red tons in the twenty-four hours. This mine has already yielded
more gold than was paid for the whole of Alaska.

Fort Wrangell is more picturesque than Juneau, although perhaps this was
partly due to the cessation (for exactly half an hour) of the rain,
which enabled our hitherto cooped-up tourists to enjoy a stroll, and a
breath of fresh air ashore. Wrangell was once, like Juneau, a thriving
town, when the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were a centre of
attraction. Between four and five thousand miners passed through every
spring and autumn, travelling to and from the diggings, and the usual
hotels, saloons, and stores sprang up on all sides. Then came a period
of stagnation, till the last gold rush to Klondike, when it seemed as
though Wrangell would rise from its ashes. But the proposed route into
the country by way of the Stikine River was finally abandoned for the
White Pass, and dealt the final _coup de grace_ to the little town,
which is now merely a decaying collection of wooden shanties and ruined
log huts, tenanted chiefly by Indians, of whom we met more here than at
any other point throughout the Alaskan journey. The natives of this part
of the coast are called Thlinkits, a race numbering about 7000, and once
numerous and powerful. But the Siwashes of Wrangell were a
miserable-looking lot, the men apparently physically inferior to the
women, some of whom would not have been ill-favoured, had it not been
for the disgusting habit of daubing their faces with a mixture of soot
and grease, which is supposed to keep off mosquitoes, and which gives
them the grotesque appearance of Christy Minstrels. Tattooing no longer
prevails amongst the Thlinkits, but the men still paint their faces and
discard ragged tweeds and bowlers for the picturesque native dress on
the occasion of a dance, or the feast known as a "Potlatch." The
Thlinkits are not hardy, nor, as a rule, long-lived, and diseases due to
drink and dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists
here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the
totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not
objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some
of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but
they are only brought out on the occasion of a feast, when a chief and
his crew appear in the gaudy panoply of war-paint and feathers.

On July 28, Seattle was reached, and here