Alaska, the Great Country - Ella Higginson

But I had heard so much of Bishop Rowe and his self-devoted work in Alaska that I finally turned my back upon temptation and joined the narrow stream of humanity wending its way to the little church.

When Bishop Rowe came bending his dark head through the low door leading from the vestry, clad in his rich scarlet and purple and gold-embroidered robes, I thought I had never seen so handsome a man.

But his appearance was forgotten the moment he began to speak. He talked to us; but he did not preach. And we, gathered there from so many distant lands—each with his own hopes and sins and passions, his own desires and selfishness—grew closer together and leaned upon the words that were spoken there to us. They were so simple, and so earnest, and so sweet; they were so seriously and so kindly uttered.

And the text—it went with us, out into the sea-sweet, surf-beaten streets of Nome; and this was it, "Love me; and tell me so." Like the illustrious Veniaminoff, Bishop Rowe, of a different church and creed, and working in a later, more commercial age, has yet won his hold upon northern hearts by the sane and simple way of Love. The text of his sermon that gray day in the surf-beaten, tundra-sweet city of Nome is the text that he is patiently and cheerfully working out in his noble life-work.

Mr. Duncan, at Metlakahtla, has given his life to the Indians who have gathered about him; but Bishop Rowe, of All Alaska, has given his life to dark men and white, wherever they might be. Year after year he has gone out by perilous ways to find them, and to scatter among them his words of love—as softly and as gently as the Indians used to scatter the white down from the breasts of sea-birds, as a message of peace to all men.

The White Sulphur Hot Springs, now frequently called the Sitka Hot Springs, are situated on Hot Springs Bay on the eastern shore of Baranoff Island, almost directly east of Sitka.

The bay is sheltered by many small green islands, with lofty mountains rising behind the sloping shores. It is an ideally beautiful and desirable place to visit, even aside from the curative qualities of the clear waters which bubble from pools and crevices among the rocks. These springs have been famous since their discovery by Lisiansky in 1805. Sir George Simpson visited them in 1842; and with every year that has passed their praises have been more enthusiastically sung by the fortunate ones who have voyaged to that dazzlingly green and jewelled region.