As we steam along through sunshine and fog, past glaciers, mountains and fiords, “so wide the loneliness, so lucid the air,” we are reminded that the Ancient Mariner sailed the blue Pacific. Now the sun drops into the sea, lighting it up with a luminous glow. With a tremor and a sparkle the purple waves glimmer red, now shadow to a violet hue, and now to a crimson blue.
“Tries one, tries all, and will not stay
But flits from opal hue to hue.”
The volcanoes of Alaska! What a grand, what a wonderful panorama, as if you had rubbed Aladdin’s lamp. Expectation stood in awe when this giant upheaval was in progress. Enwrapped always in the mellow haze of white smoke and blue atmosphere, the cold clouds kissing their white brows, these sentinels old, like Wordsworth mountain, “look familiar with forgotten years.”
The prince of them all, Shishaldin, rises nine thousand feet, trailing his white robes in the blue sea.
The seventy islands of the Aleutian chain lie along the coast for thousands of miles. These islands are treeless, but green with Arctic grasses and mosses.
At Unalaska the Russians have a nicely built church. These Greek churches have no pews, the congregation standing and kneeling during the service. The priest in charge of this church speaks no English. These churches all pay an annual tribute to the patriarch in Moscow. This is all un-American. The Mary Lee Home, a Methodist mission, has a small school here.
The Aleuts, a kind, gentle people, suffered much at the hands of their Russian masters in the past. The Aleuts living in sod huts are the Crofters of America.
The fine flower of the fauna of Alaska is found in the valley of the Koyukuk River. Here tusks and bones of mastodons are found imbedded in the sand banks and gravel bars.
Since the discovery of gold in Alaska the Indians have saved many lives. Born and reared amidst these wild surroundings, where winter white and hoary stands ever at the gate of the North, wagging his shaggy beard, they have partaken of the very nature of their own rugged mountains. The long Arctic nights and the intense cold have given these people hearts of steel and muscles of iron.