The Fraser Canyon is deep, and carries a larger river among higher mountains. Its shores are steep, but are composed of firmer rocks, along which the railway is constructed largely on galleries, with frequent tunnels. Deep in the fissure are Indians spearing for salmon, and an occasional Chinaman may be seen on a sand-bar washing out the silt to find gold, as both these rivers bring down gold-bearing sands. The rocky development of the Fraser and the magnitude of its canyon increase as it plunges deeper among the higher Coast range mountains. For thirty miles below North Bend, a place where enough flat land is left on a terrace for a little railway station, is the most impressive portion, and the final scene of grandeur on this route through the Rockies. Almost perpendicular enclosing mountains tower above, and the river is compressed by high walls of black rocks, so steep that the road is placed upon a shelf hewn out along them. Through this deep, contracted canyon the river winds, at times confined into such narrow crooked straits that the water rushes in swiftly-moving massive billows like the Niagara rapids. Tunnels pierce the jutting cliffs, bridges and walls carry the railway along, and at intervals wild cascades leap through fissures down the mountain sides. The ever-present and industrious Indians are seen in most perilous positions down by the river catching the bright-colored salmon, which they hang upon rude drying-poles among the crags. There is a brief little village, now and then, along this dreary canyon, where there may be a sparse bit of flat terrace, enabling a few white people to live in company with Indians and Chinamen, the "Joss House" of the Celestial and his queer-looking cemetery, with its tall poles and streamers to keep away the dreaded birds and evil spirits, being conspicuous. Thus the river forces its passage through the Coast range, until at Yale the mountains recede, the canyon gradually broadens into a flat intervale between distant ridges, and there are farms and pastures. As the railway emerges from the mountains, the gleaming white dome of the isolated snow-capped Mount Baker is seen glistening under the sunlight sixty miles away just beyond the United States border. The Fraser River finally flows into the Gulf of Georgia, after a course of six hundred miles through the mountains from the northward, the chief river of British Columbia. It was named for Simon Fraser of the Northwest Fur Company, who explored it to its source amid incredible hardships and difficulties in 1808. The finest timber grows throughout this region. The railway terminates at the city of Vancouver, on Burrard Inlet, a fine harbor of the Gulf of Georgia, founded in 1885, and having eighteen thousand people, with considerable manufactures and an extensive trade. The lower Fraser River is a great salmon-canning region, the shores having many canning-factories, while at New Westminster, the chief town, are large sawmills, the two products of this district being fish and lumber, and the Chinese, who are numerous, doing most of the labor.
BOUND TO ALASKA.
Westward from the Gulf of Georgia is Vancouver Island, stretching parallel to the coast and nearly three hundred miles long, the larger part of it being composed of mountains, some reaching an elevation of over seven thousand feet. It has fine forests and valuable coal mines at Nanaimo and Wellington, which furnish fuel supplies along the Pacific coast. The redoubtable Spanish adventurer, Juan de Fuca, discovered it in 1592, and his name was given the strait at its southern extremity, separating the island from the United States. The Spaniards held it until near the close of the eighteenth century, when Captain George Vancouver came with a squadron and it was surrendered to the English by the Spanish Governor Quadra, its name afterwards being called for many years Quadra and Vancouver, after the two officers. Upon a little harbor at the southeastern extremity in 1842, the Hudson Bay Company established Fort Victoria, which has since become the capital of the Province of British Columbia. This is a pleasant city of twenty-five thousand population, having an extensive Chinese quarter. To the westward is the important British naval station and dockyard of Esquimalt, upon an admirable land-locked harbor of large capacity.
For over a thousand miles, a series of internal waters behind large islands, with bays, straits and archipelagoes, lead northward from the Gulf of Georgia to Alaska, making one of the most admirable scenic routes in America. Their shores are high mountains covered with superb forests, and the voyage over these waters is most attractive. From the Gulf of Georgia the route passes through Discovery Passage, the Seymour Narrows (where the tide rushes sometimes at twelve knots an hour), Johnstone Strait, Broughton Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound. North of Vancouver Island there is a short passage on the open sea and then Fitzhugh Sound is entered, opening into the Lama Passage and Seaforth Channel to Millbank Sound, where there is another brief open sea journey. Then various interior waters lead to Greenville Channel and Chatham Sound. High mountains are everywhere, and deep, narrow fiords run far up into the land, the journey displaying so much magnificent scenery that the mind soon becomes satiated with the excessive supply of unadulterated grandeur. In this region is the Nasse River, where in the spring the Indians catch the Oulichan or "candle-fish," which gives them light, this fish being so full of oil that when dry and provided with a wick it burns like a candle. Just beyond is the boundary of Alaska at fifty-four degrees forty minutes north latitude, the famous "fifty-four forty or fight" boundary of 1843, when the United States claimed that Oregon extended up to the Russian territory at that latitude, but afterwards abandoned the claim. Alaska is a very large country, exceeding one-sixth the area of the United States, and was bought from Russia by Secretary Seward in 1867 for $7,200,000, a price then deemed extravagant, but the purchase has been enormously profitable. The name is derived from the Indian Al-ay-ek-sha, meaning the "Great land." Besides its large extent of main land, it includes some fifteen thousand islands, and its enormous river, the Yukon, flowing into the Behring Sea, has a delta sixty miles wide at its mouth, is three thousand miles long, and is navigable for almost two thousand miles. Although Alaska's productiveness seems just beginning to be realized, yet it has yielded in gold and furs, fish and other products, since the purchase, over $150,000,000.
Sitka, Alaska, from the Sea
Within Alaska, the route of exploration continues through Clarence Strait to the Alexander Archipelago, comprising several thousand islands, many of which are mountainous, and about eleven hundred of the larger ones have been charted. Here is Fort Wrangell, seven hundred miles from Victoria, on one of the islands, a little settlement named after Baron Wrangell, the Russian Governor of Alaska in 1834. Upon landing, the visitors see the Indians and their chief curiosity, the "totem poles," erected in front of their houses, and carved with rude figures emblematic of the owner and his ancestors. These poles are twenty to sixty feet in height, and two to five feet in diameter. The natives are divided into clans, of which the Whale, the Eagle, the Wolf and the Raven are the chief representatives and are said to have been the progenitors. These are also carved on the poles and show the intermarriages of ancestors, the leading families having the most elaborate poles. Beyond Fort Wrangell are Soukhoi Channel and Frederick Sound, leading into Chatham Strait, having on its western side Baranoff Island, on the outer edge of which is Sitka Sound. Here is Sitka, the capital of Alaska, in a well-protected bay dotted with pleasant islands in front and having snow-covered mountains for a high background. Alexander Baranoff founded the town in 1804, the first Russian Governor of Alaska, and there are now about twelve hundred inhabitants, mostly Indians. The old wooden Baranoff Castle, which was the residence of the Russian Governors, is on a hill near the landing-place. The main street leads past the Greek Church, surmounted with its bulbous spire, having six sweet-toned bells brought from Moscow, and adjoining it are various old-time log houses built by the early Russians. The church is still maintained by the Russian Government. The visitors buy curiosities and invest their small change in the Indians who get up monotonous dances or exciting canoe races for their amusement. It is a curious fact that, owing to the Kuro Siwo, or Japanese warm current coming across the Pacific, Sitka has a mild and most equable climate, the summer temperature averaging 54° and the winter 32°, the thermometer seldom falling to zero.
The Stephens Passage leads north from Frederick Sound, and into it opens Taku Inlet, a large fiord displaying fine glaciers. Here at Holkham Bay in 1876 began the first placer gold-mining in Alaska. Just beyond is Gastineaux Channel, between the mainland and Douglas Island. Upon its eastern bank, nine hundred miles from Victoria, is Juneau, the largest town in Alaska, having fifteen hundred population, about half of them whites; an American settlement, begun in 1880 under Yankee auspices, and named after the nephew of the founder of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The people are mostly gold-miners. The little white houses are on a narrow strip of comparatively level land along the shore, having a high and precipitous mountain behind. Juneau deals in furs and Chilkat blankets, the latter, when genuine, being made of the hair of mountain-goats and colored with native dyes. It is also a starting-point for the Klondyke and Yukon regions. Across the narrow strait, upon Douglas Island, is the famous Treadwell gold-mine, having three enormous ore-crushing mills, the largest in the world, aggregating nearly eight hundred stamps. This is a huge mountain of gold-ore which John Treadwell bought in 1882 from its owner for $430. It has paid since then $9,000,000 in dividends, and now with increased output crushes three thousand tons of ore daily, netting $4 gold per ton, and pours into the laps of the Rothschilds, its present owners, probably $2,000,000 annually from the enlarged product. The ore actually in sight in the mountain is estimated to be worth five times as much as was originally paid for the whole of Alaska. There is a native Indian cemetery adjoining Juneau, having curious little huts containing the cremated remains of the dead, with each one's personal effects.
THE GREAT MUIR GLACIER.