Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/50

 46 courses of some of the larger rivers. The Russian posts were all stockaded, and the powers of the governor were practically limited to the range of his crude artillery. The Russians made some coastal surveys, a few inland explorations, and one abortive attempt to find gold, and this was as far as they went in the study of the resources of their distant colony.

William H. Dall and his associates of the Western Union Telegraph expeditions, in 1865-7, did much toward gaining a knowledge of the vast interior. The navigators of various nationalities, who had explored and charted the coast line, had gathered fragmentary data of the natural history and geology, and these, together with the specimens collected by them, had found their way to European museums, where they were examined and described by scientists. One of these, by name Carl Greywingk, a German, with infinite pains and thoroughness, compiled all the notes on the geology and geography of Alaska, then known as Russian America. He went so far as to publish a geologic map of a part of the territory—a very remarkable piece of work, considering the fragmentary character of his data.

It appears that the people of the United States were even more indifferent to Alaska than the government at St. Petersburg. There had been strong opposition to its acquisition, both by those adverse to any territorial expansion, and also by a much larger number, who believed that we were purchasing a barren waste of ice and snow, whose only resource was furs. After the treaty had been signed and military occupation had been taken, the general opinion seemed to be, even among the annexationists, that we had fulfilled our duties toward the new possession. A policy of neglect of this northern province has been consistently followed almost to the present day. It was sixteen years after its annexation that Alaska was given a civil government, it was thirty-three years before it was given a complete civil code, and over a quarter of a century elapsed before systematic steps were taken toward investigating its resources.

In the meantime, individual enterprise did much toward opening the province to civilization. A strong corporation had succeeded to the interests of the old Russian American Fur Company, and, though it inherited most of the prejudices of its predecessors against the introduction of any new enterprises, nevertheless its agents, bent only on the acquisition of furs, did not a little to find new fields for the prospector.

The real exploration began with the advent of the restless gold seeker. The search for gold on the west coast of our continent, begun by the discovery of the California placers in 1848, gradually moved northward into British Columbia, and by 1870 had reached the Cassiar district, close to the Yukon watershed. It was the men trained in