Omaha daily bee., 1890-05-04
MORSE DRY GOODS co

officers who have served in the territory
at various times, are now endeavoring to
induce congress to authorize an explora-
tion of the Yukon Valley from it's source
to its mouth, and express willingness
to undergo the evident hardships and
privations of such an undertaking. The
reports of the fertility of certain large
portions of that great valley, and re-
specting it's agricultural possibilities,
are so conflicting and uncertain, that it
can hardly be regarded as an absolute
waste of money to authorize an
intelligent official examination of
those valleys to that end.
The permanent development of gold
mining in Alaska has been made in the
southeastern part of the territory, which
embraces all that strip of mainland,
thirty miles wide from Portland chan
vicinity of Mt. st. Elias, and including
the islands of the AleXandrian Archipe-
lago, which hug the mainland closely
from south to north and west. The
topography of this section is character
istic and remarkable. The thirty-mile
strip of mainland belonging to the
Uuited States is no more than an un-
broken range of very steep and lofty
mountains, the SUBMITS of many of
which are never free from snow.
No valleys separate or break the con-
tinuity of these ranges. AT intervals,
short, swift streams, fed by the interior
glaciers, have worn down waterways
to the bays and inlets, but these streams,
in most instances, are only wild cascades.
Rarely one finds the gorge, the stream
bed, wider than space sufficient for the
passage of the water; and in attempting
to ascend to their sources, one is con-
fronted by fierce torrents impossible to
stem, and with no margin by their sides,
along which to pass around the catar-
acts. Frequently the last leap is made
only few rods from the point where the
river enters the sea, and this is even the
rule. All the islands off the coast
of southern Alaska, Baranoff,
Admiralty, Douglass and Prince of
Wales are simply mountains rising out
of the Pacific, whose interiors are vast
glacial formations, while their fronts to
the sea are clothed with timber. No
white man has ever been heard of hav-
ing crossed either of these islands, and
the Indians disclaim ever having
attempted it, preferring the easier mode
of passing around them in their canoes.
The faces of the mountains toward the
water, on the mainland and on tho is
lands of southeastern Alaska, are very
steep almost perpendicular, and covered
with deep, spongy bog or tundra,
which is always wet or moist. They are
also covered with forests of fir, spruce,
hemlock, yellow cedar. and scrub birch
and alder, up to the snow-line, and this
underground of birch, salmon berry,
alder and devil S club makes everywhere
almost impossible thickets and jungles.
These Typographical conditions must be
borne in mind constantly, in considering
the mining development and possibili-
ties of Alaska, for they figure
largely in estimating the present
progress of the industry
Gold quartz was first discovered in the
territory in 1877, near Silver Bay, in the
vicinity of Sitka. The discoverer, Mr..
Haley, was Il soldier discharged from the
regular army, and previous to his enlist
ment, had mined in Colorado and Cali
tornia Numerous quartz lodes are To-
Gated IN the vicinity of his discovery,
which is about three miles back from the
beach, and far up the side of the noun
tain. Haley opened several tunnels and
exposed valuable quartz, and succeeded
in selling two of his discoveries for fif-
teen thousand dollars.
The proprietors of another lode some
distance from the original discovery put
upa tiye-stamp mill; but for the want of
adequate capital to place the enterprise
on square footing, conjoined with feeble
and incompetent management, the pro-