File:Alaska + its history, climate and natural resources (1898) (14597514727).jpg

Identifier: alaskaitshistory00swin (find matches)
Title: Alaska + its history, climate and natural resources
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Swineford, A(lfred) P
Subjects:
Publisher: Chicago, New York, Rand, McNally and co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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country, a skin, theactual cost of which at the islands cannot ex-ceed $15, having been increased to a marketvalue of not less than $75. These are to be seenin the beautiful garments worn by wealthy andfashionable ladies, the policy of the governmentin giving to a single corporation an absoluter^ionopoly of the fur seal business having placedthe price of such luxurious outer garments be-yond the reach of ordinary well-to-do people. The Nushegak is one of the great rivers ofAlaska. It has its source in a lake of the samename, and empties into Bristol Bay, a not verydeep triangular indentation of the coast on thewest side of the Aliaska Peninsula. This river,at its mouth, and for forty to fifty miles above,is at least twenty miles in width, beyond whichit narrows down to ten and then to six at thesettlement of the same name, but which is desig-nated on all the maps as Fort Alexander. Theriver is full of sand bars and difBcult to navigateby pilots not familiar with its intricate channel.
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m / CLIMATE AND RESOURCES. 161 which hugs first one bank and then the other.Heavy draft vessels do, however, make theirway as far as Nushegak, and some distance be-yond, in all about one hundred miles above themouth. Nushegak, or Fort Alexander, is a station ofthe Alaska Commercial Company, and the head-quarters of the Kuskokwin district of the Greco-Russian church, and was, during the Russianregime, a fortified post of considerable import-ance. It was the point at which all the furs ob-tained from all that large part of the territorylying between the sea coast on the south andwest, Cook Inlet on the east and the Yukonriver on the north, were collected, and to whichthe mails were brought overland during the win-ter from St. Michaels, and thence sent to Sitkaby sea. From here regular winter communica-tion was kept open with most of the interior na-tive settlements, and it was the center of tradefor a large area of country, which yielded anabundance of the most valuable furs, such asthe

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