“Potatoes grow and do well, although the natives have not the slightest idea of how they should be cultivated, which goes to show they would thrive excellently if properly cared for. Cabbages, turnips, and the various garden vegetables have great success, and to judge from the soil and climate there is no reason why everything that succeeds in Scotland should not succeed at Kodiak. Pasture land is so excellent on the island, and the hay harvest so abundant, that our countrymen would here, just as in Iceland, make sheep breeding and cattle-raising their chief method of livelihood. The quality of the grass is such that the milk, the beef, and mutton must be excellent; and we had also an opportunity to try these at Kodiak.” The purpose of colonizing portions of Alaska with people from Iceland is being revived, and active measures to this end are now progressing. The people of that country are eager to avail themselves of such an opportunity. They are being gradually crowded out of their native land by the increased flow of volcanic matter over their plains and valleys. Alaska, while it affords them in certain portions, say the valley of the Yukon, a climate similar to their own, offers them also many advantages over the place of their nativity. It is authoritatively stated that over fifty thousand souls will gladly avail themselves of this chance to emigrate to Alaska, provided our government will aid them in the matter of transportation. At this writing, in the village of Afognak, on the island of Kodiak, with a population of three hundred natives, over one hundred acres of rich land is planted in potatoes and turnips, and has yielded annually a large crop of excellent vegetables for three or four consecutive years. If it were necessary we could point to several other successful agricultural developments in islands even less favorably situated than is the Kodiak group. Nevertheless, there are plenty of writers who assert that domestic vegetables will not grow in Alaska. One has no patience with such perversion of facts. Miss Kate Field says in a late published article relative to Alaska: “In agriculture Alaska is not promising, but the country is by no means as impossible in this respect as it has been represented. ‘There is not an acre of grain in the whole territory,’ wrote Whymper. Because there was no grain grown, it by no means follows that grain cannot be grown in certain localities. Hundreds of acres of land near Wrangel can be drained and cultivated. The Indians on the neighboring islands raise tons of potatoes and turnips for their own consumption. Butter made for me by the Scotch housekeeper of Wrangel mission was a sweet boon, and proved that cows were a success in that region, and that dairies were a mere question of time.”