To sum up, it may be said that the acquisition of Alaska by the Americans has been a good deal of a disappointment to them. They thought it would be an excellent district for extensive settlement for agricultural purposes, and the country, as we have seen, is quite unsuited almost everywhere for such purposes. Then they had glowing dreams of rich mineral deposits; but although gold and silver and coal have been found, and are being partially worked, the mining industry is a secondary feature in Alaskan wealth. The extent of the forests, however, has been found greater than was expected. On this point, the United States Commissioner thus enlarges: ‘The timber of Alaska ... clothes the steep hills and mountain sides, and chokes up the valleys of the Alexander Archipelago and the contiguous mainland: it stretches, less dense, but still abundant, along the inhospitable reach of territory which extends from the head of Cross Sound to the Kenai peninsula, where, reaching down to the westward and south-westward as far as the eastern half of Kadiak Island, and thence across Shelikhof Strait, it is found on the mainland and on the peninsula bordering on the same latitude; but it is confined to the interior opposite Kadiak, not coming down to the coast as far eastward as Cape Douglas. From the interior of the peninsula, the timber-line over the whole of the great area of Alaska will be found to follow the coast-line at varying distances of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the seaboard, until the section of Alaska north of the Yukon mouth is reached, where a portion of the coast of Norton Sound is directly bordered by timber as far north as Cape Denbigh. From this point to the eastward and north-eastward, a line may be drawn just above the Yukon and its immediate tributaries as the northern limits of timber to any considerable extent. There are a number of small watercourses rising here, that find their way into the Arctic, bordered by hills and lowland ridges, on which some wind-stunted timber is found, even to the shores of the Arctic Sea.
But although the tree-clothed area is thus enormous, the market value of the timber is not so great as one might imagine. The most valuable is the yellow cedar; but this is not nearly so abundant as the spruce or fir, and even that is not of the very best quality.
More important than the timber is the produce of the waters, for it is said that in the seas which wash the shores of Alaska there are no fewer than seventy-five species of food-fishes. Many of these, however, are only considered as suitable for bait wherewith to catch the richer kinds. The chief of these is the cod, which abounds off the whole of the southern coasts, and the catching and curing of which promises to become an important industry. The quality is said to be quite equal to the cod of the North Atlantic. We have already spoken of the salmon, the herring, and halibut, all of which swarm in the waters in shoals of countless myriads; and there are also many valuable white-fishes, which at present are caught for native consumption only. Fish, indeed, is the chief diet in Alaska, and the consumption is enormous.
But the real wealth at present of Alaska rests in the abundance of its fur-skinned animals. It was for the fur-trade that the Russians occupied the country after it had been discovered by Behring, and it was mainly for the fur-trade that the Americans acquired it from Russia. The extent of the trade has proved greater even than was expected at the time of the transfer. The shipments of sea-otter and fur-seal skins alone have more than doubled since 1867, and now average annually about three hundred thousand pounds in value. Of land-furs, as they are called, the list is a long one, and in the order of wideness of distribution may be thus given: land-otter, beaver, brown bear, black bear, red fox, silver fox, blue and white fox, mink, marten, polar bear, lynx, and musk-rat. Rabbits, marmots, and wolverines are also common, but the skins are retained by the natives. The annual value of the furs, sea and land, now obtained from Alaska is estimated to average about half a million sterling, and there is no sign of decrease in the yield. On the contrary, the competition of the traders for skins has stimulated the natives to greater industry in hunting; while the prices now paid to the hunters are from four to ten times more than were current during the Russian rule.
A GOLDEN ARGOSY.
A NOVELETTE.
CHAPTER IV.
Queen Square, Bloomsbury, is a neighbourhood which by no means accords with the expectation evoked by its high-sounding patronymic. It is, besides, somewhat difficult to find, and when discovered, it has a guilty-looking air of having been playing hide-and-seek with its most aristocratic neighbours, Russell and Bloomsbury, and lost itself. Before Southampton Row was the stately thoroughfare it is now, Queen Square must have been a parasite of Russell Square; but in time it seems to have been built out. You stumble upon it suddenly, in making a short-cut from Southampton Row to Bedford Row, and wonder how it got there. It is quiet, decayed—in a word, shabby-genteel—and cheap.
On the south side, sheltered by two sad-looking trees of a nondescript character, and fronted by an imposing-looking portico, is a decayed-looking house, the stucco of which bears a strong likeness to the outside of a Stilton cheese. The windows are none too clean, and the blinds and curtains are all deeply tinged with London fog and London smoke. For the information of the metropolis at large, the door bears a tarnished brass plate announcing that it is the habitation of Mrs Whipple; and furthermore—from the same source—the inquiring mind is further enlightened with the fact that Mrs Whipple is a dressmaker. A few fly-blown prints of fashions, of a startling description and impossible colour, support this fact; and information is further added by the announcement that the artiste within lets apartments; for that legend is inscribed, in runaway letters, on the back of an old showcard which is suspended in one of the ground-floor windows.
From the general tout ensemble of the Whipple mansion, the most casual-minded individual on lodgings bent can easily judge of its cheapness. The ‘ground-floor’—be it whispered in the strictest confidence—pays twenty-five shillings per week; the honoured ‘drawing-rooms,’ two pounds; and the slighted ‘second-floors,’ what the estimable Whipple denominates ‘a matter of fifteen shillings.’ It is with the second-floors that our business lies.