Alaska aid the Ihlaid Passage. 
[AN travels for business and pleasure. The former can be 
easily described, by a slight interpolation in a well- 
known mathematical definition, as “the shortest dis¬ 
tance and quickest time between two points.” The 
latter bears to this mathematical rectilinear exactness 
the relation of the curves,—Hogarth’s “ line of beauty,” 
the rotund circle and graceful sweep of the Archimedean 
spiral, and bends of beauty beyond computation ; and, 
as any of these are more pleasing to the eye than the 
stiff straight line, so any tourist’s jaunt is more pleasing 
to all the senses than the business man’s travels. But, as all 
straight lines are alike, and all curves are different, so are their 
equivalents in travel, to which we have alluded. One tourist, 
as a Nimrod, dons his hunting shirt and high-topped boots, and, seeking the 
solemn recesses of the Rockies, slays the grizzly and mountain lion, and thus 
has his “ good time ; ” another drives through the grand old gorges of the 
Yellowstone Park, and the deep impressions left by a lofty nature are his ample 
rewards ; and yet again, where physical exertion is to be avoided by delicate 
ones or those averse to its peculiarities, one may float down the distant 
Columbia, with its colossal contours, and, without even lifting a finger to aid 
one’s progress, view as vast and stupendous scenery as the world can produce. 
Thus each place suits each varying disposition, from the most roystering 
“ roughing it,” developing the muscles in mighty knots, to where the most 
ponderous panorama of nature may be enjoyed from a moving mansion, as it 
were. Could we conceive a place where all these advantages would be united 
into one, or where one after the other might be indulged at pleasure, we would 
certainly have a tourists’ paradise, an ever-to-be-sought and never-to-be-for¬ 
gotten nook of creation. Such a tour is to be encountered on “ the inland 
passage to Alaska,” as it is called by those knowing it best. 
In this rough, rocky region, Nature has been prodigal of both land and 
water,—making the former high and picturesque, and the latter deep and navi¬ 
gable, and running in all directions through the other, apparently for the 
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