glance moved slowly over the jury, from face to face, and he went on
evenly: "You can't expect capital to invest without some inducement. The
Northern Pacific, the first trans-continental railroad in the United
States, received enormous land grants along the right of way; but the
Prince William Development Company, which intends ultimately to bridge
distances as vast, to tap the unknown resources of the Alaska interior,
has not asked for concessions, beyond the privilege to develop such
properties as it may have acquired by location and purchase. Surely the
benefit that railroad would be in opening the country to settlement and in
the saving of human life, should more than compensate for those few
hundreds of acres of the Government's coal."

"Mr. Tisdale," said the attorney sharply, "that, in an employee of the
Government, is a strange point of view."

Tisdale's hands sought his pockets; he returned Mr. Bromley's look with
his steady, upward gaze from under slightly frowning brows. "The
perspective changes at close range," he said. "The Government knows less
about its great possession of Alaska than England knew about her American
colonies, one hundred and fifty years ago. The United States had owned
Alaska seventeen years before any form of government was established
there; more than thirty before a criminal code was provided, and
thirty-three years before she was given a suitable code of civil laws.
Now, to-day, there are no laws operative in Alaska under which title may
be acquired to coal land. Alaska has yielded hundreds of millions of
dollars from her placers, her fisheries, and furs, but the only thing the
Government ever did for Alaska was to import reindeer for the use of the
Esquimos."

Another ripple of laughter passed through the courtroom; even the judge on
the bench smiled. But Mr. Bromley's face was a study. He began to fear the
effect of Tisdale's astonishing statements on the jury, while at the same
time he was impelled to listen. In the moment he hesitated over a
question, Hollis lifted his head and said mellowly: "The sins of Congress
have not been in commission but in omission. They are under the
impression, far away there in Washington, that Alaska is too bleak, too
barren for permanent settlement; that the white population is a floating
one, made up chiefly of freebooters and outlaws. But we know the
foundations of an empire have been laid there; that, allowed the use of
the fuel Nature has so