96 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
subdivisions will furnish more grand combination of mountain and sea than can 
be seen anywhere on the globe. It is this vast profusion of scenery, this daily 
and hourly unrolling of the panorama, that overwhelms and confuses the 
observer. It is too great to be separated into details, and everything is platted 
on such a gigantic scale that all former experiences are dwarfed, and the imag¬ 
ination rejects the adjectives that have heretofore served for other scenes : to 
employ them here is only to mislead.” 
“ As one gentleman, a veteran traveler, remarked to me, as we stood looking 
north at the entrance to Glacier Bay, with the St. Elias Alps in full view, 
and Mounts Crillon and Fairweather overtopping the snow-covered peaks of 
that remarkable range : 
“ ‘ You can take just what we see here, and put it down on Switzerland, and 
it will hide all there is of mountain scenery in Europe.’ And then he added : 
‘ I have been all over the world ; but you are now looking at a scene that has 
not its parallel elsewhere on the globe.’ 
“ I cite this incident, as it is more descriptive, and gives a better idea of con¬ 
trast than anything of my own could do, giving, as it does, to the reader, a 
conception of the vastness and immensity of the topographical aspect of the 
shores of the inland seas through whose labyrinthine passages we have for ten 
days past, and for ten days more to come will be lost to the outside world, 
where nature reigns undisturbed and unfretted by the hand of civilization.” 
Here, under the solemn influence of Mount St. Elias, and in the northern¬ 
most waters of the greatest ocean of our planet, we turn southward to repeat 
in inverse order the things we have seen ; or perchance, as often happens, down 
a number of new channels, with their varied scenery, before home is reached 
again. 
I have given a certain order in which the few ports of Alaska are visited ; 
but the reader must not for a moment think that this is always rigidly followed. 
Sometimes some of them are left for the return journey, and much depends on 
the amount of freight, and the number and character of passengers. In the 
winter the trips are made wholly with reference to mails, freight, and the few 
passengers ; but in the spring, summer, and fall these are wholly subordinate, 
and the trips are converted into excursions in the broadest sense of the word. 
While thousands of little channels remain almost wholly unexplored, which 
probably would make the fortune of excursion companies if transported else¬ 
where, yet it is evident that the greater attractions of the great inland passage 
have been discovered, and are now shown to the tourists to the Wonderland of 
the World. 
Fred’k Schwatka. 
