There is cable communication between Seattle and certain parts of southeastern Alaska,--Cordova, Valdez and Seward. Telegraph lines run from Valdez to Fairbanks and down the Yukon to St. Michael from which point there is wireless communication with Nome. These are all military lines. The Navy Department maintains wireless stations at Kodiak and Unalaska. The War Department has wireless stations at Sitka, Cordova, Fairbanks, Circle, Eagle and Nulato. There are also private wireless stations at Iditarod and on Bristol Bay and many of the mining districts are now provided with telephone lines. The United States Government is thoroughly awake to the necessity of making safe the now-dangerous waters of southern Alaska. They are now being charted and soon the old title "The Graveyard of the Pacific" will no longer apply to them. Within the past sixty years three hundred ships have gone down upon the rocks. Valuable cargoes amounting to eight million dollars and lives to the number of five hundred have here been lost. Both to southeast and southwest of Alaska lie many mountainous islands, and ofttimes the lower half of the mountain will be lost in the water. Like the submerged lower half of the iceberg which wrecked the _Titanic_, they lie in wait, seemingly, for the ignorant or the unwary and rip open the hulls of the ships that venture too near. The light-house service of Alaska leaves much to be desired. The first buoy was floated in 1884. The first light was put up ten years later. There are three hundred and twenty-nine aids to navigation now on the whole Alaskan coast line. These include a hundred and forty lights of which twenty-eight were placed in 1915. On the much-traveled route from Icy Strait to Nome, a distance equal to that between New York and London, there are but three lighthouses! There are indications of improvement along this line, however. A first class light is to be placed on Cape St. Elias. New vessels are being built for light-house work and for the Coast Survey, but like all great enterprises, things progress slowly. About one-half of the main channels of southeastern Alaska have been explored by a wire drag and as rapidly as the appropriations by Congress will permit the work will be pushed forward. CHAPTER XIV THE CITIES OF THE FAR NORTH Of the cities of Alaska the most interesting historically is Sitka. No one will regret the time spent in visiting this, the former seat of the Russian territorial government and the stronghold of the Greek Catholic Church. After the passing of the Russians it became the first capital of Alaska. It is situate on Baranof Island, facing Sitka Sound. The climate is mild and out-door life delightful.