Northward from the Gastineaux Channel stretches the grand fiord of the
Lynn Canal for sixty miles. Snow-crowned mountains surround it, from
whose sides many glaciers descend. At the upper end this Canal divides
into two forks--the Chilkoot and Chilkat Inlets, at 59° north
latitude. This begins the overland route to the Klondyke gold region,
and upon the eastern inlet, Chilkoot, are on either bank the two
bustling little towns that have grown out of the Klondyke
immigration--Skaguay on the eastern and Dyea on the western shore.
Each of them has three to four thousand people, with hotels,
lodging-places and miners' outfitting shops. Dyea is the United States
military post, with a garrison, and here begin the trails across the
mountain passes to the upper waters of the Yukon. A railway is
constructed over White's Pass to Bennett Lake, and is now the chief
route of travel. Pyramid Harbor and Chilkat with salmon-canning
establishments are on Chilkat Inlet. Beyond White's Pass, which
crosses the international boundary, the land descends in British
America to the headwaters of the Yukon River, which are navigated
northwest to Dawson and Circle City and other mining camps of the
Klondyke region, where the prolific gold-fields have had such rich
yields, there having been $40,000,000 gold taken out in two years. The
Yukon flows a winding course westward to Norton Sound on the Bering
Sea, discharging through a wide-spreading delta. The port of St.
Michaels is to the northward. There are two routes to the Klondyke
from San Francisco--_via_ Skaguay and overland a distance of about
twenty-three hundred miles, and _via_ St. Michaels and up the Yukon
forty-seven hundred miles.
The Alaskan coast beyond the Muir Glacier is bordered by the great St.
Elias mountain range, rising in Mount Logan to nineteen thousand five
hundred and thirty-nine feet, the highest of the Rockies, and in Mount
St. Elias nearer the coast to eighteen thousand and twenty-four feet.
From the broad flanks of St. Elias the vast Malaspina Glacier flows
down to Icy Bay on the Pacific Ocean. There are mountains all about
this region, which the official geographers are naming after public
men, among them being Mount Dewey. To the westward the vast Alaska
peninsula projects far out, dividing the Pacific Ocean from the Bering
Sea, terminating in the Fox Islands, of which Ounalaska is the port,
and having the Aleutian Islands spreading beyond still farther
westward. It is a remarkable fact, indicating the vast extent of the
United States, that the extremity of the Aleutian group is as far in
latitude westward from San Francisco as the Penobscot River and coast
of Maine are eastward. To the north is the Bering Strait, having the
Russian East Cape of Siberia projecting opposite to the Alaskan Cape
Prince of Wales to guard the passage into the Arctic Ocean. Here, upon
the southern shore of the protruding end of Alaska, and fronting
Norton Sound up almost under the Arctic Circle, is the noted Cape
Nome, the latest discovered gold-field, about a hundred miles
northwest of St. Michaels. Fabulous golden sands are spread out in
gulches and on the beaches, and Nome City has become quite a
settlement. This is the latest El Dorado to which such an enormous
rush of prospectors and gold-hunters was made in the early spring of
1900, many thousands filling up every available steamer that could be
got to sail northward. The prolific output of these gold-bearing sands
is said to exceed the Klondyke in its yield, and this will be the
golden Mecca until somebody crosses over into Siberia or goes up
nearer the North Pole, and finds there a new deposit of treasure.
Already it is said that Nome City spreads practically for twenty miles
along the sea-beach, and that the industrious miners are getting much
gold by dredging far out under the sea, and expect to secure fifty
millions annually from this remote but extraordinary region.
Nome City, like everywhere else that the hardy American pioneer raises
the flag for discovery and settlement, has its newspaper, the _Gold
Digger_, and this enterprising publication thus poetically describes
the new El Dorado of the Arctic seas, the "Golden Northland":
"High o'er the tundra's wide expanse,
Mount Anvil lifts its God-wrought crown,
Bold guardian of a shining shore,
That's ever garbed in golden gown.
"Here nature, lavish with her store
To those of nerve and strong of hand,
Outpours a glittering stream of wealth
To all the miners of the land.
"The ledge-ribbed hills on ev'ry side,
To feasts of ore invite mankind,
Nor Bering's waves may bar the way
To golden courses milled and mined.
"The fresh'ning breezes from the Pole
Bear far the miners' joyous cry,
As point of pick turns back the sod
'Neath which the glist'ning nuggets lie.
"Here may the rover of the hills
Find fickle Fortune's long sought stream,
And revel in the boundless wealth
That's ever been his life-long dream.
"O, tundra, beach and lavish stream!
O'er thee a world expectant stands;
With Midas measure may'st thou fill
The myriad eager, outstretched hands."
Wonderful is our latest American Continental possession--the rich
territory of Alaska. Limitless are its resources, unmatchable its
possibilities. One of its admirers thus sounds its praises: "In
scenery, Alaska dwarfs the world. Think of six hundred and seventeen
thousand square miles of landscape. Put Pike's Peak on Mount
Washington or Mount Mitchell and it would hardly even up with Mount
Logan. All the glaciers of Switzerland and the Tyrol dwindle to
pitiful summer ice-wagon chunks beside the vast ice empires of Glacier
Bay or mighty Malaspina. Think of a mass of blue-green ice forty miles
long by twenty-five miles wide, nearly the size of the whole State of
Rhode Island, and five thousand feet thick, glittering resplendently
in the weird, dazzling light of a midnight sun. Imagine cataracts by
scores from one thousand to three thousand feet high; ocean channels
thousands of feet deep, walled in by snow-capped mountains; sixty-one
volcanoes, ten of them still belching fire and smoke; boiling springs
eighteen miles in circumference, used by hundreds of Indians for all
their cooking; schools of whales spouting like huge marine
fire-engines and tumbling somersaults over each other like big
lubberly boys, weighing one hundred to two hundred thousands of pounds
each; rivers so jammed with fish that tens of thousands of them are
crowded out of the water high up on the shore; and woods alive with
elk, moose, deer, bear, and all sorts and conditions of costly
fur-clad aristocrats of the fox, wolf, lynx and beaver breeds. Growing
country, this of ours."