s. It is a great station for drying cod-fish, long lines of
which lay spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. As night fell the
squaws and Indian maidens gathered the rattling fish-carcasses under
little ark-like receptacles, where they lay till morning out of the dew.

At Juneau some of the passengers walked or rowed off to the gold-mines
in the mountains, where they picked up specimens of gold-quartz and some
teacupfuls of sifted gold-dust. One of these was said to be worth six
hundred dollars, another over twelve hundred dollars. One was reminded
of the gold-dust story of Alkmaion in Herodotus.

Shortly after this the ship cast anchor at Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor,
our two highest points in Alaska waters, about latitude 59 deg. 12' north.
We had but a poor glimpse of the glaciers on the Chilkat side,--one a
magnificent down-flow of pale-blue ice, the other a frozen river caught
and compressed in between strangling hills.

The location of Pyramid Harbor is very beautiful,--a wind-sheltered
nook, a curving shore, covered with pebbles, alder-clad heights just
behind, and dimly-flashing ice-peaks peeping out of the mist just over
the shoulder of a huge green rock-slope. A salmon-cannery in the
foreground, flanked by an Indian village, a semilune of pure green
water, nearly fresh, and a curious pyramid-shaped knoll rising from it,
constituted other features of the environment. The lifting mists drew
aside for a while, and refreshed the sight with views of the great
sculpture-lines of the surrounding mountains.

[We may pass the description of Sitka, and proceed.]

We were greatly favored when we left Sitka. Starting off in a rain, in
which everything lay in muddy eclipse, we woke up next morning and found
ourselves tracing the outside route to the Muir Glacier in sparkling
sunshine. The transition was delightful, and, though most of the
passengers were sick from the tossing of the ship on the long outside
ocean-swell, I believe they all enjoyed the sunshine as it flashed into
their cabin windows, played on the walls, and pricked and scattered the
enormous vapor masses that hung over the mountains on our right. There
were no longer the vaulted vapors of the preceding days, the dense
counterpane of nebulous gray that covered the whole sky with its
monotony. The heavy cloud-banks clung to the mountains, leaving an
exquisite arc of sky, almost Italian in its sunny azure.

Nothing could be more superb than the dee