ppressed the imminent explosion and began with forced
mildness, "My, yes. But you imagine a man trying to locate with
ninety-five per cent. of the country reserved. First you've got to
consider the Coast Range. The great wall of China's nothing but a line of
ninepins to the Chugach and St. Elias wall. The Almighty builds strong,
and he set that wall to hold the Pacific Ocean back. Imagine peaks piled
miles high and cemented together with glaciers; the Malispina alone has
eighty miles of water front; and there's the Nanatuk, Columbia, Muir; but
the Government ain't found names for more'n half of 'em yet, nor a quarter
of the mountains. Now imagine a man getting his family over that divide,
driving his little bunch of cattle through, packing an outfit to keep 'em
going the first year or so. Suppose he's even able to take along a
portable house; what's he going to do about fuel? Is he going to trek back
hundreds of miles to the seaport, like the Government expects, to pack in
coal? Australian maybe, or Japan low grade, but more likely it's
Pennsylvania sold on the dock for as high as seventeen dollars a ton. Yes,
sir, and with Alaska coal, the best kind and enough to supply the United
States for six hundred years, scattered all around, cropping right out of
the ground. Think of him camped alongside a whole forest of spruce, where
he can't cut a stick."

The little man's voice had reached high pitch; he rose and took a short,
swift turn across the floor. The stranger was silent; apparently he was
weighing this astonishing information. But Daniels broke the pause.

"The Government ought to hurry those investigations," he said. "Foster,
the mining engineer, told me never but one coal patent had been allowed in
all Alaska, and that's on the coast. He has put thousands into coal land
and can't get title or his money back. The company he is interested with
has had to stop development, because, pending investigation, no man can
mine coal until his patent is secured. It looks like the country is
strangled in red tape."

"It is," cried Banks. "And one President's so busy building a railroad for
the Filipinos, and rushing supplies to the Panama Canal he goes out of
office and clear forgets he's left Alaska temporarily tied up; and the
next one has his hands so full fixing the tariff and running down the
trusts he can't look the question up. And if he could, Congress is working
overtime, appropriating the treasury money home in the