B74 TWO DIANAS IN ALASKA 



music of their bubbling waters. Far below the vast 

 primeval forests lie, as yet scarcely trodden by the 

 feet of men, and still immune from devastations 

 wrought by their destroying axes. Here is the land 

 of mournful solitudes, where oft " the air a solemn 

 stillness holds," and where, when Nature shows her 

 fierce moods, chill blasts sweep down from barren 

 wastes to work destruction 'midst the fading summer 

 leaves. 



Who is there amongst us that can listen unmoved 

 in mountain lonelinesses or forest solitudes, to the 

 wild, weird cadence of rushing waters mingled with 

 the sighing of the winds ? 



Long since I read the words of an unknown writer 

 who was gifted with that golden talent, the glory of 

 words. Time has doubtless dimmed my memory, 

 but I venture to attempt a repetition of the lines, 

 since none which my feeble pen can create will so 

 aptly describe the feelings of a wanderer in the wilds 

 of Northern climes. 



" When the wan fires of twilight are dying to a 

 weird and ghostly light, and the woods look lone 

 and spectral against a fading sky, when the silence 

 dares not breathe for dread, and the wind wails once 

 and dies, it is as though some great magician had 

 laid the world under a spell. For the feelings excited 

 by twilight's phantom gloom are restless, fevered, 

 morbid. An hour ago, looking on the ineffable 

 glories of sunset, the soul was touched by a divine 

 longing, raised to invisible heights, set above the 

 reach of Time, with the angelic host in the eternal 



