safely predicted, long reindeer trains from arctic and subarctic Alaska will roll into Seattle and our most western cities like the great cattle trains that now every hour thunder into the yards of Chicago. Before the end of the present century Alaska will be helping to feed the 200,000,000 men and women who will then be living within the present borders of the United States.

* REFERENCES: For further information on the introduction of domestic reindeer into Alaska, consult the annual reports of Sheldon Jackson, LL. D., General Agent of Education in Alaska, for 1891-1902. The reports contain much interesting matter about Alaska as well. They may be obtained from the Superintendent of Public Documents, Washington, D. C., for a small sum.

Special mention may be made of the following articles included in the reports:

"Domesticated Reindeer, with Notes on the Habits and Customs of the Eskimo and Life

Report of Wm. A. Kjellmann Describing a Trial Trip of 2,000 Miles with Nine Reindeer Sleds," pp. 41-71, 1897.

"The Lapland Reindeer Expedition of 1898," PP. 32-46, 1898.

66

Expedition to Siberia," by Lieut. E. P. Bertholf, describing the purchase of Tunguse reindeer in Siberia, pp. 130-168, 1901.

"Reindeer in Siberia," pp. 168-175, 1901. Mention should also be made of:

"The Cruise of the U. S. Revenue Cutter Bear and the Overland Expedition for the Relief of the Whalers in the Arctic Ocean, November 27, 1897, to September 13, 1898," including reports of Lieut. D. H. Jarvis, Lieut. E. P. Bertholf, and Surgeon S. J. Call. Government Printing Office, 1899.

"Commercial Alaska in 1901," by O. P. Austin, Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department, pp. 3985-3989.

THE

RALEIGH ROCK

HE accompanying photograph of Raleigh Rock was taken by Capt. J. J. Gilbert, commanding the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey steamer Pathfinder, while on a voyage from Japan to Manila. Raleigh Rock is in latitude 25° 57' 40" N. and longitude 124° 43' E. These rocks have been long known, but different names have been assigned to them under slightly different geographical positions. If the convenient camera had been in use in early days as it is now, the identity of the rocks would easily have been established by shipmasters. So far as known, this is the first photograph of Raleigh Rock that has ever been published.

I

N ancient times the agave, or henequen, was one of the most important plants of the peninsula. At a time when most of Europe was in the pall of utter darkness, when the "Parisii" lived in caves and the Gauls in "wattled huts," the priests and rulers of Yucatan lived in stone temples and palaces. Up the steep sides of the myriad pyramids were carried great blocks and sculptured columns.

To move these mighty masses of limestone no powerful engines were at hand, but the Batabs of Yucatan, like the rulers of ancient Egypt, had little use for mechanical devices. Human muscle and ropes of agave (henequen) were all sufficient. If ten ropes and a hundred slaves were not enough, a hundred ropes and a thousand slaves were not lacking. The ancient artists made use of the fiber in their work. They were not content to make the figure; they made the skeleton, and upon the bones and in the flesh, like the cords and muscles of the body, they placed cords and plaited bands of fiber. Close examination indicates that the fiber used was that of the yaxci plant. Over the imbedded muscles and flesh they placed a thin, hard wash of stucco to represent the skin and surface pigments. The writer has examined many dozen specimens of the broken figures of stucco wherein are plainly shown the casts and the knots and braid, even the very character of the fiber.

The primeval inhabitants probably did not at first attempt to extract the fiber

*The fiber is often called Sisal grass or Sisal hemp, though it is neither a grass nor a hemp. The name "Sisal" was applied to it because it originally reached the outer world through the port of that name.

from the thick pulp, but took the leaf and wilted it in the fire, then split it, and used the splits as thongs. The leaves so treated make thongs of great strength, and as they dry they bind with wonderful force. In the primitive forms of habitation in the region, the mud and wattle nás" are bound together by these shreds of fiber-wilted leaves. They are shapely, water-tight, and durable, and the native builder's only tool is a heavy, sharp-edged knife. Not a spike or nail or metal of any kind enters into the building.

Later the people found that if they cleaned off the thick pulp and the green corrosive juice they could get a firmer hold and so bind tighter. Then they learned to twist the shreds, and this idea led to the making of ropes and cords.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, when there happened to be a scarcity of hemp for the cordage of the Royal Spanish Navy, search was made for a new material to eke out the supply from Manila. Some one told of the fiber used by the Campeche people in Yucatan. A royal commission was ordered to investigate, and its report, made in 1783, gave unstinted praise to the fiber.

For a few years quite a little henequen was sent to Europe. Then with the collapse of Spanish commerce the demand for it ceased and for half a century its existence seems to have been forgotten by the world.

Meanwhile the people of Yucatan grew poorer and poorer until, in their desperation as to how to get money to buy the necessities of life, some bright merchants thought of the fibrous plant which fifty years before had had commercial value. An association was formed and they began to experiment

with the plant. A quantity of fiber was rudely cleaned by native instruments, and, packed in loose bales of about 200 pounds each, was sent to New York. It found a market, but the price was such that there was but scant gain for the seller. The methods of cleaning the fiber were so slow that even with the small wages of the day, the cost per pound to the planter was discouraging. The state government, recognizing the great need of a suitable machine to clean the fiber, offered a gratuity of $10,000 Mexican to the person inventing an apparatus capable of producing a stated output per hour. This finally resulted in the "raspador," the device of a Franciscan friar, which was used for many years.

The raspador marked a new era for the commerce of Yucatan. With the aid of this machine, two men could clean in one day more than forty could with the tonkas and pacché. Its use became extended, and henequen farms began to multiply and become prosperous. Today, half a dozen machines are in the market, some of them marvels of design and potency.

The natives of the interior, however, still use the ancient, triangular, sharpedged piece of wood called the pacché. An able-bodied person can clean with the instrument from 6 to 9 pounds of fiber a day. The fiber obtained thus possesses qualities which that cleaned by machines does not have. In the hammock-making districts of Yucatan