revity of the cruise--we were but five or six hours outside--kept us in
a state of intense delight. Presently we ran back into the maze of
fiords and land-locked lakes, and resumed the same old round of daily
and nightly experiences.

Juneau, Douglas Island, Fort Wrangell, and several fishing stations were
revisited. They seemed a little stale to us, and we were inclined to
snub them slightly. Of course we thought we knew it all--most of us knew
as much as we cared to know; and so we strolled leisurely about the
solemn little settlements, and, no doubt, but poorly succeeded in
disguising the superior air which distinguishes the new arrival in a
strange land. It is but a step from a state of absolute greenness on
one's arrival at a new port to a _blase_ languor, wherein nothing can
touch one further; and the step is easily and usually taken inside of a
week. May the old settlers forgive us our idiocy!

There was a rainy afternoon at Fort Wrangell,--a very proper background,
for the place is dismal to a degree. An old stern-wheel steamboat,
beached in the edge of the village, was used as a hotel during the
decline of the gold fever; but while the fever was at its height the
boat is said to have cleared $135,000 per season. The coolie has bored
into its hollow shell and washes there, clad in a semi-Boyton suit of
waterproof.

I made my way through the dense drizzle to the Indian village at the far
end of the town. The untrodden streets are grass-grown; and a number of
the little houses, gray with weather stains, are deserted and falling to
decay. Reaching a point of land that ran out and lost itself in mist, I
found a few Indians smoking and steaming, as they sat in the damp sand
by their canoes.

A long footbridge spans a strip of tide land. I ventured to cross it,
though it looked as if it would blow away in the first gust of wind. It
was a long, long bridge, about broad enough for a single passenger; yet
I was met in the middle of it by a well-blanketed squaw, bound inland.
It was a question in my mind whether it were better to run and leap
lightly over her, since we must pass on a single rail, or to lie down
and allow her to climb over me. O happy inspiration! In the mist and the
rain, in the midst of that airy path, high above the mud flats, and with
the sullen tide slowly sweeping in from the gray wastes beyond the
capes, I seized my partner convulsively, and with our toes together we
swung as on a pivot and went