A BEMARKABLE LETTER. 21 
and heavily wooded. There were many rapid streams, 
all seeming to be well stocked with trout, grayling, and 
other fish. 
" As often occurs in Alaska, the weather was cloudy for 
fully ten days at a stretch. Toward the close of a dull, 
drizzly afternoon, Peeschee stopped for the night on the 
bank of a swift brook. Suddenly the clouds in the west 
began to break away, and, as they gradually parted, 
there appeared high in the heavens what seemed to be a 
mountain of fire. It was a soft, glowing crimson, and 
from its summit rose a huge column of smoke ; it was 
beyond a doubt a mountain peak ; Peeschee had never set 
eyes on it before in his life. Within five minutes the 
clouds had closed in again, and the wonderful peak was 
out of sight. 
" The next three days he spent in travelling straight 
uphill toward the Red Mountain. After much struggling 
through jungles and morasses, fording streams, and 
encountering wild beasts by day and night, he claims 
that he reached the base of the peak, and discovered the 
cause of its strange color. He brought a piece of the 
live rock itself, and showed it to me. I have it in my 
desk now. It is a magnificent specimen of cinnabar in 
the ore, deep crimson in color, promising to yield, if 
worked, an enormous percentage of weight of the pure 
metal. 
" John, that was a mountain of mercury ! It waits 
for some one to take those red heaps of granite and 
