The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-10


 cool, moist climate as that. The trou- ble is not in raising fodder, but in cur ing it. Yet, of course, it can be pre- served all right in sflos.
 I ought to be ashamed to say a word against the weather at Sitka, for was there twice this summer and the weather was in its Sunday clothes both times-and oh, such a dream of elloWed, pensive sweetness and fresh Eess and pleasant warmth-1nakes one lonesome to recall it. You wouldn't wonder the people up there love and extoI the climate of Alaska if you saw it when it is on it's good behavior: you never saw a climate so sweet and fresh and fondling. .5. -.z
 What I say of the climate of Sitka applies fairly well to the whole Pacific coast, region-but it doesn't apply tn inc interior, not at all. There the ex- tremes of heat and cold are very great from seventy-five degrees below to one hundred above freezing point. The thing to get into your head once and for all is that the tables of average or ex- tremes of temperatures are delusion and a snare to any but scientific stu dents. They tell the exact truth. of course, but a thermometer, though it may not lie, can never tell mere than a part of the truth. The average temper ature for the whole year at Sitka. for I instance, is almost exactly the same as 1 that of the city of Washington, but you | would have to hunt around quite spell : to find climates more unlike. That of Washington is frequently intolerable while the worst that can be said of the climate of Sitka is that it is monoto- nous.
 Now what have said in the way 6f warning to people of small means and 0 romantic turn of mird. who might think it "iust lovely" to throw few things into pillowslip and set off to make a sweet little home on a fruit and truck patch in Alaska, doesn't ap- ply at all to people of large means who might be fascinated by the iGea of go- Ing into special lines of farming or stock raising up there. To all such I say go and see The country is full of possible chances of fortune for such, and if they don't find the chance they are looking for they will get the worth of their money in the trip,
 way SOOh9 IIllGI V | saw exceedingly thrifty gardens of po- tatoes. cabbage turnips, radishes, and such truck. Even way mp at Nome, in latitude slxty-fve, they make very thrifty and. in small way, profitable gardens of lettuce, radishes and the diff ferent sorts of greens.
 The great farming country of Alaska, however, must be (after the Cook Inlet country) in the Yukon valley, if any where. There, away from the coast, the climate is dry. and though the win ters are very severe and long, the sum- mers al e hot-surprisingly hot-and the summer days are So long (twenty-two and one-half hours at Eagle City, on the upper Yukon) that considerable variety of crops do surprisingly well- about as we'll as in Dakota. have a lot of most interesting photographs of farm and garden products up there, but they cannot be reproduced we'll on the I rapid press of a daily newspaper. 1 believe stock raising may prove very successful in some parts of Alas ka. Tn summer 1t certainly Is the finest place in the world to fatten cattle on the native grasses, and very much of the beef now slaughtered in Nome and Valdez Is taken up there in the spring and turned out to fatten on the luscious wild grasses that cover the tundra. The tundra is simply a northern rolling prairie, but everywhere more or less boggy. s&.' 94 & D.. 1 Cattle will winter without feeding in any country where split-foot game,
 
 ter, though of course, not being able to migrate as rapidly in case of unusual snowfalls, they would be more exposed to danger, and at the best they would rapidly degenerate Into spindie-legged breeds. But there is great profit ship ping feeders up there in the spring to fatten.
 Stock cannot be raised at all any where south of Mount St. Elias-no for age; country covered with a growth of timber so dense that a man afoot can only penetrate 1t with difficulty. But following the Aleutian islands and the Alaska peninsula clear up to the head of Cook Inlet and up the broad valley of the Susitna river, the coast country is, broadly speaking, treeless. the for
 
 and winters are not more secvere than in Virginia or Missouri, the climate be- ing modified by the&warm Japan cur rent. Unquestionab1y that region will ultimately prove a good stock country, and understand that stockmen of Washington and Oregon have been studying it, and that sheep men have already shipped in f1ocls to some of the Aleutfan Islands as an experiment. I have my doubts, however, about the success of sheep in so wet a country except to fatten them quickly for the Alaska markets-for they are liable to be attacked by the fatal foot-rot, run ming constantly on so boggy a soil.
 Over in the broad valley of the Tana- ma, which is stream about like the Missouri at Omaha, and flows north ward into the Yukon, horses have been abandoned in the fall by miners coming out, but unable to get animals over the range, and have been found In the sprin gin prime condition. That is a fact that tells the whole story. The Tanana- Yukon region is also a good grain country, for, though the summer seasons are short, the days are so long and so warm that surprising crops are produced. They actually have harvest ing machines in there already.
 ne.