52 JOHN BURROUGHS 



on a small area back of the town. In the forest near the 

 mouth of Indian River I noticed a few huge stumps twelve 

 feet high, as if the ax that felled them had been wielded 

 by giants. They had probably been cut from raised plat- 

 forms. Some of them were very old, doubtless the work 

 of the Russians. Sitka is very prettily situated; a ring of 

 high dark snow-topped mountains just back of it, and a 

 sparkling bay, dotted with islands, rock-based and tree- 

 crowned, in its front, with white volcanic cones in the 

 distance. About the only bit of smooth dirt road we saw 

 in Alaska we walked on here for the distance of a mile, 

 connecting the park with the town. 



IN YAKUTAT BAY. 



After four warm humid days at Sitka we turned our 

 faces for the first time toward the open ocean, our objec- 

 tive point being Yakutat Bay, a day's run farther north. 

 The usual Alaska excursion ends at Sitka, but ours was now 

 only fairly begun. The Pacific was very good to us and 

 used us as gently as an inland lake, there being only a 

 long low sleepy swell that did not disturb the most sensi- 

 tive. The next day, Sunday the 1 8th, was mild and gentle. 

 Far at sea on our left we looked into a world of sunshine, 

 but above us and on our right lay a heavy blanket of 

 clouds, enveloping and blotting out all the upper portions 

 of the great Fairweather Range. We steamed all day a 

 few miles off shore, hoping that the great peaks, some of 

 them 15,000 to 16,000 feet high, would reveal them- 

 selves, but they did not. We saw them only from the 

 waist down as it were, with their glaciers like vast white 

 aprons flanked by skirts of spruce forests. One of these 

 glaciers, La Perouse, came quite down to the sea, with 

 a front a mile or more long and 200 feet high. At one 

 point it had cut into the edge of the forest and shoved and 

 piled up the trees and soil as a heavy vehicle shoves and 



