The Home I Found in Alaska 



hemlocks rising higher and higher on the steep green 

 slopes; stripes of paler green where winter avalanches 

 have cleared away the trees, allowing grasses and 

 willows to spring up; zigzags of cascades appearing 

 and disappearing among the bushes and trees; short, 

 steep glens with brawling streams hidden beneath 

 alder and dogwood, seen only where they emerge on 

 the brown algae of the shore ; and retreating hollows, 

 with lingering snow-banks marking the fountains of 

 ancient glaciers. The steamer is often so near the 

 shore that you may distinctly see the cones clustered 

 on the tops of the trees, and the ferns and bushes at 

 their feet. 



But new scenes are brought to view with magical 

 rapidity. Rounding some bossy cape, the eye is 

 called away into far-reaching vistas, bounded on 

 either hand by headlands in charming array, one dip- 

 ping gracefully beyond another and growing fainter 

 and more ethereal in the distance. The tranquil 

 channel stretching river-like between, may be stirred 

 here and there by the silvery plashing of upspringing 

 salmon, or by flocks of white gulls floating like water- 

 lilies among the sun spangles; while mellow, tempered 

 sunshine is streaming over all, blending sky, land, and 

 water in pale, misty blue. Then, while you are dream- 

 ily gazing into the depths of this leafy ocean lane, the 

 little steamer, seeming hardly larger than a duck, 

 turning into some passage not visible until the mo- 

 ment of entering it, glides into a wide expanse a 

 sound filled with islands, sprinkled and clustered in 

 forms and compositions such as nature alone can in- 



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