The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-11
A SUMMER TRIP TO ALASKA
OUR ACRTIC POSSESSIONS AS SEEN
 BY 4 NEW HAYENER.

Resources of the Country.
 At the meeting of the St. PauPs Church club last evening Instructor w. M, Strong of Yale gave @ very enter taining and instructive account of his visit to Alaska during the past sum mer, The president of the club, Mr. Snow, introduced the speaker, who said:
 Tt was my good fortune last sum- mer to visit @ country which is but sell dom visited. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 for a mere nominal sum, $7000,000, I believe. In extent it is ten times the size of New York state. It is unproductive, not on account of the cold, but on account of the great rainfall and moisture. Crops grow lux uriantly, but they cannot ripen It's resources are of three kinds-gold of which there is an ineXhaustible supply as far as it is known to geologists. Then there are the fisheries, source of great wealth and worth many times the purchase price of the entire coun~ try. The seal fisheries are perhaps the most wonderful of these.
 ''The forests are of great density and grow on the sides of the mountains as high up as it possible for forests to grow, sometimes as high as 5000 feet, and are for themost part spruce and fir. The great resources of the region are but little known and we may expect that they will prove much greater than we now imagine.
 Aside from it's material resources, it is a very wonderful scenery, rivalling in some respects that of Norway and Sweden; mountains rivalling the Alps almost in beauty and grandeur: beau tiful rivers whose banks are fringed with forests down to the waters edge. One who has not seen a glacier does not really know what natural beauty it possesses. / I made the trip this sum mer with a party. We sailed from Ia coma up Puget sound, beautiful sheet of water, so they say; it was hidden by smoke when I passed up it, however. In this region I saw what probably produces the present state of feeling in the west-a mining town built substan- tially to accommodate 10000 people, but I only about 100 people live there.
 The first town we reached in Alaska was a missionary settlement inhabited for the most part by Indians. A word about the noble red man. Tn Alaska he Is about as noble as he is red He resembles the Japanese closely in ap- l pear6nce, as though a degenerate de- scendant of that race. They are ex- tremely dirty and their homes are also | filthy, ill-ventilated and scantily fur nished. These Indians are very shrewd in trading with tourists, who are will l ing tr pay almost any price for curios, and they ask exorbitant prices for such, i but they are not so shrewd in dealing with those tourists who are willing to pay reasonable but not an eXorbitant price.
 "These Indians. l believe, are with out exception in favor of silver mono metallsm, because from ignorance they cannot distinguish between a bright penny and a gold piece, or between a | green tobacco label and a greenback, and so naturally they are silver mono metallists.
 Juneau is a town inhabited by white men almost exclusively and one of the largest places in Alaska. Here we saw all the scenes which Bret Harte de- scribes in his stories of California min ing camps. The town is built near the shore and the houses are crowded to- gether almost like the tenement houses of New York city. This is the place where the miners congregate in the | winter.
 "I visited one of the gambling houses taking the precaution to go around, ant in the middle of the road at that. edged my way into the house and saw there men playing faro. roulette ant half a dozen other games. Some were flushed and excited by their success while others were pale with the despair at their losses.
 "We carried the news of the demo cratic convention to Juneau, and wher the result of the convention was shout ed out to the assembled crowd on tht shore telling the features of the plat form and the name of the candidate such a shout and yell went up as lief but little doubt as to who the neX president would be, if the inhabitant of Juneau had their choice.
 we visited tIatClET pay, "llCn TO miles perhaps for hundreds of squar miles her stretches out with innumer able turrets of ice glistening brill liantly in the sun. In height it nearl! equals the palisades, and is nearly a long The ice seems almost of pur crystal of dazzling white and one coult almost imagine it to be some large dia mond blending from that into the opa and emerald, but it would take a mas ter artist to attempt to describe tn magnificent beauty of the scene.
 There is an opportunity to get upol this ice mirror for a short distance which our party did, traversing tn gravel covered, slippery, deceitful sur face till all further progress was GU off by a large crevasse.
 Ships coming to Glacier bay do no buy their ice at fifty cents a hu sire, in Tacoma, but, by means of nets ar ranged for the purpose, secure all tn ice they want from the bay. Some O these cakes are of great size. so tha they break the nets.
 "One often hears a thunderous crash as some huge mass of ice breaks of from the ice wall and falls into tn water, forming another iceberg in tn bay"
 At the close of the address, in an swer to questions by Rev. F. s. Line and General E. F. Bradley. MT. Stron