The red man, reduced from the rank of a host to that of a guest, will continue to exist for a few centuries longer. Then he will be completely absorbed by his former enemies and will only survive as a vague historical memory. That is too bad, for the red man had many very excellent qualities, both of body and mind.
But that is the way things happen and I don’t sec what we can do about it.
And now let us for the last time look at a map. From the Bering Strait to the Isthmus of Panama the west coast of America is protected against the Pacific Ocean by a barrier of high mountains. This barrier is not everywhere of the same width and parts of it consist of parallel ridges, all of which, however, run in the same direction, that is to say, from north to south.
In Alaska this mountain-chain is dearly a continuation of the mountains of eastern Asia It is divided into two sections by the wide basin of the Yukon river, the main river of this northern territory, which was part of the Russian Empire until the year 1867 when the United States acquired these 590,000 square miles of wilderness in consideration of 7,000,000 American dollars.
The reason Russia was satisfied with so little was probably due to her ignorance about the country’s potential riches. Seven million dollars for a few fishing villages and a chaos of snow-covered mountains seemed quite a good bargain at that time. But in 1896 gold was discovered in the Klondike and Alaska got .on the map, as the popular saying has it. The trip of a thousand miles from Vancouver to Juneau and then via Skagway and the Chilkoot and Chilkat passes to Dawson, the center of the Klondike territory (carrying one’s pack on one’s own back, as animals were very expensive and could hardly wade through the dense snow at the elevation of 3,500 feet just south of the Polar Circle), was about as inconvenient as any trip ever undertaken by mankind in search of material wealth. But a pot of gold at the end of the trail awaited the early arrivals and on such occasions every man is always certain that he will be the first on the spot.
Since then, however, it has been found that Alaska is not merely a gold land (as well as the country most densely covered by glaciers) but that it also has a great deal of copper and silver and coal, besides being an ideal country for fur-trapping and fishing. As a result the revenue derived from it during the first forty years of its existence as an American territory has been twenty times as large as the original cost.
Just south of Alaska, the mountain-range gets split into two parts of which the eastern branch, the Rockies, turn farther inland, while the western branch continues to run exactly parallel with the ocean. But while the Rockies never change their name until they lose themselves among the highlands of Mexico, the mountains of the Pacific slope, after they have bade farewell to Mount McKinley, the highest mountain of the Alaska range and the highest peak on the whole North American continent (20,300 feet), are known by quite a number of different names. Ifc Canada they are called the St Elias Range and the Coast Range. But after they have passed Vancouver Island (a rocky island cut off from the mainland by Johnston Strait and the Strait of Georgia) they are divided into two parts, of which the western half is still called the Coast Range while the eastern hills are known as the Cascades in Washington and Oregon and the Siena Nevada in California. The wide open space between the two is the valley of the Sacramento river and the San Joaquin River, which meet in the middle just before they run into San Francisco Bay, one of the widest and deepest and the best-sheltered harbours of the world, which connects with the Pacific Ocean by means of the famous Golden Gate.
When the advance guard of the Spanish pioneers reached the valley it was absolutely uncultivated. To-day by means of irrigation, it has been turned into the fruit garden of the world where apples and peaches and plums and oranges and apricots grow and prosper in exchange for a very reasonable amount of labour.
This valley proved to be a veritable godsend to California, for when the great gold rush of the forties of the last century had come to an end, the miners and their followers discovered that they could hope to make quite a comfortable living by merely changing their profession and by becoming fruit farmers instead of prospectors. In Alaska and in Australia, once the veins of gold had been exhausted, there was no possible chance of feeding and multitudes and they disappeared as fast as they had come, leading behind them their empty towns and villages and tin cans. But California, instead of being impoverished by its golden treasures, as most gold-providing countries have been, was actually enriched by them and the feet should be noted as unique in the history of mankind.
When it was shown that way deep down below the soil there by vast reservoirs of oil, the future of the state was entirely assured It is true that this entire region is a bit shaky and that the deep incision of the Gulf of California may cause an occasional shifting of the different layers of rock which are apt to be dangerous (specially when followed by fire), but earthquakes are only temporary inconveniences, while sunshine and an agreeable and ever climate are permanent blessings. California has only started upon its career as one of the most densely populated spots of the entire northern continent.
Between the Sierra Nevada and the actual range of the Rockies lies an enormous valley consisting of three parts. In the north lies the Columbia plateau which sends the Snake River and the Columbia River to the Pacific and in the south it is bordered by the Wasatch Mountains and the Colorado plateau through which the Colorado river has dug its famous canyon. Between these two plateaus lies the depression known as the Great Basin which the Mormons chose as their permanent place of residence after they had been forced to flee from the eastern part of the United States and which in spite of its lack of moisture (the Great Salt Lake is full of water but it is much saltier than the ocean) they have in less than a single century been able to turn into a most profitable venture.