Travels in Alaska 



climate, moss-grown and tufted with grass and bushes, 

 but muddy on the sides below the limit of the bog- 

 line. The ground in general was an oozy, mossy bog 

 on a foundation of jagged rocks, full of concealed pit- 

 holes. These picturesque rock, bog, and stump ob- 

 structions, however, were not so very much in the 

 way, for there were no wagons or carriages there. 

 There was not a horse on the island. The domestic 

 animals were represented by chickens, a lonely cow, a 

 few sheep, and hogs of a breed well calculated to 

 deepen and complicate the mud of the streets. 



Most of the permanent residents of Wrangell were 

 engaged in trade. Some little trade was carried on in 

 fish and furs, but most of the quickening business of 

 the place was derived from the Cassiar gold-mines, 

 some two hundred and fifty or three hundred miles 

 inland, by way of the Stickeen River and Dease Lake. 

 Two stern-wheel steamers plied on the river between 

 Wrangell and Telegraph Creek at the head of nav- 

 igation, a hundred and fifty miles from Wrangell, 

 carrying freight and passengers and connecting with 

 pack-trains for the mines. These placer mines, on trib- 

 utaries of the Mackenzie River, were discovered in the 

 year 1874. About eighteen hundred miners and pros- 

 pectors were said to have passed through Wrangell 

 that season of 1879, about half of them being China- 

 men. Nearly a third of this whole number set out 

 from here in the month of February, traveling on the 

 Stickeen River, which usually remains safely frozen 

 until toward the end of April. The main body of the 

 miners, however, went up on the steamers in May and 



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