Travels in Alaska 



eral small villages on the green slopes between the 

 timbered mountains and the shore. Long Beach 

 made quite a display of new houses along the beach, 

 north of the mouth of the Columbia. 



I had pleasant company on the Pueblo and sat at 

 the chief engineer's table, who was a good and merry 

 talker. An old San Francisco lawyer, rather stiff and 

 dignified, knew my father-in-law, Dr. Strentzel. Three 

 ladies, opposed to the pitching of the ship, were ab- 

 sent from table the greater part of the way. My best 

 talker was an old Scandinavian sea-captain, who was 

 having a new bark built at Port Blakely, an inter- 

 esting old salt, every sentence of his conversation 

 flavored with sea-brine, bluff and hearty as a sea- 

 wave, keen-eyed, courageous, self-reliant, and so 

 stubbornly skeptical he refused to believe even in 

 glaciers. 



"After you see your bark," I said, "and find every- 

 thing being done to your mind, you had better go on 

 to Alaska and see the glaciers." 



"Oh, I haf seen many glaciers already." 



"But are you sure that you know what a glacier 

 is?" Tasked. 



"Veil, a glacier is a big mountain all covered up 

 vith ice." 



"Then a river," said I, "must be a big mountain all 

 covered with water." 



I explained what a glacier was and succeeded in 

 exciting his interest. I told him he must reform, for a 

 man who neither believed in God nor glaciers must 

 be very bad, indeed the worst of all unbelievers. 



[ 274 1 



