A jolly old fellow with a shrewd twinkle in his eye came up the trail swinging his coat gayly, and, planting himself in the pathway, took off his hat with a fine flourish and said to me, "Madam, I was told to watch out for you on this road, and to look you squarely in the eye and tell you to hurry back to the ship or you would be left." There was a shout all round at this unmistakable message of the skipper, and the gay miner enjoyed it most of all. Timing ourselves by our watches, we lingered long on the last mile, sitting on a log in the cool shade of the forest, where the trail almost overhung the little town. We could watch the people walking in the streets beneath, and in the still, slumbering sunshine almost catch the hum of their voices. Pistol-shots raised crashing echoes between the high mountain walls, and set all the big ravens to croaking in hoarse concert.

On the east shore of Douglass Island, opposite Juneau, the group of Indian huts and canoes on the beach, and the skeleton of a flume stalking across a gorge and down to the water, tell of the mining camp there. Running across the narrow channel, the ship anchored off the Treadwell mine, on Douglass Island, and while the miners' supplies were being put in the lighter, we all went ashore and climbed the steep and picturesque trail to the mill. The superintendent took his lantern and marshalled the file into the tunnel to see the air-drill at work, and then we all filed out again. The Treadwell is one of the remarkable mines on the Pacific coast, and said to be one of the largest quartz ledges in the world. The vein is over four hundred feet wide, cropping

out on the surface and crossed by three tunnels. The ore is not high grade, but is easily mined and milled, and the supply is inexhaustible. The owners are

Messrs. Treadwell, Frye, Freeborn, and Hill, of San Francisco, and Senator J. P. Jones of Nevada. So far only a small 15-stamp mill has been at work on the ore, but the owners have decided to erect a 120-stamp mill this year and develop the property systematically The progress of the Treadwell mine has been carefully watched by miners and capitalists, and its success has done much to encourage others to hold on to their properties in the face of all the discouragements they have had to undergo through government neglect.

The Bear Ledge, owned by Captain Carroll and his partners, adjoins the Treadwell or Paris claim, and is a continuation of the same rich vein; and from the richness and extent of these and other mines, it is believed that a large town will eventually spring up on the island. A town-site was located and called Cooperstown, in 1881, soon after the discovery of gold on the island, but so far only the tents of placer miners have marked it. For two seasons lawless bodies of men worked the placers on the surface of the Treadwell lode, and, as there was no power to appeal to, the Treadwell company were forced to endure it. During the summer of 1883, over twentyfive thousand dollars was taken from the surface of the ledge in this way. The miners pounded up the rich, decomposed quartz in hand-mortars, and as it was impossible to extract all the gold by the rude process employed, they dumped over into the channel richer quartz, in many instances, than had been

worked in the Treadwell mill. The deposit of decomposed quartz on the top of the ledge was in some places ten feet deep, and in working it the squatters took the water of the Paris, or Hayes Creek, and shut off the mill supply entirely. There was a sharp contest between the mill-owners and the hydraulic miners, and the man-of-war at Sitka had to be sent for before the matter was adjusted. They pledged themselves, "until such time as they should have civil law," to let the mill have the use of the water for twelve hours and the miners for the other twelve hours of each twenty-four, and the squatters were not to blast the lode, but only wash the surface ground.

An island gold field is a rarity in mining annals, but all Douglass Island is said to be seamed with quartz lodes, and it is ridged with high mountains. from end to end of its twenty-mile boundaries. It was eighty-seven years after Vancouver's surveys before the prospectors found the gold on its shores, but the miners have retained the old nomenclature, and the island is still Douglass Island, as Vancouver named it in honor of his friend, the Bishop of Salisbury.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.

UNEAU is far enough north to satisfy any rea

sonable summer ambition, and with its latitude. of 58° 16′ N., the young mining town and future metropolis is but little above the line of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, and Moscow. The deep waters of Gastineaux Channel are obstructed by ledges just north of Juneau, and the eighteen feet fall of the regular tides leaves islands and reefs visible in mid-channel. For this reason the ship had to return on its course, and round Douglass Island, before it could continue further north, and when that island of solid gold quartz was left behind, the vessel entered a maze of smaller islands and threaded its way into the grand reaches of Lynn Canal. Vancouver named this arm of the sea for the town of Lynn, in Norfolk, England, the place of his nativity, and his explorers began the song of praise that is chanted by every summer traveller who follows their course up the high-walled, glacier-bound fiord. The White Mountains present bold barriers on the west, and along the eastern shores the great continental range fronts abruptly on the water. Each point or peak passed brought another glacier into view, nine

teen glaciers in all being visible on the way up the canal. The great Auk glacier was first seen, and then the Eagle glacier, toppling over a precipice three thousand feet in air, their frozen crests and fronts turning pinnacles of silver and azure to the radiant sun.

Not even "the blue Canary Isles" could have offered a more "glorious summer day" than the one that we enjoyed while the Idaho steamed straight up Lynn Canal, headed for the north pole. The sun shone so warmly on deck that we laid aside wraps, and sat under the grateful shade of an umbrella. There was a sparkle and freshness to the air, and under an ecstatic blue sky fleecy white clouds drifted about the mountain summits and mingled their vapory outlines with the fields of snow. We revelled in the beauties of the scenes, and appreciated at the moment that this passage leading to the Chilkat country is perhaps the finest fiord of the coast. Lynn Canal slumbered as a sapphire sea between its high mountain walls, with scarcely a ripple on its surface. The blue expanse was streaked with a greenish gray where the turbid streams poured in from the melting glaciers, and was marked with a distinct line where the azure water changed to green, and then it faded away into gray again, where the fresh waters of the Chilkat River flowed in.

At the head of Lynn Canal a long point juts out into the current, with the Chilkat Inlet opening at the left, and the Chilkoot Inlet at the right. Opposite this tongue of land on the Chilkat side is the great Davidson glacier, sweeping down a gorge between two mountains, and spreading out like an opened fan.