d
miles on the left, and we crossed the Gulf of Georgia in water of
enchanting tranquillity.

Our first days were spent in threading the wilderness of islands off
Vancouver, and we were close enough to the coast on the right to see it
distinctly. There was the continental coast range of the Cascade
Mountains, vanishing streaks of snow and silver on our eastern horizon,
rising from five hundred to two thousand five hundred feet above the
sea-level. Its peaks lay in every imaginable shape, twisted, coiled,
convoluted against the horizon-bar, now running up into a perfect cone,
like the Silberhorn of Switzerland, now elongating in rippling lines
along the east, now staining the sky with deep-blue masses of
ultramarine flecked with pearly lines.

The smoke of the burning forests of Washington Territory and British
Columbia had filled the air for days, and worried us not a little; but
one morning we awoke in perfect sunshine, and found an atmosphere
impregnated with frosty sparkles from the distant snow-peaks. Just
before night-fall, when we were about to cross Queen Charlotte's Sound,
a fog came up, and the pilot thought it advisable to lie by for the
night, more particularly as the coast is a dangerous one and is strewn
with reefs and rocks; so, while we were at dinner, the ship wheeled
around, and we reversed our course, going south until we reached Port
Alexandria, one of the most perfect little harbors conceivable. It is a
cove just like the foot of a stocking; a tiny, circle-shaped island lies
in its mouth, and richly-wooded heights throw their green shimmer on the
placid water.

Here we lay till morning, as "snug as a bug in a rug." Just before
entering the cove, which is only about two hundred yards wide, we saw in
the distance an Indian sea-canoe, with its wet paddles flashing in the
sun, and the agreeable thought was suggested, Suppose we should be
surrounded and scalped in the night! Nothing could have been easier in
this lonely neighborhood.

The perpetual wheeling of the vessel in her nautical evolutions as she
steamed through each successive archipelago gave rise to ever-new
comment on the new vistas and island-combinations before us. The coast
of Maine is not to be mentioned in comparison with this, nor the
island-dusted Caribbean Sea. These inland-sweeping seas open in long
river reaches, beyond which, in sharp sunshine, rise the everlasting
peaks, burnished with ice. The shores of British Columbia are d