290 The. American Geologist. May, isos 
to thicken without losing its fineness, and everything settles into 
deeper repose. Then comes the sunset with its purple and gold, 
blending earth and sk}' — everything in the landscape in one in- 
separable scene of enchantment. 
During the winter snow falls on the fountains of the glaciers 
in astonishing abundance, but lightly on the lowlands of the coast; 
and the temperature is seldom far below the freezing point. Back 
in the interior beyond the mountains the v(*inter months are in- 
tenselj' cold, but fur and feathers and fuel abound there. 
The bulk of the woods is made up of two species of spruce and 
a cypress. The most valuable of these as to timber is the yellow 
cedar, or cypress; a fine tree, 100 to 150 feet high. The wood 
is pale yellow, durable, and delightfully fragrant. The Menzies 
spruce, or "Sitka pine," is larger and far more abundant than 
the first. Perhaps half of the forest trees of southeastern Alaska 
are of this species. The graceful Merten spruce or hemlock is 
also very ■abundant. Alaska has but few pines. The hard woods 
are birch, maple, alder and wild apple, forming altogether a 
scarcely appreciable portion of the forests. In the region drained 
bj' the Yukon the principal tree is the white spruce. I saw it 
growing bravely on the banks of rivers that flow into Kotzebue 
sound, forming there the extreme edge of the Arctic forests. 
The underbrush is mostl}' huckleberry, dogwood, willow, alder, 
salmonberry vines, and a strange-looking woody plant, about six 
or eight feet high, with limber rope-like stems, and heads of 
broad leaves like the crowns of palms. Both the stems and 
leaves are armed with barbed spines. This is the Echinopanax 
horrida, or devil's club ; and it well deserves both its names. 
It is used b)' the Indians as an instrument of torture, especiallj^ 
in the work of correcting witches. 
The ground is covered with a thick felt of mosses, about as 
clean and beautiful as the sky. On this yellow carpet no dust 
ever settles, and in walking over it 5-ou make no mark nor sound. 
It clothes the raw earth, logs, rocks and ice warmly and kindly, 
stretching untorn to the shores of the Arctic ocean. 
The whole country is shining with perennial streams, but 
none of them, from the mighty Yukon, 2,000 miles long, to the 
shortest torrent rushing from the coast glaciers, has been fully 
explored. The Stikeen, one of the best known rivers of the 
territory, is about 350 miles long, and draws its sources from 
