The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1905-09-13

AS big as Belgium and Holland put
together. very nearly as big as Ireland
and fully twice as big as Greece.
gakhalin island, one of the bones OF
contention between the Russian and
Japanese peace ENJOYS and recently
taken by Japan, will add about $4,000
square miles of territory to the
mikado's empire. 1t is a narrow
island. nowhere wider than the
state of Massachusetts is long and at
certain points not wider than Nan
tucket, says the Boston Evening Tran
script. But this ribbonlike island, ly-
ing northwest of Japan, stretches
along the coast of Siberia frOm which
a narrow sea separates it, for dis
lance of $40 miles. Sakhalin has
river go miles long and mountains
5000 feet high. It's by no means
vest pocket country.
Japanese enterprise, then, will have
plenty of room to knock about ill., but
square miles aren't everything, even
when YOU can count them by the tens
of thousands, and unfortunately SAX
halin's climate is nothing to boast of.
TO be sure. the island isn't far north
lit lies in about the same latitude as
France, but the sky is almost always
elouded. and the cold currents flowing
from the Okhotsk sea keep the eastern
coast pretty well ice strewn all sum-
mer while on the western coast the ice
from the Amur clogs up the narrow
space between the island and the main
land and long remains unmelted. No
body is ever too warm on Sakhalln.
The climate resembles that Of Siberia,
and Alexandroffsky is colder in winter
than Archangel.
Another thing, equally discouraging
as far as it gOes-you can't farm TO adj
vantage on Sakhalin. Only here and
there is the soil at all fertile, and even
then YOU must content yourself with
raising market truck and expect to get
malaria while wedding your garden.
Such at least has been the experience
of Russian penal colonists who have
tried to wrest Il living from the soil.
Moreover, the country looks every Whit
as inhospitable as experiment has
proved it to be- They say that when
Russian exiles get their first glimpse
of that rocky coast and those grim,
cloud capped mountains they often
burst into tears for very despair When
such of them as are not life prisoners
have served their term and become
"free colonists," they are almost GER
tain to leave Sakhalin and settle in 81
IBERIA. They call the country of their
imprisonment 1.-The Isle Of the Lost"
Cold, untillable, but big. Is that the
whole story? If it were, then we should
certainly be at a loss to know why the
peace ENJOYS at Portsmouth have been
haggling over the question of who is
TO own Sakhalin. But that isn't by
any means the whole story. The Isle
OF the Lost is also the Isle Of Poten-
tial Wealth. If it had no other claim
to Importance its dense forests would
be enough to make it worth owning.
Practically untouched. they stretch
from one end of SalAalin to the other.
The Japanese will Know what to do
with them.
Besides, there is coal-not easily
mined, but abundant At Duey the
toughest criminals have worked
chained to their barrows, and each
year they spent in the mines has count
ed as a year and half toward hasten
ing their discharge. Sakha4in has long
supplied ships with fuel Perhaps the
Japanese will develop the coal mines
to the full extent of their possibilities,
but 1t is certain at all events that they
will develop the oil fields. According
to c. S. Patonof, the oil regions
OF Sakhalin are richer than those of
America. Subterranean lakes, some
of them with an area of 5000 square
feet, lie so close to the surface that
natural gushers can be easily astab-
lished. The oil regions lend themselves
readily to exploitation. for the east
coast is only from twenty to twenty
FIVE miles away, and there nature has