The oldest fruit in the World is the apple. It is the fruit that grew in the Garden of Eden, but people believe the apple that Eve gave Adam was a very poor one compared to the apples that grow in the State of Washington. People in Washington, D.C.—all the way across the country—buy apples that have been shipped from Washington State—3,000 miles away—for they are so much better than ordinary apples. They are “skookum.” That’s what the Indians of the Northwest call something very nice—whether it is a girl or an apple.

There are great forests in Washington and Oregon. The forest trees are cut down to make lumber for building houses; and the paper I am writing on was made from trees that grew in Oregon. How do I know that? When I hold the paper up to the light, there is printed in white—we call it a watermark—the word “Oregon.”

At the northwest corner of America is a large country that belongs to the United States and yet it is not a State. It is called a Territory. It is Alaska. The highest mountain in North America is there. It is called Mount McKinley. Alaska is so cold, so far off, and so hard to get to, and yet the United States bought it and paid millions of dollars for it, not because it had the highest mountain, but chiefly because of the fish in its waters and the fur on its animals, and then one day gold was discovered there.

Gold is a magic word. Again, as in the days of the Forty-niners, thousands of people, when they heard of the gold, left everything and, with nothing but shovels to dig the gold and sieves to strain it out of the water, started off to that far-away place, hoping to make their fortunes before the new year. Many foolishly went off with nothing to live on after they reached Alaska. They didn’t seem to know that where the gold was to be found there was no food, nothing to eat, and no stores where one could buy food. Others, more wise, carried cans of food with them, and when the foolish gold-diggers had found gold, the wise ones sold them food for their gold. For a can of beans they often asked hundreds of times what it had cost, and the foolish gold-diggers had to pay it or starve, for they couldn’t eat gold and they had to eat or die. So the wise ones came back with the gold which the foolish ones had dug, and the foolish ones were lucky to get back at all.