52 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
these are for sale to tourists, and every excursion steamer brings numbers of 
these romantic remembrances of a yet more romantic journey back to civili¬ 
zation. 
But the inland passage to Alaska is not the only grand and picturesque part 
of that great territory visited by the excursion steamers ; for beyond and as far 
as Mount St. Elias, they often sail to this the greatest cluster of high mountains 
on the Western Continent,—Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high ; and Fairweather 
and Crillon, a third taller; then beyond, Cook and Vancouver cluster near 
sublime St. Elias, nearly 20,000 feet above the ocean that thunders at its base, 
and whose jagged top may be seen a hundred and fifty miles to sea. How 
disappointing are the Colorado peaks of 12,000 and 14,000 feet to one, for the 
simple reason that they spring from a plain already 6,000 to 8,000 feet above 
sea-level, and seem, as they are, but high hills on a high plateau. How like 
pygmies they appear to Hood, Tacoma, Shasta, and others not so high above the 
ocean base line, but whose nearly every foot above sea-level is in mountain 
slope. How grand, then, must be hoary-headed St. Elias, whose waist is the 
waters of the wide sea, and whose 20,000 feet above sea-level springs from the 
Pacific Ocean, from whose calm waters we view its majestic height. 
But let us commence at the starting point of our journey, and take our read¬ 
ers step by step over the whole route. 
For many years the people of our great Northwest country, Oregon, Wash¬ 
ington and Idaho Territories, have spoken familiarly of “ the Sound ” as one of 
their great geographical features,—in much the same way as the people of 
Southern Connecticut or Long Island speak of “the Sound,”—referring 
thereby to Puget Sound, that cuts deep into the northwestern corner of Wash¬ 
ington Territory. Many have visited it, and sailed on its beautiful waters ; 
beautiful enough in themselves or their own immediate surroundings, but thrice 
grand and gorgeous in their silver framing of snow-clad peaks and mountain 
ranges, surrounding them on all sides. The long, narrow, picturesque sound, that 
looked not unlike a Greenland fjord, or close-walled bay at the mouth of some 
grand river,—one of those bays so slowly converging that a person can hardly 
define where it ceases and the river commences,—was considered one of the 
most beautiful and scenic places of the Northwest ; and its people delighted to 
show it to strangers, with its enhancing surroundings, reaching from the pret¬ 
tily situated capital of the Territory, Olympia, at the head of “the sound,” to 
where the broad Juan de Fuca Strait leads to the great Pacific Sea. Then 
Alaska was known only as Russian America, when it was spoken of at all, so 
seldom was it heard, and seemed to be as far away from the United States on 
that side of the continent, and as little thought of, as Greenland or Iceland is 
to-day with our people of the Atlantic coast. An occasional Hudson’s Bay 
Company trading boat steamed out of Victoria harbor, and disappeared north¬ 
ward, crawling through a maze of intricate inland channels and Alpine-like 
waterways to some distant and seemingly half-mythical trading post of that 
lonesome land ; but, as to anything definite as to where she was going, as little 
