in the main will probably
always be imported, but oats cut green and properly cared for make
excellent fodder, and the native hay, while not nearly as nutritious as
the imported timothy, will sufficiently supplement grain.

We hear a great deal nowadays of the benefits which are to come to
Alaska from the railroad which the United States is expected to build
from tide-water to the Yukon, and the clamorous voices of the journalist
and the professional promoter and politician, which seem the only voices
which ever reach the ear of government, are insistent that this is the
one great thing that will bring prosperity to the country. Yet the
writer is confident that he expresses almost the unanimous opinion of
those who live in the country, outside of the classes mentioned, when he
says that if the amount of money which this railroad will cost were
expended upon good highways and trails the benefit would be much
greater. It is means of intercommunication between the various parts of
the country that is the great need of Alaska; some of its most promising
sections are almost inaccessible now or accessible only at great trouble
and expense. Access to the country itself, for the introduction of
merchandise, is furnished easily enough during three or four months of
the year by its incomparable system of waterways. Good highways, well
engineered and well maintained, over which horse teams could be used
summer and winter, would remove much of what at present is the almost
prohibitive cost of distributing that merchandise from river points.
Such roads would give an enormous stimulus to prospecting, and would
render it possible to work gold placers all over the country that are of
too low grade to be worked at the present rates of transportation. A
_really_ good highway from Valdez to Fairbanks and the making of the
long-ago begun Valdez-Eagle road; a good highway from Fairbanks to the
upper Tanana as far as the Nabesna, connecting with the one from the
Copper River country and the coast; another from the Yukon into the
Koyukuk and the Chandalar; another from Fairbanks into the Kantishna,
connecting with one from the lower Kuskokwim and one from the Iditarod;
a road from Eagle across the almost unknown region (save for the line of
the 141st meridian) between the Yukon and the Porcupine Rivers; two or
three roads between the Yukon and the Tanana; a road from the Koyukuk to
Kotzebue Sound--these would constitute main arteries of travel