122 Snapshots from the North Pacife.

“Night falls over the again calm sea, and now, instead of
the reduplicated shore and the powdered peaks photographed
on the burnished surface as they were at sundown, the dark
reflection in-shore would be sombre, but for the elastic stars
floating on the ebony mirror, the counterpart of all but the
fixity of the starry splendour above.

“Tired with watching the varied moods of God’s handi-
work, we thankfully moor alongside the wharf at Fort
Wrangel. There we take on our cargo and a large number
of horses for our destination at the head of navigation on
Stikine River. Half-way across to the river’s mouth, as
we steam along, we see anchored off the only salmon-cannery,
a tull-rigged ship that iately brought the workers and
materials. By-and-by she will ship the produce of their
summer work, and sail away to distant shores.

‘“A few hours’ steaming takes us through the U.S. terri-
tory into our own. The entrance to the river is encumbered
with vast sand-banks, so that we could not pass over until
high water, and then by a passage so tortuous that only a
local pilot knows the shifting windings.

“Our pilot from Fort Wrangel was a wizened old Indian
shaking with palsy, and so impressed with the importance
of his temporary charge that he bought a new suit of clothes
with the money to be earned. So small was he for his
germents that they seemed to be nearly empty. He posted
himself opposite the big Zimshian quartermaster at the
waeel, who, as soon as the bar was crossed, steered his own
course, much to the discust of the new suit of clothes.

“What a vista in mountain snow-land burst on us as we
turned into the first long reach of the river! Range after
range abutted on the river, so that the valleys opened to us
as we steamed past, each with its glacier, giving the moun-
taims an appearance of a serried line of gigantic sentinels
guarding the avenue, rather than a magnificent defile open-
ing into the treasures of the snow.

“At Wrangel, in the one poor little garden, I saw there
were daisies and pansies, lettuce and radishes. The willows