Show wonderful coast scenery deserts wi alers and there is no more wonderful scenery in the world said mr marcus baeser of the geological surrey to a reporter than is to be found along the coast oi alaska as you go up from portland by steamer to sitka and beyond by the inside passage only for a very small part of the way do you feel the ocean swell at all a continuous archipelago of islands forming a breakwater for hundreds of wiles against the waves of the pacific vessel sails in water smooth aa a mill pond along the mainland mountains thousands of feet high tower precipitously up from the sea covered with dense timber while here and there a great fiord reaches up toward the interior the settlement so essential to pic are unhappily lacking save cow and then an aleut village may be been upon reaching sitka you find yourself in a much more equable climata than that of boston its moan tempera two being about the game though it is degrees north of the latter point pursuing your way northward along th coat yon see now and then a glacier reaching down to the sea when you reach the yukon if it is tha proper sea aon you find countless myriads of can dasback ducks di sporting themselves that stream together with other thereabouts is the great breeding ground you know for canvas backe aa well aa for many other sorts of ducki and geese and swans all the canvas backs which are shot on the chesapeake come from the yukon and ita neighborhood this fact has been established as a certainty by observation of their flights from various points thair aerial course being by way ot the great lakes what is the interior of alaska like the reporter it very mountainous and so bitterly cold through nearly all the year that nobody lives there save fw wretched aleuns aleuts the summer only lasij tor about two months during which tha hoat in tb daytime is apt to ba very often above a hundred degrees in the shade grasses and other plants grow aad ripen with enormous enor moua rapidity during the bhart seabon because they have to if they grow at all in tha winter it is figu almost all tha time while in the summer th gun hardly haa time to set before it rises again altogether it b a ver weird sort of country tbt chait of irae is kept warm by be enormous body of water called th pacific ocean 00 OO aay 1 J J S SS a because no conra the only ever discover dis coved by ex ploren there was found by my party some years ago probably however there is no part of the world where mosquitoes ara more dreadful than alaska abo coil U of a soft spongy character that holda water for days after a rain and the in sects are bred out of it in such sarama that it ii hardly possible for man or any other animal to exist among them thea attack the moose with such ferocity as so drive the beasts into the river the natives attack them with knives bears and reindeer are plentiful perhaps the worst part 0 alaska is that tc the northwest south of the yukon river crossed but once by a party of ers who nearly starved to death on the way the history of alaska is a story of successive leases to fur gather ing companies when russia added it to her cm pire she let it out in terms of twenty years each to such companies but by 1869 tha abuses practiced by the fur concerns had become so serious that the matter was made an important question in russian politics they decided in st petersburg that alaska was mon trouble than it was worth thus it cama about that sir saward bought it for a comparatively small price not with at anding a very vociferous howl that was raised against the project that was in 1809 A lease ot the seal blanda for twenty years was at knoo given to an american company this lease having expired the same company is seeking its renewal and as you know the pro position ia being earnestly antagonize tn the senate |