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from a barren hill of solid rock into a modern town of six thousand souls. When Prince Rupert for a transcontinental terminal was first suggested, the idea was ridiculed throughout the country; but the Grand Trunk Company knew what they were doing they knew that they could ship freight to the Orient via Prince Rupert in in eighteen hours' less time than could be done by any other of America's transcontinentals. They saw, too, the strategic advantage of the location, for the timber and mineral resources of Northern British Columbia are practically untouched, and to all this vast territory Prince Rupert is the natural outlet. The town also has an excellent harbor-very spacious and the deepest on the Pacific Coast.

While stopping, we may have time to visit the large fish cold-storage plant owned and operated by the Canadian Fish and Cold Storage Company. A sally into the frosty storage rooms reveals to us hundreds of thousands of pounds of halibut, salmon, herring, place and other fish frozen as hard as wood, in which state it keeps indefinitely. In another part of the plant

we see cod being dried and salmon being pickled for shipment to Europe. The plant's capacity is three million pounds.

But in order to get any conception at all of British Columbia's fishing industry we should stop over at Prince Rupert and make the trip to Port Essington up the Skeena River. It is very interesting and well worth one's time. During the summer months the Skeena is always dotted with fishing boats, each with its huge net spread and marked by a circle of buoys. They all but blockade the river. When the fisherman makes a haul he not infrequently brings up a stray fish head or two, which tells him a hair seal has been hunting and made a dinner of the missing body; and the fact that the head invariably belongs to a pink salmon tells him that the hair-seal is a discriminating, if voracious, animal. One should not forget to bring field glasses along on this trip-not so much to watch the operations of the fishermen as to get a good look at those bald-headed specks in the trees. They are eagles. The Skeena is lined with salmon canneries, and at any of

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Mt. Juneau rises like

great sentinel 3590 feet into the clouds behind the town of Juneau.

them one may watch the process of canning salmon. But fish and fisheries. are not the only attraction of the Skeena River trip. There is much beautiful scenery to be enjoyed as well. Here as elsewhere in the northern country are the ubiquitous snowcapped mountains and picturesque islands and winding waterways.

After leaving Prince Rupert, the next stop is Ketchikan, the port of entry to Alaska. Before we may be permitted to land, the quarantine officer boards the ship and gives us the onceover, asks when we expect to come back, and bids us God-speed. Ketchikan is a town of some twenty-five hundred people, and is situated on the Prince of Wales Island. The impression of the town that the tourist carries away with him is mostly of a very high and precipitous mountain. Under the wing of the mountain is nestled the town. The one thing that he never forgets about his visit to Ketchikan, though he forget all else, is the sight of the salmon jumping the Ketchikan Falls.

Just below the falls are hun

dreds of fish that have not yet made the successful leap, swarming like flies in a molasses jar-a sight which requires seeing to believe. They do get over the falls in time, however, though they may first make many unsuccessful attempts, and continue on their way to the spawning grounds.

At Wrangell we are surprised at the splendid vegetable gardens we see. Contrary to the once universal belief the United States department of agriculture has proven that vegetables can be very successfully grown and nearly every housewife now has her kitchen garden. Shortly after leaving Wrangell we enter Wrangell Narrows, a passageway no wider than a river, and very beautiful.

All the while we are traveling among the islands of the Alexander Archipelago the northern part of the submerged Island Mountain System, through the same intricate waterways that Captain George Vancouver explored and charted in 1794. It's a wonderful place, and we want to be on deck every moment lest some tiny por

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