THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
53 
was known by the people as if an arctic expedition was leaving the harbor of 
New York or Boston, and not one hundredth of the furor was made about 
the departure, if, in fact, any notice was taken of it at all. With the accession 
of Alaska, through the efforts of Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, the 
discovery of the Cassiar mines, in British Columbia, but which must be reached 
through Alaska, and a few other minor incentives, set many people to looking 
northward ; they then found that they could continue their trips on a long 
inland salt-water river, of which the well-known Puget Sound was but a small 
part,—hardly the equivalent of Narragansett Bay taken from Long Island 
Sound, or Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Not that these were the first 
explorations and discoveries of importance in the inland passage and its sur¬ 
rounding woods and waters, by any manner of means. Cook and Clerke, as 
early as 1776 ; Dixon, from 1785 to 1788 ; Langsdorff, in 1803-8 ; La Perouse, 
in 1785-88 ; Lisianski, from 1803 to 1806 ; Meares, of the Royal navy, from 
1788 to 1789 ; and especially Vancouver, from 1790 to 1795,—had peeped into 
this part of the country, and many of the explorations and surveys were of the 
most extended nature ; but, at about the time of which I speak, the knowledge of 
the inland passage to the bulk of the people, even in these parts so near to it, was 
nearly as musty as the old volumes on the library shelves that gave the most 
information. In fact, but little knowledge or interest was to be found regard¬ 
ing these parts. Their history of development from that embryonic state 
where everything told is regarded as bordering on the mythical, to where a 
line of ocean steamers visits them with crowded passenger lists, is the usual his¬ 
tory of such developments. 
The inland passage to Alaska may be said to practically extend from 
Tacoma, in Washington Territory, at the head of Puget Sound, to Chilkat, 
Alaska, at the head of Lynn Channel, a distance of nearly 1,100 miles, where 
the tourist taking a sea voyage has high shores in close proximity on either 
side of him, except a few places here and there, where a short communication 
with the ocean outside is to be had. But this “ inland passage,” so called, is 
not the only one leading between the points named. It is, rather, a Broadway 
in New York City, a Pennsylvania avenue in Washington, State street in 
Chicago,—i. je., the main way ; but every few miles a vessel could turn off down 
another passage as readily as a pedestrian or vehicle could down a side street, 
and, continuing a short way, return to the main thoroughfare again. Probably 
all the channels and straits and sounds and inlets in this part of Alaska, 
British Columbia and Washington Territory, susceptible of navigation by fair¬ 
sized ocean and river steamers, .and all of them connecting with each other in a 
perfect network of waterways, would, if placed end to end, reach from a quarter 
to a third of the way around the world. Many of them are so illy charted—or 
not charted at all—that no craft of value would trust herself to follow their 
courses, while some of the smaller ways, but probably none the less pictur¬ 
esque, have yet to bear the first white man on their bosom. The most 
picturesque of all the ways through this intricacy of picturesque channels has 
