Excerpt from Our Northern Domain: Alaska, Picturesque, Historic and Commercial By a movement as quick and a change as sudden as ever was pro duced by Aladdin's lamp, we were standing upon the margins of the inlets, bays, and water courses of Alaska. There the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out to me the fish with which these waters swarm; no sir, I beg pardon, not swarm; there is no room for them to swarm; they are piled up, fish upon fish, pile upon pile - solid columns of fish; no human arithmetic can compute their numbers. And, Sir, such fish shad, salmon, cod, according to the description, a foot and over through the shoulders, with Sides and tails to match. AS I stood there, Mr. Chairman, listening to the gentleman from Mas sachusetts, with fish to the right of me, fish to. The left of me, fish all in front of me, rolling and tumbling, I had to acknowledge that the pic ture as painted made Alaska a good country for fish. He declared that he was almost ready to embrace the creations of this splendid fancy, until, on sober second thought, stripping it of the trimming and tinselry in which his imagery had clothed it, there remained noth ing but a cold, forbidding, ghastly, grinning skeleton, from which he turned with horror and disgust. From all that he could learn, Alaska was, in the language of an impartial historian, very moun tainous and volcanic, with a climate intensely cold, and a sterile soil. He ended by claiming that Russia ought to be allowed to remain in peaceable possession Of Alaska in all her hideous proportions-and native cheerlessness, with her icebergs, her volcanoes, her three hun dred and sixty days in the year of clouds and storms, her harbors, streams, Indians, and fish. 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.