments of salted salmon in barrels from the Kadiak-Aleutian divisions have been steadily increasing.
Next in importance to furs and fish are to be ranked gold and silver. The first gold mines of real importance were opened at the end of 1880, near the present settlement of Juneau. At present there are three or four gold producing quartz mines which ship the precious metal to the United States, the largest of them being the Treadwell or Paris mine, which supplies a mill with 240 stamps. There are also paying mines in the Yukon region which have produced for some years past gold dust to the value of from $40,000 to $90,000 a year. The total value of the gold found in Alaska since 1867 is about $4,000,000, but probably as large a sum has been expended in the same time in prospecting and opening and equipping the mines. The annual output of silver is insignificant, amounting to only about $3,000.
Coal has been discovered in various parts of the Territory, but it is all of the lignite variety. Only one of the veins is at present operated, and it is situated on Herendeen Bay, on the north side of the Alaska peninsula. Other veins near Cape Lisburne are utilized by the ships which visit that region every year, but are not otherwise systematically worked. Large deposits of copper and of cinnabar are known to exist, but they are far inland and not readily accessible.