ice all around us, that occasionally was ground and crunched up by the paddle-wheels with a most uncomfortable sound. With each thump from the ice, and the recurrence of the noise in the paddle-box, and then the sight of some red slats floating off on the water, Dick Willoughby's concern was remembered; and the advantages of the screw propeller, and the merits of the favorite and original Idaho, were appreciated.

While we cruised away in the mist and twilight, the children, who never could be made to keep ordinary bedtime in that latitude, celebrated the birthday of one of their number with high revel. While they danced around the cake on the cabin table, and blew out the eight candles one by one with an accompanying wish, the last boy wished that the happy youngster might "celebrate many more birthdays in Glacier Bay," and the elders applauded him.

After the Idaho had made its first visit to the Muir Glacier, and returned Dick Willoughby to his Hooniah home and his strawberry farm, we had a seven hours' enforced anchorage, on the succeeding day, in a narrow fiord on the north end of Chicagoff Island, which that same Willoughby had described as an unknown channel, "a hole in the mountain," and a short cut to the open ocean, that he had travelled many times himself. Following up his fortyfathom channel, the lead marked shoaling waters, and before we knew it the Idaho ran her nose on a sloping bank, and stayed there until the returning tide floated her off.

There had not been a canoe in sight, nor a sign of life along the shores all that morning, but the ship's

officers had hardly settled the fact that they were hard aground before several canoes were seen in the wake, and the gangway was surrounded with bargaining Hooniahs, who held up furs, baskets, and trophies for us to buy. More and more of them came paddling down the narrow lane of emerald water, and family groups in red blankets were soon at home around blazing camp fires on the narrow ledges of the shore, and added greatly to the picturesqueness of the scene. Of all the little fiords we had been into, this one was the most beautiful, and even Naha Bay cannot surpass it. The narrow channel has steep, wooded hills on either side, and a rugged, snow-covered mountain stands sentry at the head of the fiord, and the clear, green water was so still that every tree and twig was clearly reflected; the ship rested double, and the breasts of the soaring eagles were mirrored in all the shadings of their plumage. The silence was profound, and every voice or sound on deck was echoed from the mountains, and could be heard for a long distance up the inlet. Had it not been for the Hooniah canoes following so promptly, we might have supposed ourselves explorers, who had penetrated into some enchanted region, or dreamers who were seeing this beautiful valley in a strange sleep. It was exploration to the extent that all our course up the inlet was across the dry land of all the charts then published, and the Idaho was aground in the woods according to the authorized maps.

This Idaho Inlet, as it is now put down, is the sportsman's long-sought paradise. The stewards, who went ashore with the tank-boats for fresh water,

startled seven deer as they pushed their way to the foot of a cascade, and the young men who went off in an Indian canoe caught thirteen large salmon with their inexperieneed spearing. Mr. Wallace, the first officer, took a party off in the ship's small boats, and we swept gayly up the inlet, over waters where the salmon and flounders could be seen darting in schools through the water and just escaping the strokes of the oar. At the mouth of the creek at the head of the inlet, the freshening current was alive with fish, . and some of the energetic ones landed there, and, pushing ahead for exploration, were soon lost to sight in the high grass and the underbrush that fringed the forest. It began to rain about that time, and a dripping group remained by the boats, watching the rainbow fish playing in the waters, and enjoying the dry Scotch humor of the officer, who had led us off on this water picnic. Clouds rolled over our snow-capped mountain and blurred the landscape, and after an hour of quietly sitting in the rain, even the amphibious Scot began to wish, too, that the wanderers would return, lest the falling tide should leave us on the wrong side of the shallows at the mouth of the creek. As he took a less humorous view of the situation, all the rest joined in the strain and began to berate the Alaska climate with its constant downpour. Some one was impelled to ask the genial Scotchman if it was really true that the summit of Ben Nevis is never seen oftener than twice a year. He nearly upset the boat to refute that slander, and his emphatic "No!" may be still ringing and echoing around the north end of Chicagoff Island.

After the first officer had returned his boatloads of

damp but enthusiastic passengers to the ship, the stories of fish, and boasts of the great bear-tracks seen on shore, disturbed the tranquillity of the anchorage. The captain of the ship took his rifle and was rowed away to shallow waters, where he shot a salmon, waded in, and threw it ashore. While wandering along after the huge bear-tracks, that were twelve inches long by affidavit measure, he saw an eagle flying off with his salmon, and another fine shot laid the bird of freedom low. When the captain returned to the ship he threw the eagle and the salmon on deck, and at the size of the former every one marvelled. The outspread wings measured the traditional six feet from tip to tip, and the beak, the claws, and the stiff feathers were rapidly seized upon as trophies and souvenirs of the day. A broad, double rainbow arched over us as we left the lovely niche between the mountains in the evening, and then we swept back to Icy Straits and started out to the open ocean, and down the coast to Sitka, having a glimpse, on the way, of the vast glacier at the head of Taylor Bay, that Vancouver and his men visited while his ships lay at anchor in Port Althorp, just west of our Idaho Inlet.

CHAPTER XI.

SITKA

ATM

THE CASTLE AND THE GREEK CHURCH.

T six o'clock in the morning the water lay still and motionless as we rounded the point from which Mount Edgecombe lifts its hazy blue slopes, and threaded our way between clearly reflected islands into this beautiful harbor, which is the most northern on the Pacific Coast. In the mirror of calm waters the town lay in shimmering reflections, and the wooded side of Mount Verstovaia, that rises sentinel over Sitka, was reflected as a dark green pyramid that slowly receded and shortened as the ship neared the shore. By old traditions the ravens always gather on the gilded cross on the dome of the Greek church when a ship is in sight, and one lone, early riser flapped his big black wings and croaked the signal before the ship's cannon started the echoes. A steam launch put out quickly from the man-of-war Adams to carry the mail bags to that ship, and a sleepy postmaster came down to look after his consignments. There were signs of life in the Indian village, or rancherie, further up shore, and one by one the natives assembled on the wharf with their baskets and bracelets for sale, or, wandering down with the blankets of the couch wrapped about them, and lying face downward with their heads propped on