. But the _Ancon_ rode like a duck--I can not consistently say
swan in this case,--and heaved to starboard and to larboard in
picturesque and thoroughly nautical fashion. Some of us were on shore,
wading in the mud and the slush, or climbing the steep bluffs that hem
in the glacier upon one side. Here it was convenient to glance over the
wide, wide snow-fields that seem to have been broken with colossal
harrows. It was even possible to venture out upon the ice ridges,
leaping the gaps that divided them in every direction. But at any moment
the crust might have broken and buried us from sight; and we found the
spectacle far more enjoyable when viewed from the deck of the steamer.

What is that glacier like? Well, just a little like the whitewashed
crater of an active volcano. At any rate, it is the glorious companion
piece to Kilauea in Hawaii. In these wonders of nature you behold the
extremes, fire and ice, having it all their own way, and a world of
adamant shall not prevail against them.

CHAPTER XII.

Alaska's Capital.

Sitka has always seemed to me the jumping-off place. I have vaguely
imagined that somehow--I know not just how--it had a mysterious affinity
with Moscow, and was in some way a dependence of that Muscovite
municipality. I was half willing to believe that an underground passage
connected the Kremlin with the Castle of Sitka; that the tiny capital of
Great Alaska responded, though feebly, to every throb of the Russian
heart. Perhaps it did in the good old days now gone; but there is little
or nothing of the Russian element left, and the place is as dead as dead
can be without giving offence to the olfactory organ.

We were picking our way through a perfect wilderness of islands, on the
lookout for the capital, of which we had read and heard so much. Surely
the Alaskan pilot must have the eye and the instinct of a sea bird or he
could never find a port in that labyrinth. Moreover, the air was misty:
we felt that we were approaching the sea. Lofty mountains towered above
us; sometimes the islands swam apart--they seemed all in motion, as if
they were swinging to and fro on the tide,--and then down a magnificent
vista we saw the richly wooded slopes of some glorious height that
loomed out of the vapor and bathed its forehead in the sunshine.
Sometimes the mist grew denser, and we could see hardly a ship's-length
ahead of us; and the air was so chilly that our overcoats were drawn
snugly about