66 JOHN BURROUGHS 



looking set of men that we saw, no nonsense about 

 them. Such hardships and disappointments seem to 

 sweep away everything put on and meretricious in a 

 man, and uncover and bring out the bedrock of char- 

 acter, if there is any in him. In this crowd two large 

 powerful men, father and son, were especially notice- 

 able. The father, a man probably of sixty-five years, 

 had nearly died with scurvy and was still very lame, 

 and the tenderness and solicitude of the son towards 

 him warmed my heart. Homely, slow, deliberate men 

 but evidently made of the real stuff. These stranded 

 men were penniless and were depending upon the charity, 

 or the willingness to trust, of the steamboat company to 

 take them home to San Francisco. I was glad when I 

 saw them depart on the steamer the next day. Alaska is 

 full of such adventurers ransacking the land; we heard of 

 them at several other points; men looking for new Klon- 

 dikes, exploring remote corners, going eagerly and quietly 

 into the wilderness, crossing glaciers, rivers and moun- 

 tains, hoping to be the first in new and rich fields. 



Sunday the 25th was another day of great beauty. We 

 spent the main part of it steaming across the sound to- 





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COLUMBIA GLACIER FROM A DISTANCE. 



ward some of the more remote inlets. It was an ideal 

 day, an ideal sail, a day to bask in the sunshine upon the 

 upper deck and leisurely contemplate the vast shifting 

 panorama of sea and islands and wooded - shores and 



