In the village, which claims to be the second town in Alaska, we have walked about and seen some of the totem poles which stand before many of the Indian cabins. Grotesque things, surely.
It is now near nine o’clock and yet the lingering twilight permits one to read. At Dawson, they tell me, there is in June no night, and baseball matches are played at 10 P. M.
August 25, 1903.
We did not leave Wrangel till 2 A. M., lying there waiting for the flood of the tide. We were to pass through the very tortuous, narrow and difficult straits and passages between Wrangel Bay and Frederick Sound, through which the tides rush with terrific fury—the tides rise twenty or thirty feet along these shores—and the ship would only venture at flood tide and after dawn. In order to see these picturesque passages, I climbed out between three and four o’clock this morning, wrapped in a blanket shawl above my overcoat, and stood in the ice-chilled air while we threaded slowly our dangerous way. Along sheer mountain-sides, between low wooded islands (all fir), a channel carefully marked with many buoys and white beacons, with many sharp turns, finally entering the great Frederick Sound, where many whales were blowing, and we saw our first real icebergs—masses of ice, blue and green, translucent, with deep, clear coloring.
APPROACHING FORT WRANGEL.
THE PIER—FORT WRANGEL.