THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
61 
demand. About half way through Queen Charlotte Sound, and we pass 
through a narrow channel, twenty-two miles long, named Goletas Channel. 
Emerging from it, we leave Cape Commerell on our left side, and bid good-bye 
to Vancouver Island, for this is its northernmost cape. Near the exit from 
Goletas Channel, but by another passage, now seldom used, is where the United 
States man-of-war “ Suwanee” was wrecked, on a submerged rock, in July, 1869, 
when the inland passage was not so well known by pilots as it is now. We can 
now look out to sea toward the Pacific Ocean ; but a short journey plunges us 
into one of the many passages ahead of us, the smallest, or one nearest the 
mainland, being taken, called Fitzhugh Sound. It was named in 1786 by 
Captain Hanna, is about forty miles long, and with a width of about three miles. 
The first island to our left on entering is Calvert Island. About ten miles 
from its southern cape is an indentation in the island, called Safety Cove or 
Port Safety, probably a mile deep. It was while delayed in this picturesque 
little harbor, in 1885, that Mr. Charles Hallock, the well-known author on 
piscatorial pursuits, penned the following lines, descriptive of the inland pas¬ 
sage, which we find in the American Angler of September, 1885 : 
“The mainland is flanked throughout nearly its entire extent by a belt of 
islands, of which the majority are sea-girt mountains. Of course, throughout 
this extended coast-line there are many islands of many different phases,—some 
of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors 
in a storm; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir; and 
others, still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Most aptly 
has this wave-washed region been termed an archipelago of mountains and 
land-locked seas. Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels 
which seem to have no outlets ; straining the neck to scan the tops of snow¬ 
capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor ; 
watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and herds of sea-lions, 
which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they enclosed by 
the shadowy hills,—one seems, indeed, in a new creation, and watches the strange 
forms around him with an intensity of interest which almost amounts to awe. 
“ In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or 
gravelly shores. All the margins of mainland and islands drop down plump 
into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow 
weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and. 
barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. * * 
* * * When the tide sets in, great rafts of algae, with stems fifty feet 
long, career along the surface ; millions of jelly-fish and anemones crowded as 
closely as the stars in the firmament; great air-bulbs, with streamers floating 
like the long hair of female corpses ; schools of porpoises and fin-back whale 
rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam ; all sorts of marine 
and Mediterranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. 
Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content 
or run about feeding. 
