The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-03-06
EDGAR 6. RAINE TELLS STORY OF
 LIFE IN ALASKA
Art League Members Delighted With Treasury Dept.
 Officials Lecture.

Alaska, the wonderland, and Alaska the land of opportunity, was set vividly before the members or the Bridgeport Art league yesterday after noon in the splendidly interested lec- ture on that country by Edgar C. Raine More than 13,0O0 miles o1 great productive country, of maJectlc mountains and glistening glaciers across the Bering Straits into weird Siberia and back again were traversed in the short course of an hour and a quarter. Two hundred eyquisitely colored slides illustrated the talk. A pioneer in the land when it first came into worlds importance with the dis covery of gold there 20 years ago, and who has seen several towns winch ne helped lay out with tape measure, grow into thriving cities, there is per haps no one more intimately acquaint- ed with Alaska than MT. Raine. As a representative of the Treasury De- partment of the United States, MT. Raine is required to visit every set clement in Alaska once a year and he is the only man who makes such an annual trip.
 He is 8 short. wiry man who is &C., customed to run between 35 and 40 miles a day behind his team of II dogs, from settlement to settlement in Alaska.
 In hisilecture. every point of which is Illustrated, MT. Raine tells of Juneau, 20 years ago a settlement of log cabins and tents, and today an Alaskan metropolis with steam heated sidewalks which melt the snow as it falls upon them. He showed the Lynn canal, termed the "most ma jestic canal in the world.' and Chilli kot Pass, the terror of so many pion- eers but now comfortably traversed in a railway trip that 'is worth going 1000 miles to see.'' The Northern Lights are thrown upon the screen and then, the Midnight Sun. During the summer baseball games in Alaska begin at II clock at night and con- tinue sometimes until noon of the next day. MT. Raine said the vege- tables in Alaska are the largest and most luscious that he has seen. This he attributes to the fact that when the sun comes out in summer it con- tinues to shine day and night.
 A number of pictures showed the seal raising in the Aleutian islands. When ti-ese animals are ready for market, they are killed with clubs made in New London, Conn.
 { The customs of the Eskimo and the Indian of that country were explein- ed. In Siberia 52 miles from Alaska, pictures were shown of feast which the natives hold when they put their old and useless people to death. The victim agrees to the killing. He in- vites all his relatives and friends to a feast and when the eating is con- cluded in the presence of the whole company who have been seated around as for some pleasant enter tainment, one of the nearest male relatives steps forward and kills him. Another queer custom in that country Is that when a person becomes i'll, his friends send him a coffin. MT. Raine says that he knows one woman there, who has received five collins.
 The several hundred members of the Art League so thoroughly enjoy ed the lecture that it was no sooner concluded than they began making plans to have MT. Raine return next year and tell them more about the great territory of Alaska.