being done for the development of Alaska prevented the bill from becoming a law. Even the present act establishing a form of civil government does not make the Territory a land district, and nothing could seem more perverse than this action. Timber lands can neither be bought nor leased, and as settlers can in no way acquire an acre, there are few saw mills in the Territory, and their owners are guilty of stealing government timber, and liable to prosecution if the new officials press things to the finest point. Want of lumber has been a serious hindrance and obstacle to settlers, and the miners at Juneau had to pay freight on, and await the monthly consignments of, Oregon pine that were shipped to a country crowded with better timber.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND.

IKE Kouiu and Kuprianoff islands, the Prince

L'of Wales Island is another home of the yellow

or Alaska cedar. It was named by Vancouver, and when the Coast Survey changed his name of the George III. Archipelago to the Alexander Archipelago, this largest island of the group retained its former designation. It is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles long, and from twenty to sixty miles wide, but the surveys have never been complete enough to determine whether it is all one island or a group of islands. Great arms of the sea reach into the heart of the island, and dense forests of cedar cover its hills and dales. The salmon are found in the greatest numbers on every side of it, and the pioneer and most successful cannery and packing houses are on its shores. On account of its timber and its salmon, it was once proposed to declare the island a government reservation of ship timber for the use of the navy yards on the Pacific coast, and to lease the valuable fisheries. The very mention of Alaska has been provocative of roars of laughter in the houses of Congress, and though the reservation would have been larger than the State of New Jersey, and its

value incalculable, the wits took their turn at the measure and nothing was done. A citizen of Alaska, who has chafed under the neglect and indignities put upon this Territory, made scathing comments upon the debates of both House and Senate, brought about by these cedar reservation bills and the bill for a Territorial government. His final shot was this:

"If those Senators and Congressmen don't know any more about the tariff, and the other things that they help to discuss, than they do about Alaska, the Lord help the rest of the United States. Their ignorance of the commonest facts of geography would disgrace any little Siwash at the Fort Wrangell School. What have they paid for all these special government reports for, if they don't ever read them when they get ready to speak on a foreign subject, to say nothing of what can be found in the encyclopædias and geographies?"

These Alaskans are keenly critical of all that is written about their Territory, and they scan newspaper accounts with the sharpest eyes for an inaccuracy or a discrepancy. The statesmen who have assailed the Territory in speeches and debates in Congress are condemned with a certain thoroughness and sweep; and to introduce a copy of The Congressional Record, containing such efforts, causes even worse explosions than the one quoted. It was one of these revengeful jokers who laid the scheme for having an eminent senator introduce a bill to build a wagon road from Fort Wrangell to a point on the Canadian Pacific Railroad on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountaius. An appropriation of $100,000 was asked for, and every married citizen was to receive six hundred.

and forty acres of agricultural or grazing land in the Territory. As the contemplated highway would lead for a thousand miles across British Columbia, through the densest woods and over the roughest country, and from the island town of Fort Wrangell only ten leagues of the route would be within the Alaska boundaries, some of the joke can be discovered.

On the west shore of Prince of Wales Island there is a large salmon cannery and saw-mill at Klawak, belonging to Messrs. Sisson, Crocker, & Co., of San Francisco. It was established in 1878, and the shipments of salmon are made direct by their own schooners to San Francisco, or by their steam launch, which makes frequent trips to Kaigahnee and Fort Wrangell, the nearest post offices and landings of the mail steamer. In 1883 the Klawak cannery shipped 10,000 cases of salmon to San Francisco, and in 1884, 8,000 cases were sent below. The Klawak settlement is off the regular line of the steamer, and rarely visited by it, now that the cannery is well established and furnished with its own boats; but it is described as one of the many beautiful places in the archipelago where the silver salmon run in greatest numbers.

For salmon fisheries and salmon canneries there exists a perfect craze all along the Pacific coast, and from the Columbia River to Chilkat such establishments are projected for every possible place. At the most northern point of our cruise we picked up a piratical-looking man, in flannel shirt and tucked-up trousers, who had been sent to Alaska "to prospect for salmon," by the owners of one of the large canneries at Astoria, Oregon. This piscatorial prospector had for years been a pilot on the Columbia

River, and this fact, together with his buccaneer air, made him quite a character on deck. The prospector was the kindest and best-natured man that ever lived, with a bushy head and beard, and a mild, twinkling blue eye. Months of strolling in the mud and moisture of Alaska soil had taught him to roll his trousers well up at the heel, and he continued that cautious habit after he came on board, often pacing the dry and spotless decks of the Idaho with his checked trousers rolled halfway to his knees, and the gay facings of red leather streaking his nether limbs like the insignia of the knightly order of the garter. Confidentially he said to the mate one day, "Did you notice the terrible cold I had when I came up with you? Well, it was all because my wife made me wear that white shirt." The sincerity and earnestness with which he said this sent his accidental listeners off convulsed, and the prospector's latest remarks passed current in the absence of daily papers and humorous columns.

Not all of the "salmon prospectors are as worthy and reliable as this shipmate, and in their solitary quests they have time to gather and manufacture. some fish stories that leave all the Frazer River yarns far behind. At every place that we touched we were shown or told about "the biggest liar in Alaska." These great prevaricators and embroiderers of the truth were not always in the salmon business, and quite as often were searching for coal or the precious metals. One pretty bay was famous as the residence of such a man, who had beguiled capitalists below into letting him sink $10,000 in a fishery. When the ship anchored off his lodge in the wilderness early