Her decks were now thronged with hopeful Klondikers of all ages and descriptions, the majority men, though there were a few brave women who preferred roughing it with their husbands to staying behind in physical comfort, but alone. On the bow temporary stalls had been built for a score of horses intended for use in the coast towns or on the trails.
As the wharf receded David caught a glimpse of a girlish figure and a face framed in wavy light hair, among the crowd. Flora saw him at the same moment and waved her handkerchief. How pretty and winsome she looked! David vowed then and there to bring her that bear-skin at all hazards. At last, when he could see her no longer, he turned toward the stateroom on the upper deck abaft the pilot-house, where his father was stowing away the brown canvas bags which contained their clothing and such small articles as they would need on the trail.
We must pass rapidly over the events of the voyage, filled though it was with experiences quite new to the Bradfords. At Victoria, the pleasant little capital of British Columbia, situated on the southern point of Vancouver Island, where the steamer remained half a day, Mr. Bradford procured two mining licenses which gave himself and David the right to locate claims in Canadian territory, cut timber, and take game and fish. These licenses cost ten dollars apiece, and no claim could be legally staked without one. Poor Roly, not having reached the required age of eighteen, could take neither license nor claim. This business completed, they wandered through the city, David securing a picture of the magnificent Parliament building then just finished.
Two days later, after passing up the sheltered Gulf of Georgia and crossing the broad, blue expanse of Queen Charlotte's Sound, the steamer entered a narrow waterway between islands on the west and the mainland of British Columbia on the east. Here the scenery was of the most bold and rugged description, reminding the travellers of the Hudson where it breaks through the Catskills. On either side rose immense mountain masses, covered below to the water's edge with a virgin forest of spruce, cedar, and hemlock, while from the bleak, treeless summits the snow could sometimes be seen blowing into the air like smoke.
"What a pity," exclaimed Mr. Bradford to David and Roly, as they stood upon the deck gazing about them in admiration, "that the grandeur and beauty of this coast are so little known! We've been travelling for hours through this paradise without seeing a hotel, or a cottage, or even a log-cabin, and yet I believe it will not be long before tourists will throng to this region. Now there," said he, pointing to a level plateau on the top of a forest-covered ridge which rose a hundred feet above the water,—"there is an ideal site for a hotel. It commands a view of the strait both north and south, and of the mountains in every direction. No doubt there is a lake in that hollow beyond it, and the waterfall yonder is its outlet. I should like to spend a summer right here."
That evening they emerged into Dixon's Entrance, where the open Pacific tossed them about for several hours until they came again into the lee of islands. Morning found them at Saxman, a village of the extreme southern end of Alaska, where the "Farallon" stopped to take on a passenger.
At Ketchikan, a few miles beyond, there was a good wharf and a considerable settlement, and here the Bradfords saw for the first time a raven, which the boys mistook for a crow. Here, too, they first beheld an Indian totem-pole,—a great tree-trunk carved into grotesque shapes of beast and bird, and strange caricatures of the human countenance, all of which doubtless had a significance relating to the tribe, family, and achievements of the deceased chieftain whose memory it perpetuated.
David, with the enthusiasm of an amateur, attempted to photograph this strange column, but as the day was dark and a damp snow was falling, he failed to obtain first-rate results.
At ten in the evening the lights of Wrangel, or Fort Wrangel, as it is often called, being a United States military post, came into view. Late as it was, the Bradfords decided to go ashore, for this was one of the larger Alaskan towns. The wharf was unlighted save by the steamer's lamps, but they picked their way without much difficulty. Most of the townspeople seemed to have retired, and only the saloons and dance halls showed signs of life. From these places the travellers heard the strains of a fiddle, or the worn, hard voice of some poor girl doomed to sing to a throng of rough men amid the glare of lights and the fumes of beer and bad tobacco.
There were many evidences that the gold excitement had brought a large if transient population to Wrangel. New frame buildings were in process of erection all along what appeared to be the main street, which was, however, utterly impassable for any kind of wheeled vehicle, being a deep ditch far below the level of the board walk which skirted it. In this hollow what little light there was revealed logs, lumber, boats, and mud, and it was evident that at high tide the water filled it. The buildings were raised on piles to the level of the future highway.