50 
THROUGH WONDERLAND . 
purpose that it might be easily viewed. From the northwest corner of Wash¬ 
ington Territory, through all of the coast line of British Columbia, and along 
Alaska’s shores to the long-cast shadows of Mount St. Elias, stretches for 
nearly two thousand miles a picturesque panorama that seems as if the Yellow¬ 
stone, the Yosemite, Colorado, and Switzerland and the Alps, were passing in 
review before the spectator ; and, when the greatest northing is gained, Green¬ 
land and Norway have added their glacier-crowned and iceberg-bearing vistas- 
to the view. It looks as if the Yellowstone National Park had sunk into the 
sea until the valleys were waterways, and the feet of the high mountains had 
been converted into shores. A grand salt-water river it is that stretches from 
Puget Sound, itself a beautiful sheet of water, to our distant colony of Alaska, 
a good round thousand miles, and whose waters are as quiet as an Alpine lake, 
even though a fierce gale rage on the broad Pacific outside. 
Beyond the parallel of Sitka, though the grand scenery may be no more 
imposing than that through which the tourist will have passed in coming from 
Washington Territory, he will find some of the curiosities of nature which are 
to be found only in the dreaded frigid zones,—icebergs and glaciers. Before 
the waters of Northwestern Washington Territory are out of sight, great 
patches of snow are to be seen on the highest of the grand mountains bordering 
the inland passage. These little white blotches in the northern gullies become 
larger and larger as the excursion steamer wends her way northward, until the 
loftiest peaks are crowned with snow. Then, across connecting ridges, they 
join their white mantles ; and, in a few more miles, the blue ice of glaciers- 
peeps from out the lower edges of the deep snow. Lower and lower they 
descend as the steamer crawls northward, until the upper parts of the passage 
are essayed, when they have come to the ocean’s level, and, plunging into the 
sea, snap, off at intervals, and float away as icebergs, some of them higher than 
the masts of the large, commodious steamers that bear tourists to this fairy-land 
of the frigid zones, if one can be allowed such an expression. Glacier Bay, 
which the excursion steamers visit on their summer trips, has a great number of 
these frozen rivers of ice debouching into it ; and its clear, quiet waters, 
reflecting the Alpine scenery of its shores, are ruffled only by the breaking of 
the icebergs from the terminal fronts of the glacier, that send waves across its 
whole breadth, and with a noise like the firing of a sea-coast cannon. Muir 
Glacier is the greatest of this grand group, and surpasses anything nearer than 
the polar zones themselves. There is no use in going into mathematical meas¬ 
urements,—its two and three hundred feet in height and its breadth of several 
miles ; for they but feebly represent its grandeur, the deep impressions that fig¬ 
ures can not measure when viewing this frozen Niagara of the North. Not until 
the blue Adriatic has pierced its way into the heart of the high Alps, or some 
ocean inlet has invaded the valleys of the vast Yellowstone Park, will we ever 
have an equivalent to this display of Nature’s noblest efforts in scenic effects. 
Were the other scenery as monotonous as the ceaseless plains, a visit to the 
Alaskan glaciers and icebergs would well repay any one’s time and effort; but, 
