The Cordova daily times., 1921-09-02
BY MARIANNE KING

cence of it's beauty; peopled with a
 strange miscellany of whites, natives,
 halfbreeds and orientals living in
 mall unpainted towns close to sea | and river edge; misunderstood. over
 looked. forgotten by most of the out
 side world; struggling with the inter
 nal disagreements that isolation
 breeds, yet receiving from it's own a
 loyalty and devotion few lands know;
 'uffering the severest industrial re.
 verses of it's history; watching it's
 with unhappy memories of it's past l yigor and with desperate hope for it's
 Cuture-this is Alaska
 | Of the northwestern division Alas l ka comprises nearly three.quarters of | he territory and less than a fiftieth
 If the population not an easy com binatIon to deal with The only means | of communication are by boat and l cable. The nearest southeastern port | If any size at all is almost three
 days and three night from Seattle
 Juneau. the capital. is still another
 day and night away. To Seward, the
 most northern open port the year | round is a weeks travel and Nome nd St Michael arc inaccessible for
 more than half the year. One reaches
 the rim of the bouudicss inland coun-
 try on the mncompletcd spurs of three
 railroad lines, and then proceeds
 across country by dog-team or down | the Yukon by boat
 This was the country to which the
 northwestern division owed the peace
 time services of the Red Cross as l truly as tO the most adjacent and | 9opulous regions of its jurisdiction | During the war Alaska unfailingly
 went over the top in every Red Cross
 campaign and roll call as we'll as in
 every Liberty loan drive. although
 these facts were usually omitted from | public records. Early in November. 1920. Miss | Agnes R. Holland, a graduate nurse of | long experience and well acquainted with the territory, was appointed di- vision field representative for Alas | ka and instructor in home hygiene and care of the sick Miss Holland. | who had been anxious to see Red Cross nursing established in Alaska, left i'm mediately to put on the instruction work in WranRell. the first chapter visited. From Wrangell Miss Holland went to Ketchikan. and by July 1 she !. had visited the chapters at Juneau. |. CordOva. Valdez. Seward and Anchor i age and had put on at each place courses varying from a month to six
 weeks in length. Nearly 400 women and girls attended these courses. and | approximately 300 certificates were granted.
 Miss Holland is now in Nome, hay ing reached the Yukon from Anchor age partly by means of the govern i ment railroad and partly by means of seventy-fiye mile tramp across country She took this trip in com | pany with two school teachers and stopped at government camps and road houses along the way. Trans | portation in Alaska is either primi- i tive or sporadic and sometimes both. If you take the railroads. you await the convenience of the officials. Miss Holland once spent four days going tl3O miles. She took her seventy | mile hike to save herself another four days and one hundred dollars.
 Before Miss Holland leaves the in- terior she will put on home hygiene classes at Fairbanks, Tanana and Nome and will have visited all the principal points in Alaska. What
 will have been the results of her work?
 Alaska towns are exactly like small
 towns everywhere They are not al
 ways friendly at first to new ideas.
 And there was trace of not unrea- l sonable nor incomprehensibie resent | ment in the attitude of some of them
 toward the instruction. The sincere \ personality of the instructor. how
 ever. quickly dissipated any tempor-
 ary coldness toward the work. Wom-
 en and girls, both white and native, 1, gave publicity; chapter officers and
 other interested individuals could not
 do enough to help the instructor in
 securing places to hold her classes,
 equipment and so forth, and by the