FEATURES OF THE SITKA N REGION. 15 



water upon the cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip 

 of eight or nine hundred miles up, and then down again, when the 

 fog is not omnipotent and I'ain not incessant, the tourist will record 

 a vision of earthly scenery grander than the most vivid imagination 

 can devise, and the recollection of its glories will never fade from 

 his delighted mind. 



If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the west- 

 ward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka — no 

 communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever 

 takes place, except accidentally ; the traveller starts from San Fran- 

 cisco either in a codfishiug schooner, a fur-trader's sloop, or steamer, 

 and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for Kadiak or 

 Oonalashka ; and, from these two chief ports of arrival and dej^art- 

 ure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing the country, 

 constantly interrupted and continually beset with all manner of 

 hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea. These 

 physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of interest 

 in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district, will bar out 

 and deprive thousands from ever beholding the stiiking natural 

 characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook's Inlet and 

 the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive in the 

 dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of steamers in 

 regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this most in- 

 teresting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite satisfaction 

 be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird and the 

 sublime in nature ; meanwhile, visits to that region in small sailing- 

 craft are highly risky and unpleasant— boisterous winds are chronic 

 and howling gales are frequent. 



The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel 

 up the British Columbia coast will have prepa'red the mind for a 

 full enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. 

 If you are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the 

 officer in charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the 

 low wooded crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, 

 are speedily left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. 

 To the left, as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence 

 Straits, the abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of 

 Wales Island rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and 

 sphagnous, shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great 

 Pacific rollers afforded in the Sound ; while on the right hand you 



