FAR AND NEAR 



our right, with a salmon cannery at the head of it, 

 and a large, rapid trout stream making a fine water- 

 fall. Here, among the employees of the cannery, we 

 see our first Alaskan Indians and note their large, 

 round, stolid, innocent faces. Here also some of us 

 get our first taste of Alaska woods. In trying to 

 make our way to the falls we are soon up to our 

 necks amid moss, fallen timber, and devil's club. 

 Progress is all but impossil^le, and those who finally 

 reach the falls do so by withdrawing from the woods 

 and taking to boats. Traversing Alaskan forests 

 must be a trying task even to deer and bears. They 

 have apparently never been purged or thinned by 

 fire — too damp for that — and they are choked 

 with the accumulation of ages. Two or three gen- 

 erations of fallen trees cross one another in all 

 directions amid the rocks, with moss over all like a 

 deep fall of snow, and worse still, thickly planted 

 with devil's club. This is a shrub as high as your 

 head, covered with long sharp spines and with 

 large thorny leaves. It is like a blackberry bush 

 with thorns ten times multiplied. It hedges about 

 these mossy cushions as with the fangs of serpents. 

 One can hardly touch it without being stung. The 

 falls are the outlet of a deep, hidden, enticing valley, 

 with a chain of beautiful lakes, we were told, but 

 our time was too brief to explore it. The winter 

 wren was found here, and the raven, and a species 

 of woodpecker. 



28 



