with certainty from year to year; in Alaska their lot would have been quite the reverse, and they could have maintained themselves there with no better success than the present inhabitants. Attention should be directed to the development of its mineral wealth, which I have reason to think will yet prove to be considerable, and efforts should be made to stimulate and protect the present available industries of the fur trade, the canning of salmon, etc."*
Twenty years of intelligent and active investigation by thousands of our people since the publication of this analysis has confirmed its truth beyond cavil or doubt. But the development of Alaskan mines and mining, and its salmon canneries, has practically ruined the fur trade-these industries cannot thrive side by side.
Alaskan mining for the precious metals is in its infancy: not one thousandth part of the mineral-bearing surface rock and soil of that region has yet been examined; that work is slow and tedious in so rugged a country, even for the hardiest and bestconditioned prospectors, and the success and the failure of these men will from this time forward be constantly in our sight. HENRY W. ELLIOTT.
* A Report on the Condition of Affairs in the Territory of Alaska, by Henry W. Elliott, Washington, 1875; pages 18 and 19.