Southeastern Alaska is that seemingly insignificant little scraggly piece of real estate hanging on precariously to the lower right-hand corner of the big Alaska map. Its narrowed coastline, where the great Fairweather Range bulges out from the Canadian hinterlands to the waters of the North Pacific, seems barely enough to keep this scrap of land tied to the biggest Alaska land mass to the north and west. Yet this is the land where for most of Alaska's young history the greater bulk of the population once lived. This is where Russians built a city that was termed by some the "capital of the Pacific," a headquarters operation for all Russian endeavors in the east Pacific regions, and where English and spanish and French and Yankees explored and left their names behind. This is where the first of Alaska's great salmon canneries were built. Here were some of the largest and richest gold mines in the world. Here also is the homeland of Tlingits, some Haidas, and a few late-arriving Tsimshians. And before them, unknown people who only left a few notes of their passing scribed in stone at the mouths of rivers and just beyond the tide.