travels in Alaska 



meadow, or a cascade in its dell; or even a grand 

 master view of mountains beheld from some com- 

 manding outlook after climbing from height to height 

 above the forests. These may be attempted, and 

 more or less telling pictures made of them ; but in these 

 coast landscapes there is such indefinite, on-leading 

 expansiveness, such a multitude of features without 

 apparent redundance, their lines graduating delicately 

 into one another in endless succession, while the 

 whole is so fine, so tender, so ethereal, that all {)en- 

 work seems hopelessly unavailing. Tracing shining 

 ways through fiord and sound, past forests and water- 

 falls, islands and mountains and far azure headlands, 

 it seems as if surely we must at length reach the very 

 paradise of the poets, the abode of the blessed. 



Some idea of the wealth of this scenery may be 

 gained from the fact that the coast-line of Alaska is 

 about twenty-six thousand miles long, more than 

 twice as long as all the rest of the United States. 

 The islands of the Alexander Archipelago, with the 

 straits, channels, canals, sounds, passages, and fiords, 

 form an intricate web of land and water embroidery 

 sixty or seventy miles wide, fringing the lofty icy chain 

 of coast mountains from Puget Sound to Cook Inlet; 

 and, with infinite variety, the general pattern is har- 

 monious throughout its whole extent of nearly a 

 thousand miles. Here you glide into a narrow chan- 

 nel hemmed in by mountain walls, forested down to 

 the water's edge, where there is no distant view, and 

 your attention is concentrated on the objects close 

 about you — the crowded spires of the spruces and 



[ 14] 



