pany paid the United States $55,000 yearly for
its monopoly of the Alaska seal-fur trade. The product of this business
was about $2,500,000 each year. An official report made to our
Government stated that in the year 1880, $2,181,832 worth of Alaska furs
found sale in London alone. Coal had been discovered in various places.
So had beautiful white marble. Gold-bearing ledges were numerous, and
the only one of these yet broached, that on Douglas Island, had
certainly yielded well. The mill connected with it, working only the
equivalent of two-thirds time, turned out during its first twelve months
a little over $750,000 worth of gold bullion. For the year 1889,
according to imperfect returns, the product from this remote patch of
our national domain was as follows: Seal fisheries, $314,925, a falling
off of over 80 per cent. in nine years; other fisheries, $1,059,365, an
increase of about 100 per cent. for the same period; 43,762 troy ounces
of gold and 9,219 troy ounces of silver. In 1890 there were ten
manufacturing establishments, whose product amounted to $58,440.

After 1860 there was a steady filling up of the Pacific coast, and an
equally continual extension of population to the west on the east side
of the Rockies. All Iowa was in cultivation, and all Minnesota but the
extreme northwest corner. In fifteen years the rate of interest went
down in Iowa from ten to seven or eight per cent., in Michigan from ten
to six or seven per cent. Chicago, from being only a borrower of money,
grew to be an immense lender for enterprises in the West. Settlement in
Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas rolled westward with strength and rapidity.
Some of the finest new towns in these States were well toward their far
western border.

[Illustration: Four men navigating a boat with oars. It is about 10 feet
wide and 30 feet long, covered with barrels and other freight.]
An Ohio River Flat-Boat.

The construction of the five great Pacific railway lines, the Northern,
the Union, the Santa Fe, the Southern, and the Great Northern, with
their various branches, brought into valuable employ infinite reaches of
fertile land previously as good as desert. Texas made most remarkable
advance both in square miles occupied and in density of population,
brought about by great extension of railway mileage, and of cattle,
sheep, and wheat culture. Large patches of the Dakotas, Montana, and
Idaho filled with settlers. Colorado became a giant in productio