"Travels in Alaska 



uninviting as seen from the ship, the magnificent 

 forests keeping well back out of sight beyond the 

 reach of the sea winds ; those of Oregon and Washing- 

 ton are in some places clad with conifers nearly down 

 to the shore; even the little detached islets, so marked 

 a feature to the northward, are mostly tree-crowned. 

 Up through the Straits of Juan de Fuca the forests, 

 sheltered from the ocean gales and favored with 

 abundant rains, flourish in marvelous luxuriance on 

 the glacier-sculptured mountains of the Olympic 

 Range. 



We arrived in Esquimault Harbor, three miles from 

 Victoria, on the evening of the fourth day, and drove 

 to the town through a magnificent forest of Douglas 

 spruce, — with an undergrowth in open spots of oak, 

 madrone, hazel, dogwood, alder, spiraea, willow, and 

 wild rose, — and around many an upswelling mou- 

 tonne rock, freshly glaciated and furred with yellow 

 mosses and lichens. 



Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was in 

 1879 a small old-fashioned English town on the south 

 end of Vancouver Island. It was said to contain about 

 six thousand inhabitants. The government buildings 

 and some of the business blocks were noticeable, but 

 the attention of the traveler was more worthily at- 

 tracted to the neat cottage homes found here, em- 

 bowered in the freshest and floweriest climbing roses 

 and honeysuckles conceivable. Californians may 

 well be proud of their home roses loading sunny veran- 

 das, climbing to the tops of the roofs and falling over 

 the gables in white and red cascades. But here, with 



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