INTRODUCTION. 



IF the writer could materialize in the reader's mind that large 

 aggregate of printed matter now stacked on book-shelves and filed 

 in newspaper columns, which has been published to the world 

 during the last eighty years upon Alaska, the effect would cer- 

 tainly be startling. 



Scores of weighty volumes, hundreds of pamphlets and mag- 

 azine articles, and a thousand newspaper letters, have been devoted 

 to the subject of Alaskan life, scenery, and value. In contempla- 

 tion of this, viewed from the author's standpoint of extended per- 

 sonal experience, he announces his determination to divest him- 

 self of all individuality in the following chapters, to portray in 

 word, and by brush and pencil, the life and country of Alaska as it 

 is, so clearly and so truthfully, that the reader may draw his or her 

 own inference, just as though he or she stood upon the ground 

 itself. 



How differently a number of us are impressed in the viewing of 

 any one subject, by which observation we utterly fail to agree as to 

 its character and worth ! This variance is handsomely illustrated 

 by the diverse opinion of Alaskan travellers. 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 

 February 2G, 1886. 



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