Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Miss Field's experience in Juneau must have been, indeed, a contrast to the scenic setting of her girlhood, when, in Florence, Italy, she studied music and art; where Walter Savage Landor taught her Latin and wrote classic verse to her; where Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning welcomed her to their poets' home in Casa Guidi; and where she met George Eliot, whose genius kindled her own. With her literary talent stimulated and all aglow in this radiant atmosphere, Miss Field wrote that exquisite series of monographs on Landor, Mrs. Browning, Madame la Marchesa Ristori, and several of the Italian poets, which were published in the Atlantic Monthly (then the magazine which was the very arbiter of American literary destiny), a series that has been often erroneously attributed to the eminent sculptor and poet, William Wetmore Story, as in those days the Atlantic Monthly preserved the silence of the gods regarding the identity of its contributors.
It is something to have passed one's early youth in Arcady; and between those Florentine days, and her appearance as the first lecturer in Alaska, there lay a series of richly varied years and achievements. Kate Field seemed to be always winging her shining way, and it was during an interlude in Hawaii, whose beauty steeped her in gladness, that she fared forth, on a golden day in the Maytime of 1896, on still another journey; a mystic journey into those realms of the Life More Abundant, and entered on a new phase of experiences, even those of the Adventure Beautiful.
From Juneau the Grand Trunk Pacific Line of steamers proceeds to Skagway, through the Lynn Canal, considered, all in all, the most beautiful of the fiords of Alaska. Skagway rejoices in the poetic designation of "the flower City of Alaska" from the amazing luxuriance and loveliness of the riotous floral growth in the gardens of the town and also in the outlying country. Skagway is the gateway to the Yukon, and the tourist who wishes to visit Canada's portion of this great Northland embarks on the White Pass and Yukon Railway, which affords easy access to Lake Atlin and down the Yukon to Dawson, the capital of Yukon Territory.
The future importance of Skagway depends largely on the success of the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Of this, however, there is practically no question. Skagway has a population of more than two thousand; and it is splendidly equipped with cable, telephone and telegraph services; with electric lighting; with good schools and churches; and with shops and stores furnishing an adequate assortment for all needs of utility and of taste and beauty; it has a very attractive resident region, and its gardens are already famous. During the Klondike excitement of 1897-98, Skagway was the base of operations for many thousands of prospectors who thronged this region. It is especially attractive to the devotees of ethnological science, as it is near some of the more interesting Indian villages, and it has supreme attractions for the artist. The glaciers of Davidson and Mendenhall are near, and nowhere are the enchantments of a summer in the far northlands more alluring and spellbinding to the lover of flowers and fragrances, of stars and sunsets, of the beauty that flashes from solid mountain walls of opal pinnacles and glittering palisades, in an atmosphere prismatic in colour—nowhere are there more lovely "lands of summer beyond the sea" than in and around Skagway.
It has been more or less generally supposed that the climate of Alaska was inevitably severe and fairly arctic in its character. On the contrary, the mean temperature of Juneau for July is fifty-seven degrees and the thermometer often ranges from seventy to even ninety. Thus the mean temperature of Juneau for July is only one degree less than that of San Francisco for August. The equability of the temperature in Southern Alaska is a feature of importance. The entire land, in summer, is covered with a dense vegetation.
One of the great marvels of nature in the Alaskan and Yukon regions is that of the matchless spectacle of the Northern Lights. Not even the glacier can rival Aurora Borealis. It is Robert Service who is the bard of the mystic illuminations that are fairly before the eye of the reader of that scintillating poem, the "Ballad of the Northern Lights."