Excerpt from Handbook of Alaska: Its Resources, Products, and Attractions Forty years have passed since the foresight and negotiations of a great statesman, William H. Seward, added to our national domain the immense and valuable Territory of Alaska. It has contributed to our public wealth products worth more than three hundred millions of dollars, yet to this day it is a terra incognita to the American public. Not only is the ordinary man of affairs ignorant of the general features of Alaska, but this is also true of the usually well-informed. Indeed, in a widely circulated and standard work of geographic reference the errors relative to the Territory are simply astounding in number as well as in character. The great economic value of the more northern parts of North America is being gradually recognized, as indicated by the rapidly increasing wealth of north western Canada, and by the construction of the trans continental Grand Trunk Railway with its terminus at the southeastern boundary of Alaska. For the first time an organized effort has been made to draw public attention to the products and resources of Alaska, through their adequate and material presentation in the Alaska-Yukon Exposition at Seattle. The need has long been obvious of a Handbook that should assemble widely scattered and reliable Alaskan data of current interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.