84 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
ure, both in numbers and excellence, that you seldom hear them mentioned in 
Alaska, except as Chilkat blankets. Nearly all of the T’linkit tribes, as the tourist 
will have seen by this time, spend most of their out-of-door time in the water, 
in their canoes ; and this constant semi-aquatic life has told on their physical 
development to the extent of giving them very dwarfed and illy developed 
lower limbs, although the trunk and arms are well developed. When walking, 
they seem to shamble along more like an aquatic fowl on land than a human 
being. The Chilkats are noticeable exceptions. Although their country is 
much more mountainous in appearance than others lower down, yet here are 
some of the most accessible of the few mountain passes by which the interior, a 
rich fur-bearing district, can be gained. The Chilkats have yearly taken 
trading goods from the white men, lashed them into packs of about a hundred 
pounds, and carried them on their backs through these glacier-clad passes, and 
traded them for furs, bringing them out in the same way. They monopolized 
the trade by the simple process of prohibiting the interior Indians from coming 
to the sea-coast to trade. The Chilkats therefore are probably the richest tribe 
of Indians in the Northwest, the chief having two houses full of blankets, their 
standard of value, at the village of Kluk-wan. 
To those who find their greatest pleasure in a rough, out-of-door life, let 
them leave the steamer at this point, hire three or four Indians to carry their 
company effects on their backs, and make an Alpine journey to the head of the 
Yukon river, where lakes aggregating 150 miles in length can be passed over in 
a canoe. The route leads up the Dayay river, over the Perrier Pass in the 
Kotusk Mountains. The trip could be made between visiting steamers, and I 
will guarantee the persons will come back with more muscle than they took in. 
Bidding good-bye to the picturesque country of the Chilkats, the steamer’s 
head is turned south again ; and, when just about ready to leave Lynn Canal, we 
entered an intricate series of channels bearing eastward, and which bring us to 
the great mining town of Juneau, where many Alaskan hopes are centred. 
This is what a correspondent of the Chicago Times , under date of February 23, 
1885, says of this Alaskan town and its curious history : 
“ The centre from which radiates whatever of excitement and interest there 
is in Alaskan mines is Douglas Island. The history of the discovery of ore 
near this island, which eventually led to the location of the present much-talked- 
of property, is similar to that attending the finding of most of the large mines in 
the West. It seems that some half-dozen years ago two needy and seedy pros¬ 
pectors named Juneau and Harris arrived at an Indian village that still remains 
visible on the shore across the bay from Douglas Island, in search of ore. They 
prospected the country as thoroughly as they could, with but little success, and 
were about to return home when an Indian said that he knew where gold existed, 
and that he would reveal the place for a certain sum of money. Hardly believ¬ 
ing, but yet curious, Harris and Juneau accepted the offer, and, with their 
guide, set out on a pilgrimage into the interior to a spot now known as ‘ The 
Basin.’ After a long tramp through the forests, and up a deep valley, the 
