26 THE NAUTILUS. 



ramie view in all directions over thousands of square miles of water 

 with scores of islands, and the mainland rising foothill above foothill 

 to the Olympics and the Selkirks with their snowy ranges, and 

 dominating and crowning all, the splendid peaks of Mt. Baker and 

 Mt. Rainier. 



We were soon established in camp quarters after our arrival, and 

 regular work got under way. Here I met for the first time Dr 

 Kellogg of Williams College, who was doing some most interesting 

 work on the siphonal currents of the pelecypods. Others were doing 

 equally interesting original work in various lines of botany and 

 zoology, but of course the dredging was most important from my 

 point of view. Their dredging was done by a regular shrimp dredger 

 who was employed by the season. The apparatus is crude but very 

 efficient. A trawl twelve feet wide was used, and as the water is 

 shallow everywhere, the boat only carried about fifty fathoms of 

 cable. No soundings were taken, but the depths, which generally 

 varied between ten and thirty fathoms, were ascertained from the 

 charts. I have done considerable work with the Alexander Agassiz, 

 the boat of the Marine Biological Association of San Diego, and I 

 spent five days aboard the Fish Commission Steamer Albatross off 

 San Diego, but I have never seen such a wealth of material as we 

 got at all stations. The great trawl always filled in a few minutes, 

 but I was impressed by the fact that the variety of species was not 

 nearly so great as in our more southern waters. As no one was 

 specially interested in mollusks, I was allowed the privilege of taking 

 any of the dredgings which I could handle. In fact we were royally 

 treated by everybody at the station, and I shall always count the ten 

 days we spent there as " the best yet." 



A week later we were on onr way to Alaska, that country of which 

 some one has said, " If you are old, go by all means ; but if you are 

 young, wait. The scenery of Alaska is much grander than anything 

 else of the kind in the world, and it is not well to dull one's capacity 

 by seeing the finest first." As representatives of one of our local 

 papers we were a part of the National Editorial Association, and as 

 far as we went all Alaska was ours for the asking. The usual Alaska 

 trip consists of a run from Seattle up to Skagway and back, the whole 

 distance with the exception of a dozen miles or so being in land-locked 

 channels, often only a few hundred yards wide, bounded by steep, 

 heavily wooded mountains on either hand. Various towns of much 



