Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/326

ALASKA. head, where spruce forests clothe the bases of the mountains, separated by grassy valleys, exhibiting a wide diversity of tall flowering herbage and low shrubs. The Aleutian Islands are entirely without trees, except a few scrub willows; but some have great numbers of bushes allied to the cranberry and whortleberry. Under the moist and temperate influences heretofore mentioned, the coastal strip, however, from Kadiak down to British Columbia, is clothed with a forest which becomes of great size, variety, and economic value from Cross Sound southward. Deciduous (hard-wood) trees are white birches, poplars (often very large), alders and similar kinds, usually of small size and importance; but coniferous trees form extensive forests over all the islands and around the bases of the mountains up to the edge of the ice or snow, which lies permanently at an average elevation of about 2000 feet. The most widely distributed species is the Sitka or Alaskan spruce (Abies sitchensis), which is scattered over the whole territory as far north as the Arctic Circle, but reaches a useful size only on the shores of Prince William Sound and on the islands of the Alexander Archipelago. (See .) It is the tree which serves most of the wants of the natives for house-building, fire-wood, torches, and general purposes, and is the principal resource for lumber for mining and other rough purposes on the coast and in the interior; but owing to its slow growth the timber is knotty and not adapted to the finer uses. The hemlock (Abies martensiana) and the balsam fir may exceed the Sitka spruce, but are uncommon and of little service, except that the bark of the former is useful for tanning hides. The yellow cedar (Cupressus nutkaensis), however, is very valuable. It has been nearly exterminated on Baranov Island, but remains numerous and of large size on several islands southward; it is from this that the great dug-out boats of the Haida Indians are made. Its wood is clear-grained and very durable.

. The fauna of Alaska is very extensive and economically valuable. The catalogue of its mammals and birds forms a long list of high zoölogical interest. Reptiles and amphibians are of course few, but insects present a wide variety, diminishing toward the north; among these mosquitoes are painfully conspicuous, swarming in summer on the central and northern plains in such dense masses as to make life in the lowlands almost impossible for either men or animals. The neighboring seas are peculiarly rich in small marine creatures (see ); hence fishes abound, and these support numerous marine carnivores, such as seals, etc., to be spoken of later. The larger land animals include the moose, south of the Yukon; caribou, formerly widely numerous, but now nearly exterminated, whence the efforts of the Government to restock the country with reindeer; and, in the southeastern mountains, sheep and goats. Porcupines and hares of various species abound, and form an important food resource for the inland natives, besides lemmings, marmots, squirrels, mice, etc.; while suitable streams everywhere south of the Arctic borders support beavers (now uncommon) and muskrats. These animals supply food for bears, lynxes, and a long list of smaller fur-bearing carnivores. The bears include, besides the polar, grizzly, and black species, the huge Kadiak bear and the glacier

bear, which are exclusively local. (See .) The marine mammals are whales of several kinds, the Pacific walrus, Steller's sea-lion, and five other species of hair seals (see ), and the fur-seal. The fur animals embrace gray wolves, the basal stock of the native sledge-dogs; the white arctic fox, common near the coast from the Aliaska Peninsula northward, and on the islands of Bering Sea, while its “blue” variety inhabits the Aleutian Islands; the red fox, and its variety, the “cross” fox, occur everywhere; but the black variety is rare and almost unknown, except in the eastern mountains. Of the mustelines, the sable is numerous wherever coniferous forests extend; and more generally distributed are the weasels (ermine) and wolverines, while minks are common along all watercourses, and otters less so. The most notable of Alaskan fur animals, however, is the sea otter (Latax lutris), which formerly was numerous along the entire southern coast, but now is found only on a few remote islands, where it will soon become extinct unless rigorously protected. Choice skins are now worth $100 to the hunter, and bring $500 in New York or London. With their disappearance will go the last resources of many Aleuts. In 1899 the catch reported in San Francisco was 154 skins, worth $30,000.

. The seals that visit the shores of Alaska, especially from the Aleutian Islands northward, are the main dependence of the natives for food, furnishing materials for boat-building, house-making, dog-harness, etc., and are hunted pertinaciously with guns, spears, nets, etc., and their skins are an article of intertribal trade. To white men they are of small importance. The walrus is almost the sole dependence of the Eskimos at and beyond Bering Strait, and is steadily diminishing, because it is also hunted by white men for the sake of its ivory. Fossil elephant ivory is also collected extensively by the Eskimos. The white whale and the great arctic whales are also of prime importance to the Arctic Alaskans, and these animals attract annually a considerable whaling fleet, which endeavors to leave the Arctic Ocean before the straits are obstructed by ice; vessels often fail to do so, however, and must pass the winter in the ice along the north shore of Alaska. In 1898 the catch of whales was 140.

The fur-seal was formerly abundant along both coasts of the strait and on most islands in Bering Sea; now it is restricted to the Copper Islands of the Siberian coast, and to the Pribylov group or Seal Islands, where it is theoretically protected by the government under the care of an American corporation whose rentals have yielded much more than the amount paid for the purchase of Alaska. The Congressional regulations, however, have failed to put an end to pelagic sealing, in the suppression of which Great Britain will not join. In consequence, the herds of seals resorting to the Pribylov Islands to breed, from which an annual quota of 30,000 (formerly 100,000) skins is permitted to be taken, have steadily diminished. The catch for 1898 was 18,032. But 35 Canadian vessels took in pelagic catch from American herds 28,132. This ruthless taking of the seals threatens their early extinction. This would mean the loss to Alaska of the most valuable item in the fur trade of the world. The fur trade was, indeed, the first inducement for the