Territory mountains. It is true, we could not see across the Straits when we landed at Victoria. Over the waters, across which we had come, hung lowering clouds, and the waves were tossed by the wild wind, which blew until masses of spray filled the air, and the prospect grew uncanny in its wildness. Rounding the long point of land which juts out into the sea to form Victoria harbor, the town lay all revealed to us at last. In one direction were red painted shops, set upon a high bluff overlooking the bay, and eastward there were green fields and trimly built cottages.

sippi River, north of Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Its extreme breadth from east to west is 2,200 miles. The island of Attu, in Alaska, is as far west of San Francisco as the coast of Maine is east of that city. The length of Alaska is 1,400 miles, and the shore line up and down the bays and around the islands is 25,000 miles. In other words the coast of Alaska, if extended in a straight line, would belt the globe. From a sufficiently high elevation, one looking down upon Alaska would see how numerous its islands are. Along the entire length of coast they are grouped before the gently curv

"Not today," the artist said.

channels, with a heavy growth of trees and shrubs covering their banks. There are big islands and little ones, but all have their thick covering of forests, which in nearly every instance have never been disturbed by So thickly, indeed, do the trees grow

more.

"Yes."

"Alaska?" "Yes."

"Nice trip; good bye."

It

It was not the wish which made us angry for the moment. That was good enough. But the idea of going to Alaska not causing astonishment was what troubled us. seems to be a matter of course in the north that one should go to Alaska. Searching for something very new and strange, it began to look as though we were not to find it yet. And still our most western possession is, to the great majority, a land unknown, a land unappreciated, a region of doubts. We have owned the country since 1867, but what of that? Only a score know what revenues it brings. Alaska has scenery rivaling in grandeur and beauty that of Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden; but how few are aware of it? It has glaciers larger than any others in the world; but what has ever been said of them?

The territory of Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867 for $7,200,000, has an area of 580,107 square miles, or a size equal to all of the United States east of the Missis

man.

hardly travel inland, and the natives of the country depend entirely upon their cedar canoes when moving from place to place. The canoe, in fact, is to the people of Alaska what the gondola is to Venetians; and like the dwellers by the Adriatic, those in the far North know nothing of and care nothing for horses, which in other places are so necessary.

Wrangel was the first town of any size at which we stopped after leaving Victoria. It is not a metropolis-this dark, damp, grimy little place, nestled down beside its islanddotted bay and flanked by a high hill—but to the natives it is a city of importance and many attractions. In its day-for Wrangel, like other places, has seen better times—the village had a larger population than it has at present, and its houses had a glimmer, at least, of brightness. But the surplus inhabitants have departed, and the houses have all become soaked with the ever-present moisture, and the town today is as dull and melancholy as a deserted fishing village in distant Maine.

"Does it always rain here?" asked the artist, of a rubber-coated man who piloted us about the town.

"No, not always. We do see clear sky now an' then; but 'taint usual, sir; 'taint usual."

No, I should say it was not. The clouds seem to have a particular fondness for Wrangel. They pour their blessings continually upon it, and hover about the mountains and cling to the islands, until one feels that there never is any sunlight, or that, if there is elsewhere, Wrangel never gets any of it. Everything is damp-the wharf, the houses, the trees, and the dilapidated board shops. Men wear gum boots, when they can afford any boots at all, and the natives have long since ceased to care whether they are wet or not. The time of year does not matter. It is always drizzle, always wet, always cloudy. Look upon the town. It actually has not a bright color to offer. Beginning just around a point of land that pokes its long finger out into the harbor, a crooked street extends along the water front, and leads to where the Indians have erected their own particular huts. The street is the only one that Wrangel possesses, and small though it be, it is sufficiently large to more than accommodate the people and the business of the town. There are not over twenty "whites" in the village, and counting the Indians and all, the population is under five hundred.

be of but little interest. But these early settlers, who have always had a village here, still retain many of their curious customs and modes of life, and their part of the town has at least the charm of novelty. Leaving the wharf-the only one, by the way, that there is—and following the wavering course of the narrow main street, the huts of the Indians are soon reached. A few of them are decently built, but the majority are veritable hovels, wet, dingy, smoky, and uncomfortable. Standing beside the better built homes are the totem poles-tall spires of native wood, on which are rudely carved the heads and animals that form the family crest of the inmate of the house.

An Alaska Indian is as proud of his totem as an Englishman is of his title. It is his crest and his history, both in one. There are many tribes, but only a few families in Alaska. A man belongs to the Raven, the Bear, the Wolf, or the Whale family, no matter to what tribe, whether Stickeen, Sitka, or Chilkat, he may be joined. The totem poles are not found in every village, and the best ones are at Wrangel. Many of them there are fully sixty feet in height, and are elaborately carved and painted. Until within a few years they were kept in perfect order and religiously guarded; but today-so custom changes everywhere

"Lively," he echoed. "Oh, yes; we had three thousand people here at one time." "What sent them away?"

"Mines petered out, sir. See that canoe coming in? Well, that's come from the Stickeen River region. The mouth of the stream's 'bout five miles above here, an' the river's navigable near three hundred miles. In old times the boys used to go up the Stickeen River for summer prospecting an' work, an' winter at Wrangel. Then 'twas lively no law, no order, nothing to keep things straight."

the lack of care given them. Many are but tottering where they stand, and all are scarred and weather-beaten. Seen in the wet, gray dawn of early morning, as I first saw them, they have a most weird and strange appearance; for the ravens which are carved upon them, and the whales and bears, are all of huge proportion, and have a most melancholy way of glaring down upon all who stand gazing at the barbarous relics.

Some of the totems are inside the houses. To see them, we entered a characteristic home. Passing through a narrow doorway, we were led at once into the one large room of

"Yes, pretty much so. There's a little prospecting still, but none of any account."

Were it not for its Indians, Wrangel would

smoke rising from the fire in the center of the floor found exit through a hole cut in the roof. Around the four sides of the room was a raised platform, four or five feet wide,

on which were the beds of the fathers, husbands, wives, sisters, and brothers who lived in the place. It was breakfast time when I made my call, and the family had gathered about the fire to watch the kettle boil. Either because there was too much heaviness in the atmosphere, or because the hole in the roof was not large enough, the smoke refused to make exit from the room, but rolled about within, and made blacker and dirtier yet the dark brown walls of the oneroomed house. It was far from being an inviting home, and yet it was better than the Indians generally inhabit, for the others we saw were wetter and dirtier than the first, and in many instances were made of cedartree bark, which offered but little protection from the falling rain.

Following the example set by the Indians of the Southwest, these in this far away corner of the Northwest do not hesitate to sell anything they may happen to possess. Many of the curios are well worth having. At one house I bought an elaborately decorated pair of snow-shoes, which are used during the winter months, and at another a curiously carved wooden bowl, made of cedar. The Indians are, or have been, expert workers. Not only are their baskets-made of roots and fibres, and colored with brilliant dyes-real works of art; but many of their spoons and forks are delicately turned and handsomely carved. Most of the curiosities have now found their way into the shops of the white men of Wrangel, and from there into the hands of tourists; so that in the near future the original owners will not have much left to prove their efficiency as workers.

The distance between Victoria and Wrangel is a little less than eight hundred miles. In that number of miles, strange as it may seem, there is not a moment when one is in danger of being sea-sick, for the course leads in and out among the almost countless islands lying abreast of British Columbia. Journeying to Alaska is like sailing down the St. Lawrence River, for the water is as calm,

the islands are as numerous, and the channels as full of turns. Leaving Victoria at an early hour in the evening, and when the wind had somewhat abated its fury, we turned toward the north, and followed until early morning the tree-covered shores of Vancouver Island. It was a beautiful night, clear and moonlit, and as we walked the upper deck, the islands among which we sailed and the shore of the huge island bearing George Vancouver's name were all clearly outlined. Behind us the moon made a long track of silvery light over the quiet waters, and far away in the distance the mountain peaks of the region lifted their proud heights into the star-dotted sky. At daybreak we entered Departure Bay, calling first at the little town of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, and then going northward three miles to the Bay, at which ships bound for long journeys. receive their supply of coal. The Bay itself does not disappoint one who has read of it in the writings of the old discoverers that sailed into its placid waters a century ago. There are the two the two wooded headlands forming the harbor, and islands, with tall pine trees growing from rocky ledges, and a long curved beach, behind which rise a group of hills with their sides and summits covered with the ever-present forests. In the years which have passed since George Vancouver saw the place the changes have been slight, the only one of importance being the wharves which stretch out into the water, and from which the coal from the mines near by is dumped into the waiting vessels.

The Nanaimo coal mines are the largest ones on the Island, and are located about five miles inland. Connecting them with the wharf is a narrow-gauge track, over which there is a continual running of empty and loaded cars. Vancouver has a large supply of coal lands and timber. It is proposed now to build a railroad from Victoria to the Nanaimo fields, and some of the capitalists of San Francisco are interested in the scheme.

II.

FROM Departure Bay to Wrangel, the first shipping-place of any importance in Alaska, the opportunity is afforded one of enjoying some of the sublimest scenery in this or any other country. Possessing all the grandeur of scenes in Switzerland, the country is as weird as parts of Norway, and as wild as neglected sections of Maine. In fact, it is altogether strange. One is continually admiring the features. Now the ship sails through channels varying from a mile to five miles in width, and from ten to forty miles in length; and again enters what seems to be a mountain-guarded lake, without entrance and without exit. On all sides rise the mountains, high, tree-covered, grand, and massive. Now heavy ledges of granite crop out above the trees, and then streams of water, formed from the deep banks of snow that are visible in the distance, leap from the heights above, and fall in silvery masses into the waters over which we ride. Many of these miniature Niagaras are exceedingly beautiful, seen gliding down the deep green slopes, and glistening in the sunlight; and some of them are dashed into steam-like spray as they fall upon projecting rocks and are there dashed into a thousand fragments. Early in the season-in May and June-the waterfalls are larger and stronger than in September, and plough great gullies as they tear down the mountain sides, and the hills are covered with scars, showing where the torrents have torn the trees away, and dug channels to run their mad races in.

In one of the straits sailed through, known as the Seymour Narrows, the width of water is not over half a mile, and the actual channel is less than a quarter of a mile wide. Here the mountains are higher than in most places, and the depth of water is seventy fathoms, and the current runs at the rate of nine miles an hour. Full of hidden rocks, narrow and tortuous, the place is as dangerous as the St. Lawrence Rapids, and still holds a United States ship which lies rotting away seventy fathoms below the surface. Another passage of small width is Grenville

Straits. It is forty miles long and as straight as an arrow. Parallel ranges of mountains guard it on the east and west, and its waters are as calm as a mill-pond, and reflect the trees, the rocky headlands, and the snowcovered peaks that rise from the channel's edge. Sailing up the narrow way, one cannot but imagine that Arizona has been flooded, and that he is sailing among its mountains. For here, as there, the peaks are sharp-pointed, and grow faintly blue in the distance, and there is the same wild ruggedness which renders the southern territory so attractive.

"This is better than seeing the fjords of Norway," said the artist, as he gazed at the varying colors, and watched the clear reflections all about us.

"It is like sailing through the cañons of the Rockies," I said.

Escaping from Grenville Straits, and entering the more open waters known as Dixon's Entrance, we had our first glimpse of Alaska. Over at our right, toward the east, the forests of British Columbia still reached down to the water's edge, and far away to the dreary solitudes of the interior; westward lay isolated islands, forming a natural breakwater between us and the open Pacific; behind us rose the mountains about which we had sailed. But toward the north, and so far away that a thin blue haze hung over them, towered the pointed cones and the heavily-wooded heights of our distant possession. As the gigantic summits of the Rocky Mountain range rise in the west before one who rides across the plains of eastern Colorado, and fill the sky with their white crests, so the mountain islands of Alaska look at one sailing toward them from the south. They are of every shape and size, these guardians of the north, but all are tall and graceful, and if we can but catch them when there are no clouds to hide them, we will see how beautiful they are. As we neared them the sky was free of mists, and the sunlight flooded all the region, and white heads rising proudly above dark blue forests glistened like pillars of ice in the brilliant light. Gradually approaching our country, the islands which form Alaska began to grow less shad