Travels in Alaska 



old ice-river may be seen again in imagination about 

 as vividly as if present in the flesh, with snow-clouds 

 crawling about its fountains, sunshine sparkling on 

 its broad flood, and its ten-mile ice-wall planted in the 

 deep waters of the channel and sending off its bergs 

 with loud resounding thunder. 



About noon we rounded Cape Fanshawe, scudding 

 swiftly before a fine breeze, to the delight of our 

 Indians, who had now only to steer and chat. Here we 

 overtook two Hoona Indians and their families on 

 their way home from Fort Wrangell. They had ex- 

 changed five sea-otter furs, worth about a hundred 

 dollars apiece, and a considerable number of fur-seal, 

 land-otter, marten, beaver, and other furs and skins, 

 some $800 worth, for a new canoe valued at eighty 

 dollars, some flour, tobacco, blankets, and a few bar- 

 rels of molasses for the manufacture of whiskey. 

 The blankets were not to wear, but to keep as money, 

 for the almighty dollar of these tribes is a Hudson's 

 Bay blanket. The wind died away soon after we met,' 

 and as the two canoes glided slowly side by side, the 

 Hoonas made minute inquiries as to who we were and 

 what we were doing so far north. Mr. Young's object 

 in meeting the Indians as a missionary they could in 

 part understand, but mine in searching for rocks and 

 glaciers seemed past comprehension, and they asked 

 our Indians whether gold-mines might not be the 

 main object. They remembered, however, that I had 

 visited their Glacier Bay ice-mountains a year ago, 

 and seemed to think there might be, after all, some 

 mysterious interest about them of which they were 



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