NORTHERN GAME TRAILS 273 



On board was Judge Ford of New York. He, 

 too, had felt the lure and spell of the open places 

 where he could be a brother of the trees and a 

 kin to the untrodden. On the little steamer Prin- 

 cess Sophia we proceeded to Wrangell, Alaska, 

 which occupied about three and a half days. 



The course lay entirely through the dangerous 

 but beautifully picturesque inner passage. Fiord 

 after fiord came into view in the ceaselessly 

 changing panorama, ever increasing in splendor. 

 Gigantic mountains rising up sheer out of the 

 sea loomed against the sky in weird, fantastic 

 forms, and from their snowy brows looked down, 

 mute and solemn as if listening to the sobbing of 

 the sea, heaving its long billows against their 

 base of high-flung, naked, gap-tooth rocks. 

 Regiments of spruces lined their sides that stood 

 out like spear points against the sky. Further 

 on one glimpses, through the inimitable vistas the 

 spurning torrent, bearing down from austere and 

 defiant heights; flashes here the million- voiced 

 cascade, and trickles there a little soft-trebled 

 spring. Cloud fragments drift silently over the 

 nearer rose-tinted mountains; cascades, snow 

 peaks, glaciers and overhanging cliffs made the 

 way one of ever changing beauty. Colors un- 

 told mingling and melting and blending and 



