18 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



around it, and you speedily make your inspection of an Alaskan 

 hamlet. 



Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of 

 those clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom 

 seen, only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, 

 or where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle, 

 do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There 

 are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon 

 by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or less 

 width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about three 

 to six feet above present high-water mark ; they become, in most 

 cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a 

 rank growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the In- 

 dians love to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, 

 so welcome and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently 

 been produced by the waves acting at different times in opposing 

 directions. 



In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening 

 between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and 

 Lynn Canal down to the north end of Vancouver's Island, marks, 

 or glacial scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, 

 are to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of 

 the passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preserva- 

 tion ; and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one 

 time, reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the 

 entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders 

 on the beaches are plainly glaciated ; and, as they are often 

 bunched in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have 

 not been disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are 



in the summer of 1883 : "Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction to Alaska. It is 

 most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to the sublime and lonely 

 scenery of the north. It is situated at the foot of conical hills, at the head 

 of a gloomy harbor, filled with gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling 

 crags, stretch away on all sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, 

 backed by range after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost 

 against lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that 

 in the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in the 

 lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it not in its straggling 

 lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside it, nor in the fort, 

 for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into decay." 



