were quantities of skins miserably cured, impregnating the air with
vilest odors; and these were waved at you and wafted after you at every
step. In the forest which suddenly terminates at the edge of the town
there is game worth hunting. The whistler, reindeer, mountain sheep and
goat, ermine, musk-rat, marmet, wolf and bear, are tracked and trapped
by the red-man; but I doubt if the foot of the white-man is likely to
venture far into the almost impenetrable confusion of logs and brush
that is the distinguishing feature of the Alaskan wilderness. Beautiful
antlers are to be had in Juneau and elsewhere; and perhaps a cinnamon or
a black cub as playful as a puppy, and full of a kind of half-savage
fun.

In the upper part of the town, where the stumps and brush are thickest,
there are cosy little log-cabins, and garden patches that seem to be
making the most of the summer sunshine. In the window of one of these
cabins we saw a face--dusky, beautiful, sensitive. Dreamy eyes slumbered
under fringes that might have won a song from a Persian poet; admirably
proportioned features, delicious lips, almost persuaded us that a
squaw-man might in some cases be excusable for his infatuation. Later we
discovered that the one beauty of Alaska was of Hawaiian parentage; that
she was married, and was as shy of intruders as a caged bird. Very
dissimilar are the ladies of Juneau.

In the evening the town-crier went to and fro announcing the opening of
the ball. It was still drizzling; the cliffs that tower above the
metropolis were capped with cloud; slender, rain-born rivulets plunged
from these airy heights into space and were blown away like smoke.
Sometimes we caught glimpses of white, moving objects, far aloft against
the black wall of rock: these were mountain sheep.

The cannonading at Douglas Island continued--muffled thunder that ceases
neither night nor day. Nobody seemed to think of sleeping. The dock was
swarming with Indians; you would have known it with your eyes shut, from
the musky odor that permeated every quarter of the ship. The deck was
filled with passengers, chatting, reading, smoking, looking off upon the
queer little town and wondering what its future was likely to be. And
so, we might have lingered on indefinitely, with the light of a dull
day above us--a light that was to grow no less till dawn, for there is
no night there,--were it not that some one looked at his watch, and lo!
it was the midnight hour.

The