162 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The scene is exactly identical, but the card has been reduced in 

 size by the omission of superfluous sky. It has been rendered 

 much fainter and more ghostlike than the original, and is perhaps 

 taken from a new negative in which the lines of the houses and 

 gravel walks have been purposely made less distinct. 



The original edition has the following on the back of the 

 card: 



" THE GLACIAL WONDER OF THE SILENT CITY. 



" For the past fifteen years Prof. Richard Willoughby has 

 been a character in Alaska as well known among the whites as 

 he has been familiar to the natives. As one of the early settlers 

 of old Fort Wrangel, in which his individuality was stamped 

 among the sturdy miners who frequented the then important 

 trading port of Alaska, he has grown with the Territory and is 

 to-day as much a part of its history as the totem poles are iden- 

 tified with the deeds of valor or commemorative of the past tri- 

 umphs of prominent members of the tribes which their hideous 

 and mysterious characters represent. 



" To him belongs the honor of being the first American who 

 discovered gold within Alaska's icy-bound peaks, but his greatest 

 achievement from a scientific standpoint is his tearing from 

 the glacier's chilly bosom the ' mirages ' of cities from distant 

 climes. 



"After four years of labor amid dangers, privations, and 

 sufferings, he accomplished for the civilized world a feat in 

 photography heretofore considered problematic. 



"It was on the longest day of June, 1888, that the camera took 

 within its grasp the reproduction of a city remote, if indeed not 

 altogether within the recesses of another world. The 



SILENT CITY 



is here presented for the consideration of the public as the wonder 

 and pride of Alaska's bleak hills, and the ever-changing glaciers 

 may never again afford a like opportunity for the accomplish- 

 ment of this sublime phenomenon." 



The picture attracted much attention and met with an encour- 

 aging sale. The skeptical bought it as an original document in 

 the natural history of mendacity. The credulous regarded it as 

 a wonder not surpassed by the gigantic glacier itself. The dis- 

 cussion arose in the newspapers as to whether some distant city, 

 as Montreal, could have been brought into view by the freaks of 

 the marvelous Alaskan atmosphere. Many who thought this 

 impossible leaned to the belief that in the heart of Alaska or in 

 British Columbia there is some great settlement of civilized men, 

 as yet undiscovered by geographers. To those who held this 

 opinion neither the nearness of the houses to the observer nor the 



