ALASKA. The greatest of the Territo ries of the United States in area and in pros pective resources. It practically is divided into three distinctive regions—the main territory, the panhandle or southeastern Alaska, and the Aleutian Archipelago. The main territory in cludes all that part of the continent of North America to the west of the 141st meridian of west longitude; its other boundaries are the Arctic Ocean to the north, Bering Sea to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The panhandle of southeastern Alaska comprises a narrow fringe of continental coast — with the outlying and adjacent islands — extending from Portland Canal north to Mount St. Elias. The Aleutian Archipelago consists of all the islands westward from the Alaskan Peninsula to in clude Attu, off the Asiatic coast. Under Amer ican jurisdiction also are the islands of Bering Sea—the Pribilofs, Saint Lawrence and others near the Alaskan mainland. The geographical extension of Alaska is very great, from 51° N. in the Aleutian Archipelago to about 72° N. latitude at Point Barrow, and from 130° W. longitude, in Portland Canal, westward to Attu Island in E. longitude.
Since Alaska, with its area of about 590,000 square miles, is one third greater in size than the Atlantic States from Maine to Florida, its detailed geographic description would involve much space. Sitkan Alaska, the land of tourists, is a narrow region intersected by long, deep fiords, which are dom Mated by lofty, glacier-covered mountains ris ing precipitously hundreds, and in places thou sands, of feet from the sea. Its densely wooded, irregular land surfaces are very rarely level. Southwestern Alaska, from the Alaskan Penin sula eastward to the Saint Elias region, has coasts of the fiord type, which are rather more open through the great waterways of Cook In let, Prince William Sound and Yakutat Bay. These mountainous coasts are, however, broken by the Copper River and the debouching streams at the head of Cook Inlet. This well
wooded country of surpassing beauty from Yakutat Bay to Cook Inlet thence shades west ward to the desolate Alaskan Peninsula, a tree less, volcanic, upturned region, where lakes are interspersed. Southeastward of this region are the fertile islands of Afognak and Kodiak. The Aleutian Archipelago stretches from the Peninsula a thousand miles westward toward Kamchatka in the form of some 70 treeless volcanic islands, of which less than a third are inhabited. The best known are the Fox group (Uminak and Unalaska), the Nearer (Attu), Rat (Seven Peaks), and Andreanafski (Atka) groups. Isolated in the middle of the Bering Sea are the Pribilofs, the wonderful breeding grounds of the fur-seal. The Bering Sea dis trict from Bristol Bay north is a barren coast, usually a treeless and tundra country. The Seward Peninsula, about 20,000 square miles in area, rises from low, sandy coasts to flat topped uplands, rarely above 2,000 feet. The Arctic coast is low, sandy, shoal-bounded and practically uninhabited, though the forest-clad hills of the interior are roamed over by Eskimo hunters. The Yukon watershed, about 200,000 square miles in area, comprises far the greater part of the habitable regions of the Territory. In its bow-shaped course of 1,500 miles from the Canadian frontier to Bering Sea the Yukon receives three large and navigable affluents — the Porcupine, Tanana and Koyukuk. The Yukon watershed is separated from the Arctic slope by low (Endicott) mountain ranges, and from the Gulf of Alaska by lofty, snow-clad ranges — the Alaskan chain, the Saint Elias, Wrangell and McKinley groups which rise from 9,000 to 19,000 feet. Extensive areas in the Yukon and other valleys are tundra—flat, undrained lands covered with a dense, rank growth of mosses, sedges and shrubs. Apart from the Bering Sea coast the Yukon Basin has extensive forest growths in its valleys, prin cipally alders, birches, cottonwood, hemlock, poplar and spruce.