The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-10-22
A GREAT ENTERPRIsr.
With Wonderful Promises for the
 Near Future.

Near Future.
 Alaska being topic of the hour, there Is timely interest in the story told by William R. Stewart in the current Worlds Work of its wonderfully rapid
 development. The whole vast stretch of
 the far Northwest, Canadian as we'll as
 American. is now repeating the wonder
 story of California's magical growth. Within year or two Alaska will be l traversed by railroads almost from end to
 end. Nome. the western terminus of the
 railroad system of Northwestern Alaska,
 is already a city of 2S.OOO population. The railroad tracks that run to Nome are furthest north of all the world; they are almost within the arctic circle. Nome has good hotels, daily papers, banks electric lights, telegraphs and telephones-in | short. a complete outfit of civilization. It Is connected by cable with St. Michaers s
 and by telegraph with Dawson and Skag-
 way.
 When the railroads now building and
 projected are completed 1t will only need q short northern spur from Russia's great
 Siberian Railroad to give all rail com-
 munication from New York to Paris. Meantime, Dawson Is the city to which
 all railroad building leads. Dawson has 1.200 population. and its municipal cquip-
 ment includes all modern improvements. Its assessment for taxation is over $l1,-
 o00. 900. It Is now installing a @,0Oo.0Oo wa
 ter supply plant.
 The Yukon r:ver Is open to navigation from May to October, and forty stern wheel steamboats ply between Dawson and St. Michael's. covering the i,6O0 miles in about ten days.
 Primarily the railroads so far have been built to tap the enormous mineral wealth nf la aka nA ha "a vr,kn T1,,t contrary to old notions, there is immense agricultural and forest wealth to be de-
 valoped in the Hudson Bay, North Sas-
 katchewan and Peace River districts. Nearly a thousand miles north of the boundary between Alaska and the Cana
 dian Northwest, in the valley of the Peace River. wheat, barley and oats are grown in quantities limited only by the
 number of farmers. The most northerly
 roller process flour mill on the continent
 has just been built at vermlllion. The wheat which took the first prize at the Centennial Exhibition of 1878. at Phila-
 delphia. came from the Peace River coun | try. which Is estimated to contain more
 than 100000 acres of good grain-grow-
 ing soil.
 The postal service of this empire in
 embryo is a wonder. Mail steamers leave the Pacific coast daily, bringing bags from
 Sltka, Shagway, Nome and other points
 by all manner of means--wagons dog
 sleds, etc. Russian reindeer carry the sacks over frozen lakes and snow-covered
 hills with remarkable rapidity. The high
 est salaried postal official in the world
 serves in Alaska. He Is paid $2B coo year
 for carrying the mail fortnightly to Fort Yukon. providing his own dogs and sleds for the purpose. Alaska has now upward of 100 postofflces. and mails are collected
 and delivered regularly beyond the arctic circle. s..~ The fisheries of Alaska are rich beyond calculation. It's cod banks are believed to
 equal in wealth those of Newfoundland More than half of our entire salmon pro- duct Is Alaskan, and last year 1t was
 worth S7.0O0 00O0--exactly what we paid Russia for the whole territory.
 The winters of Alaska are less rigorous
 than those of Wyoming or Montana. and horses and cattle are worked there with out fear of being frozen. The cold is in- tense. but there are no storms. Except on the coast of Behring Sea all the hardy
 vegetables are grown with marked suc- cess throughout Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, south of the arctic circle.
 As a measure of Alaska's growth 1t is noted that her total foreign trade. all she
 bought and all she sold. in 1892 was less than $2y,UOO Tn value, Whic TUT tHc HsCh
 year ending June 30 last 1t reached total of $35 O00,o0o.
 Americans and British settlers are push- ing steadily north into this great terri tory in about equal numbers. and Mir
 Stewart says that the entire Canadian
 Northwest Is already more American than
 British in its administrative system"
 President Roosevelt. speaking at Seat
 tie in May last. predicted that men now
 living would see Alaska one of the
 greatest and most populous States of the