From Vancouver, British Columbia, to Skagway, Alaska, is one thousand miles.
This is a most fascinating steamer trip, which may also be made from either Seattle or San Francisco. Winding between islands and the mainland, passing glaciers with the summer sun shining overhead, the steamers stop at various places, and the interesting Totem Pole People (the Alaskan Indians), may be interviewed.
Captain Stretch, whose many years of connection as an engineer with mining and railroad enterprises in the West and Alaska render him an authority, says: “Alaska is a country unique in its geographical situation, unique in its climate, and unique in its physical beauties. Cape Barrow, its northernmost cape, is warmer than any point in the world as far north of the equator; and its southern shores bordering the North Pacific Ocean are likewise warmer than any point in the world in similar latitudes during the winter months as the result of the beneficent influence of the Japan current. Norway alone can approach it in these respects, but in Norway the mountain backbone runs parallel to the coastline, and its rivers are insignificant streams, and there is no room for extensive valleys; while in Alaska the immense quadrangle is divided into three zones by lofty mountains ... which leave between them broad plains, through which such streams as the Kuskokwin, with 600, and the Yukon, with 2,000 miles of navigable waters, open up its vast interior. Norway and Sweden are the Mecca and Medina of the European tourist in search of the picturesque and sublime, and the latter country takes its annual toll of American pilgrims on similar sights intent; but Alaska can discount anything which these countries can boast. Its mountains overtop Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, or the Matterhorn; its glaciers dwarf the Mer de Glace....
“At the Childs Glacier you may loll at ease by the river bank on a carpet of flowers while the glacier splits with a noise like a cannon shot or the staccato reports of small arms, and watch avalanche after avalanche start 300 feet above, driving the water in mighty waves up the general slope below you as they take the final plunge and float away in the narrow river. When the mist has drifted by, the dead-white face of the ice disappears. The new dress glistens with the brilliancy of diamonds, and the deeper recesses of the façade gleam blue as a summer sky unflecked by clouds.
“The charm of the glaciers is never-ending.... The peace and silence of the rock-bound fiords, clad in green, with the snowy peaks of far-off mountains gleaming through the tree tops on the skyline, suggest the delights of Lotus land; picture after picture more beautiful than anything that the Hudson can show, or either Norway or the Rhine can boast.... There are sunsets such as no painter could ever put on canvas, veritable vortices of flame, as though the world was on fire.... Even the sun is loath to leave the scene which his warmth has endowed with life, and forsakes it for only a few minutes at midnight.
“Along the Alaskan Peninsula the tourist may witness in safety the tremendous pent-up energy of the internal fires; islands raised from the bottom of the ocean one year, only to be engulfed the next, as at Bogoslop....”
Here may be seen: “The crowning peaks of a mountain range which, dividing to the east, culminate in Mount McKinley, 20,464[1] feet high, north of Cook Inlet; and Mounts St. Elias and Fairweather and their cold virginal sisters, grim guardians of the northern shores of the Pacific. These stupendous mountain masses (a mile taller than Switzerland’s champion), their feet buried under a glacier which lines the coast for more than a hundred miles, are even more impressive than the loftiest of the world’s famous peaks, either in the Himalayas or the Andes; for while these rise from lofty interior plateaus, the sweep of St. Elias is from ocean to sky, with nothing to break the foreground.... The scenic beauties of Alaska, whether they be of earth or water or of sky, are varied enough to bring enthusiasm to the lips of the most blasé traveller.”[2]
SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT
This reservation lies about one mile from the steamboat landing at Sitka, Alaska.
Here was located the village of a warlike tribe, the Kik-Siti Indians. A celebrated witch-tree of the natives and sixteen totem poles, several of which are examples of the best work of the tribes, stand along the beach.