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Impressions of Alaska. 
By GRACE E, CooLey. : 
A short trip of five weeks to southeastern Alaska must give 
only the merest impression of its beauties and resources, yet the 
mind is crowded full of memories of pleasant days, beautiful pic- 
tures and interesting questions about our ‘‘new Eldorado.” This 
name has been justly given to Alaska, for its quartz ledges have 
been “‘ prospected” by the gold-seeker from Fort Tongas to the 
Yukon, and to him the country is best known—even the Govern- 
ment exploring parties to the interior still following his trail. 
The rest of the world, held in check by the instant barriers to 
intrusion presented by the Coast range, skirt the shore and 
scarcely touch foot a mile from the sea; while the greater mass 
of travelers who “go to Alaska” sleep, eat and live on the 
steamer from Puget’s Sound to Sitka and back to the starting- 
point. Hence we gain, at best, only a slight conception of this 
vast country, with its miles of unexplored mountains and plains, 
though the imagination is fired and the impression is vivid and 
lasting. 
To the tourist. a trip to Alaska means ocean travel, with all 
of its'delights and none of its disagreeable features. It means 
two thousand miles of panoramic scenery, as if Norway with its 
fiords and Switzerland with its glaciers and white peaks could be 
unrolled as a scroll and viewed from a steamer’s deck. There 
are to be seen dome-like peaks, snow-capped like Ranier and 
Baker, sharp-pointed and glacier-bearing like Fairweather and 
Crillon. Here also are inlets and channels, deep and narrow, 
between high, rocky walls, with the Cascades on the east bathing 
their feet in the Pacific waters, and the mountain-tops of a sub- 
merged range closing the western view. 
From Puget’s Sound north for a thousand miles to 60°, to where 
the coast line turns to run directly west, the map shows 4 long ; 
series of passage-ways between a ragged coast and the fringe ok 
out-lying islands, these last being only parts of the mountain- 
chain that dips into the sea from that lower portion in Washing- 
ton which we call the Olympics. So deep are some of these — 
passages that no anchorage is afforded, and so narrow that one — 
well-remembered night, being caught by a sudden fog, we steered 
