We have before us a printed letter which appeared in the “Philadelphia Press,” signed by Mr. C. F. Fowler, late an agent of the Alaska Fur Company, who has resided for twelve years in Alaska, in which he says: “You who live in the States look upon this country as a land of perpetual ice and snow, yet I grew in my garden last year, at Kodiak, abundant crops of radishes, lettuce, carrots, onions, cauliflowers, cabbages, peas, turnips, potatoes, beets, parsnips, and celery. Within five miles of this garden was one of the largest glaciers in Alaska.” In a certain sense it is surely a country of paradoxes.
The harbor of Sitka is never closed by ice, which cannot be truthfully said of Boston or New York.
Dr. Sheldon Jackson, long resident in the Territory as United States general agent of education for Alaska, tells us that the temperature of Sitka and that of Richmond, Va., are nearly identical. Mr. McLean of the United States Signal Service, who has been located at Sitka for several years, says, “the climate of southern Alaska is the most equable I ever experienced.”
There is in Alaska a very large section of country, composed of islands and the mainland, where the average temperature is higher than at Christiania, capital of Norway, or Stockholm, capital of Sweden,—where the winters are milder and the fall of rain and snow is less than in southern Scandinavia, which is the geographical counterpart of Alaska in the opposite hemisphere. Sitka harbor is no more subject to arctic temperature than is Chesapeake Bay. “It must be a fastidious person,” said Mr. Seward in his speech upon Alaska, “who complains of a climate in which, while the eagle delights to soar, the hummingbird does not disdain to flutter.” If it is sometimes misty and foggy on the coast, it is not so to a greater extent than is the case during a large portion of the year in the cities of London and Liverpool.
Both the islands and mainland of this latitude afford ample grass for cows, sheep, and horses, also producing, with ordinary care, the usual domestic vegetables, as we have shown, the assertion of certain writers to the contrary notwithstanding. We have not far to look for the cause of this favorable temperature existing at so northerly a range of latitude. The thermal stream known as the Japanese Current, coming from the far south charged with equatorial heat, is precisely similar in its effect to that of the better known Gulf Stream on our Atlantic coast, rendering the climate of these islands and the coast of the mainland of the North Pacific remarkably warm and humid. We speak especially and at length of this subject of the temperature of Alaska, because a wrong impression is so generally held concerning it. At a distance from the coast the temperature falls, and most of the inland rivers are closed by ice half the year. Even in the interior we are in about the same latitude and average temperature of St. Petersburg. Thus on the line of Behring Strait the annual mean at Fort Yukon, which lies just inside of the Arctic circle, six hundred miles inland from Norton Sound, is 16.92°; this is in latitude 64° north. Along the coast of southern Alaska the fall of snow is not greater in amount than is experienced during an ordinary winter in the New England States, and it disappears even more quickly than it does in Vermont and New Hampshire. In the interior and at the far north, the quantity of snow is of course much greater, and covers the ground for about half the year.
But where the sun shines continuously throughout the twenty-four hours, the growth of vegetable life is extremely rapid. The snow has hardly disappeared before a mass of herbage springs up, and on the spot so lately covered by a white sheet, sparkling with frosty crystals, there is spread a soft mantle of variegated green. The leaves, blossoms, and fruits rapidly follow each other, so that even in this boreal region there is seed-time and harvest. The annual recurrence of this carnival season is all the more impressive in the realm of the Frost King.
The Japanese Current, already referred to, strikes these shores at Queen Charlotte Island in latitude 50° north, where it divides, one portion going northward and westward along the coast of Alaska, and the other southward, tempering the waters which border upon Washington, Oregon, and California; hence their mild climate. Sea captains who frequently make the voyage between San Francisco and Yokohama have told the author that this Japanese Current—with banks and bottom of cold water, while its body and surface are warm—is so clearly defined as to be distinguishable in color from the ordinary hue of the Pacific Ocean, and that its deep blue forms a visible line of demarcation between the greater body and itself along its entire course. The thermometer will easily define such a current, and this the author has often seen demonstrated from a ship’s deck; but it must be a very keen eye that can distinguish such differences of color at sea as the above assertion would indicate.
In so extended a territory as that of Alaska, with broad plains, deep valleys, and lofty mountain ranges, it is reasonable to suppose there must be a great diversity of climate. The brief inland summer is represented to exhibit marked extremes of heat, and the winter corresponding extremes of cold. W. H. Dall, an undoubted authority in all matters relating to the valley of the Yukon, though his book upon the country was published some twenty years since, says: “At Fort Yukon I have seen the thermometer at noon, not in the direct rays of the sun, stand at 112°, and I was informed by the commander of the post that several spirit thermometers graded up to 120° had burst under the scorching sun of the Arctic midsummer.” Fort Yukon is the most northerly point in Alaska inhabited by white men. It is estimated that ten or twelve thousand Eskimos live in the uninviting region north of the Yukon valley. They are a most remarkable people, who are struggling with the cold three quarters of the year, and who seem to be strangely content with a bare existence. Their days and nights, their seasons and years, are not like those of the rest of the world. Six months of day is succeeded by six months of night. They have three months of sunless winter, three months of nightless summer, and six months of gloomy twilight. No Christian enlightenment or religious teaching of any sort has ever found its way into this region. The people believe in evil spirits and powers who are in some way to be propitiated, but have no conception of a Divine Being who overrules all things for good. Like the southern Alaskans they are superstitious to the last degree, and discover omens in the most ordinary occurrences. The decencies of life are almost totally disregarded among them, their highest purpose being apparently the achievement of animal comfort and gorging themselves with food and oil.
Their sky is famous for its beautiful auroral display—gorgeous pyrotechnics of nature—in the long, chill winter night, when a brilliant arch spans the heavens from east to west, marked with oscillating hues of yellow, blue, green, and violet, rendering everything light as day for a few moments, then falling back into darkness. So off the coast of Norway among the Lofoden Islands, the hardy men who pursue the cod-fishery in that region, during the winter season, depend upon the Aurora Borealis to light their midnight labor, that being considered the most favorable hour of the twenty-four to secure the fish. Without this nocturnal meteoric illumination, it would be darkness indeed in the polar regions for half the year.
This phenomenon in its Arctic development is so much intensified as to quite belittle the exhibition with which we are familiar in New England, and which is called the Northern Lights.