On the 2d of May we took passage at Victoria, on the Pacific Coast Steamship Company’s vessel Queen, and started upon a delightful voyage to Alaska, that opalescent gem in the frosted coronet of the far northwest. The trip is a revelation, a day-dream of indescribable transports, a luxury of blissful surprises. It is a strange combination of ocean and inland water travel, and just enough of each to provide all the pleasures of both, with none of the monotonies or discomforts of either. The route is almost entirely land-locked through channels of varying width, among islands which appear numberless, and as green with prolific vegetation as the shores of Killarney’s lakes.
UMATILLA INDIAN CAMP, OREGON.
At places the channel narrows and passes through walls of very great height, and again widens to many miles, but all the while there are emerald shores, and high-rising banks over which tumble many beautiful waterfalls, and still above these, in the hazy backgrounds, are snow-capped mountains. Two hundred miles north of Victoria is Nanaimo, the last town with telegraphic connections, and six hundred miles beyond the steamer touches at Fort Wrangel, where the first contact with Alaska Indians is made, and interest at once centers in the curious appearance and habits which they display. Passing thence through Wrangel Narrows the region of ice is reached, indicated by a few straggling bergs that have become detached from the glacier that forms in a fiord called Thunder Bay, near the mouth of Stikeen River. Then follows a view of the Coast Range, which is rent with icy cañons that glow and gleam with refractions of clear sunlight, until in places they suggest the palace of Iris. Through this maze of mighty wonders the steamer plows her way to the town of Juneau, famous not so much for its latitude as being the location of the largest quartz-mill in the world. Thence we proceeded through a labyrinth of islands into Lynn Canal, which is considered to be the “most sublimely beautiful and spacious of all the mountain-walled channels of the Alaska route.” The Auk and Eagle Glaciers are displayed on the right as you enter the canal, coming with grand effect from their far-reaching fountains and down through the forests. But it is on the west side of the canal, near the head, that the most striking feature of the landscape is seen—the Davidson Glacier. It first appears as an immense ridge of ice thrust forward into the channel, but when you have gained a position directly in front, it is shown as a broad flood issuing from a noble granite gate-way, and spreading out to right and left in a beautiful fan-shaped mass, three or four miles in width, the front of which is separated from the water by its terminal moraine. This is one of the most notable of the large glaciers that are in the first stage of decadence, reaching nearly to tide-water, but failing to enter it, send off icebergs. Davidson Glacier is on the left shore of Chilcat River, and very near the Indian village of Chilcat, the northernmost point reached by the regular line of steamers. The place is of very little interest except for its salmon canneries and other fisheries. Cod, herring and halibut are very plentiful, but all the streams thereabout abound with salmon. Indeed, during certain seasons they are so numerous as to fairly choke the shallow rivers, and in places they may be scooped up with shovels. From this point the steamer turns south to Icy Strait, then proceeds north again by that channel into Glacier Bay, whence beyond to Mount St. Elias is the real ice-land of Alaska.
INDIAN RIVER, ALASKA.
THE MOUNTAIN NEAR MUIR GLACIER.
According to general opinion Alaska is a cold and forbidding region, fit for habitation only by Esquimau Indians and fur traders. But this opinion is very much overdrawn, for in the valleys and along the islands of the coast, where the influence of the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean is felt, the climate is mild, and a vegetation almost semi-tropical is produced. This is shown to a considerable extent in the photograph of Indian River on this page.—The companion picture, with our photographer in the foreground, represents a front view of a portion of Muir Glacier, where the ice accumulation of centuries has piled up until it is mountain high.