William Henry SEWARD
1870 - Our Frozen Possessions - A Sea Captain's Opinion About Mr. Seward's Purchase - The North-West Pasasge.

We make the following extracts from a letter recently written to the Titusville Herald by Capt. LEONARD HARTWELL, of New-Bedford, Mass.:

"Having spent the past four years on whaling voyages in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, I have no hesitation in stating that the Territory of Alaska was, in my opinion, a good bargain for the United States. The climate is not too severe for Americans and not so trying to the constitution as tropical countries. The soil is adapted to grazing, and the common vegetables are raised in abundance, making it a good recruiting ground for ships. The seal fisheries on the coast and islands are very extensive and valuable - St. Paul and St. George especially. San Francisco gets her fish, cod-fish, salmon, &c., there. I know that the very last season there were some twenty-eight vessels engaged in trading between San Francisco and Alaska, in furs, such as the Russian sable, fox, mink, otter, &c. The timber of the territory is something like the Oregon pine. The cranberry fields of Kodiac Island, near the peninsula, are immense, and far surpass in size and are equal in flavor to those of Cape Cod or New-Jersey. Gold mines have recently been discovered in Alaska, and California miners have gone there in considerable numbers. The new Oregon Railroad, or North Pacific Railroad, will start the tide of travel, immigration and adventure to Alaska, for Portland is not far from half way between San Francisco to Sitka. I have seen herds of the finest cattle in Kodiac Island, which is some 600 miles north-east of Sitka.

The fact of the existence of a North-west Passage, in the discovery of which Sir John Franklin lost his life, is established beyond a doubt by the finding of harpoons in the bodies of whales captured on the west side of America, which must have been struck and the animals wounded on the east coast. These harpoons, as you may be aware, are all marked with the name of the whaling vessel to which they belong, and I well recollect seeing one from a whale taken near Point Barrow by the Cornelius Harlow, which bore the inscription of Ansel Gibbs, the name of a vessel which struck and lost the whale on the Cumberland Inslet. This North-west Passage, however, is not and never can be of any use or advantage to commerce. I state these facts because I have found in the minds of my countrymen false impressions as to the value of Alaska as an investment. Very crud ideas people have or distant countries and latitudes. Even north of Portland, Oregon, as I was told by my companion from San Francisco the other day, no snow had been seen there for over three years, a fact which is hard to reconcile with the prevalent notions of the qualities of the climate in what we usually call the frozen North. I have seen in the Summer season at the extreme northern coast of Alaska, bordering on the Arctic Ocean, herds of reindeer, thousands in number, grazing on the plains."

William H. Seward house - Auburn, New York The Seward House was built in 1816 on four acres on th
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New Bedford, Massachusetts, USA