FAR AND NEAR 



Bearded, decrepit, dwarfed spruces above a turf 

 like a pillow decked with flowers! I walked alon^j^ a 

 margin of open Vvoods that had a singularly genial, 

 sheltered, home look, and listened to the hermit 

 tlirush. The nearer we get to the region of perpet- 

 ual snow, the more does vegetable life seem to simu- 

 late snow and cover the ground with softness, — soft- 

 ness to the foot, and dimpled surface to the eye. 

 Such handfuls of wild flowers as we all gathered! 

 The thought in every one's mind w^as. Oh, if we 

 could only place these flowers in the hands of friends 

 at home! The colors were all deep and intense. 



In the afternoon the steamer picked us up. A 

 little after midnight we took aboard the party we 

 had left at Columbia Glacier, and then returned to 

 Ilarriman Fiord for Gannett and Muir. When they 

 were on board, w^e once more turned our faces to the 

 open sea, bound for Cook Inlet, the largest of the 

 Alaskan bays. It penetrates the land one hundred 

 and fifty miles, and is more than fifty miles broad at 

 its mouth. 



We entered it on the 80th, under bright skies, and 

 dropped anchor behind a low sandspit in Kachemac 

 Bay, on the end of which is a group of four or five 

 buildings making up tlie hamlet of Homer. There 

 was nothing Homeric in the look of the place, but 

 grandeur looked down upon it from the mountains 

 around, especially from the great volcanic peaks, 

 Iliamna and Redoubt, sixty miles across the inlet to 



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