Sitka is the turning-point in the Alaskan summer cruise. It is the beginning of the end; and I am more than half inclined to think that in most cases-charming as the voyage is and unique in its way beyond any other voyage within reach of the summer tourist-the voyager is glad of it. One never gets over the longing for some intelligence from the outer world; never quite becomes accustomed to the lonely, far-away feeling that at times is a little painful and often is a bore.

During the last hours at Sitka, Mount Edgecombe loomed up gloriously, and reminded one of Fugjyamma. It is a very handsome and a highly ornamental mountain. So are the islands that lie between it and the Sitkan shore handsome and ornamental, but there are far too many of them. The picture is overcrowded, and in this respect is as unlike the Bay of Naples as possible; though some writers have compared them, and of course, as is usual in cases of comparison, to the disadvantage of the latter.

Leaving Sitka, we ran out to sea. It was much easier to do this than go a long way round among the islands; and, as the weather was fair, the short cut was delightful. We rocked like a cradle-the Ancon rocks like a cradle on the slightest provocation. The sea sparkled, the wavelets leaped and clapped their hands. Once in awhile a plume of spray was blown over the bow, and the delicate stomach recoiled upon itself suggestively; but the deliciousness of the air in the open sea and the brevity of the cruise-we were but five or six hours outside-kept us in a state of intense delight. Presently we ran back into the maze of fiords and land-locked lakes, and resumed the same old round of daily and nightly experiences.

Juneau, Douglas Island, Fort Wrangell, and several fishing stations were revisited. They seemed a little stale to us, and we were inclined to snub them slightly. Of course we thought we knew it all-most of us knew as much as we cared to know; and so we strolled leisurely about the solemn little settlements, and, no doubt, but poorly succeeded in disguising the superior air which distinguishes the new arrival in a strange land. It is but a step from a state of absolute greenness on one’s arrival at a new port to a blase languor, wherein nothing can touch one further; and the step is easily and usually taken inside of a week. May the old settlers forgive us our idiocy!

There was a rainy afternoon at Fort Wrangell,-a very proper background, for the place is dismal to a degree. An old stern-wheel steamboat, beached in the edge of the village, was used as a hotel during the decline of the gold fever; but while the fever was at its height the boat is said to have cleared $135,000 per season. The coolie has bored into its hollow shell and washes there, clad in a semi-Boyton suit of waterproof.

I made my way through the dense drizzle to the Indian village at the far end of the town. The untrodden streets are grass-grown; and a number of the little houses, gray with weather stains, are deserted and falling to decay. Reaching a point of land that ran out and lost itself in mist, I found a few Indians smoking and steaming, as they sat in the damp sand by their canoes.

A long footbridge spans a strip of tide land. I ventured to cross it, though it looked as if it would blow away in the first gust of wind. It was a long, long bridge, about broad enough for a single passenger; yet I was met in the middle of it by a well-blanketed squaw, bound inland. It was a question in my mind whether it were better to run and leap lightly over her, since we must pass on a single rail, or to lie down and allow her to climb over me. O happy inspiration! In the mist and the rain, in the midst of that airy path, high above the mud flats, and with the sullen tide slowly sweeping in from the gray wastes beyond the capes, I seized my partner convulsively, and with our toes together we swung as on a pivot and went our ways rejoicing.

The bridge led to the door of a chief’s house, and the door stood open. It was a large, square house, of one room only, and with the floor sunk to the depth of three feet in the centre. It was like looking into a dry swimming bath. A step, or terrace, on the four sides of the room made the descent easy, and I descended. The chief, in a cast-off military jacket, gave me welcome with a mouthful of low gutterals. I found a good stove in the lodge and several comfortable-looking beds, with chintz curtains and an Oriental superabundance of pillows. A few photographs in cheap frames adorned the walls; a few flaming chromos-Crucifixions and the like-hung there, along with fathoms of fishnet, clusters of fish-hooks, paddles, kitchen furniture, wearing apparel, and a blunderbuss or two. Four huge totem poles, or ponderous carvings, supported the heavy beams of the roof in the manner of caryatides. These figures, half veiled in shadow, were most impressive, and gave a kind of Egyptian solemnity to the dimly lighted apartment.

The chief was not alone. His man Friday was with him, and together we sat and smoked in a silence that was almost suffocating. It fairly snapped once or twice, it was so dense; and then we three exchanged grave smiles and puffed away in great contentment. The interview was brought to a sudden close by the chief’s making me a very earnest offer of $6 for my much-admired gum ulster, and I refusing it with scorn-for it was still raining. So we parted coldly, and I once more walked the giddy bridge with fear and trembling; for I am not a somnambulist, who alone might perform there with impunity.

It was a bad day for curios. The town had been sacked on the voyage up; yet I prowled in these quarters, where one would least expect to find treasure, inasmuch as it is mostly found just there. Presently the most hideous of faces was turned up at me from the threshold of a humble lodge. It was of a dead green color, with blood trimmings; the nose beaked like a parrot’s, the mouth a gaping crescent; the eyeless sockets seemed to sparkle and blink with inner eyes set in the back of the skull; murderous scalp locks streamed over the ill-shapen brow; and from the depths of this monstrosity some one, or something, said, “Boo!” I sprang backward, only to hear the gurgle of baby laughter, and see the wee face of a half-Indian cherub peering from behind the mask. Well, that mask is mine now; and whenever I look at it I think of the falling dusk in Fort Wrangell, and of the child on all-fours who startled me on my return from the chief’s house beyond the bridge, and who cried as if her little heart would break when I paid for her plaything and cruelly bore it away.

Some of the happiest hours of the voyage were the “wee sma’” ones, when I lounged about the deserted deck with Captain George, the pilot. A gentleman of vast experience and great reserve, for years he has haunted that archipelago; he knows it in the dark, and it was his nightly duty to pace the deck while the ship was almost as still as death. He has heard the great singers of the past, the queens of song whose voices were long since hushed. We talked of these in the vast silence of the Alaskan night, and of the literature of the sea, and especially of that solitary northwestern sea, while we picked our way among the unpeopled islands that crowded all about us.

On such a night, while we were chatting in low voices as we leaned over the quarter-rail, and the few figures that still haunted the deck were like veritable ghosts, Captain George seized me by the arm and exclaimed: “Look there!” I looked up into the northern sky. There was not a cloud visible in all that wide expanse, but something more filmy than a cloud floated like a banner among the stars. It might almost have been a cobweb stretched from star to star-each strand woven from a star beam,-but it was ever changing in form and color. Now it was scarf-like, fluttering and waving in a gentle breeze; and now it hung motionless-a deep fringe of lace gathered in ample folds. Anon it opened suddenly from the horizon, and spread in panels like a fan that filled the heavens. As it opened and shut and swayed to and fro as if it were a fan in motion, it assumed in turn all the colors of the rainbow, but with a delicacy of tint and texture even beyond that of the rainbow. Sometimes it was like a series of transparencies-shadow pictures thrown upon the screen of heaven, lit by a light beyond it-the mysterious light we know not of. That is what the pilot and I saw while most of the passengers were sleeping. It was the veritable aurora borealis, and that alone were worth the trip to Alaska.

One day we came to Fort Tongass-a port of entry, and our last port in the great, lone land-for all the way down through the British possessions we touch no land until we reach Victoria or Nanaimo. Tongass was once a military post, and now has the unmistakable air of a desert island. Some of us were not at all eager to go on shore. You see, we were beginning to get our fill of this monotonous out-of-the-world and out-of-the-way life. Yet Tongass is unique, and certainly has the most interesting collection of totem poles that one is likely to see on the voyage. At Tongass there is a little curving beach, where the ripples sparkle among the pebbles. Beyond the beach is a strip of green lawn, and at the top of the lawn the old officers’ quarters, now falling to decay. For background there are rocks and trees and the sea. The sea is everywhere about Tongass, and the sea-breezes blow briskly, and the sea-gulls waddle about the lawn and sit in rows upon the sagging roofs as if they were thoroughly domesticated. Oh, what a droll place it is!

After a little deliberation we all went ashore in several huge boat-loads; and, to our surprise, were welcomed by a charming young bride in white muslin and ribbons of baby-blue. Somehow she had found her way to the desert island-or did she spring up there like a wild flower? And the grace with which she did the honors was the subject of unbounded praise during the remainder of the voyage.

This pretty Bret Harte heroine, with all of the charms and virtues and none of the vices of his camp-followers, led us through the jagged rocks of the dilapidated quarters, down among the spray-wet rocks on the other side of the island, and all along the dreary waste that fronts the Indian village. Oh, how dreary that waste is!-the rocks, black and barren, and scattered far into the frothing sea; the sandy path along the front of the Indian lodges, with rank grass shaking and shivering in the wind; the solemn and grim array of totem poles standing in front or at the sides of the weather-stained lodges-and the whole place deserted. I know not where the Indians had gone, but they were not there-save a sick squaw or two. Probably, being fishermen, the tribe had gone out with their canoes, and were now busy with the spoils somewhere among the thousand passages of the archipelago.

The totem poles at Tongass are richly carved, brilliantly colored, and grotesque in the extreme. Some of the lodges were roomy but sad-looking, and with a perpetual shade hovering through them. We found inscriptions in English-very rudely lettered-on many of the lodges and totem poles: “In memory of” some one or another chief or notable red-man. Over one door was this inscription: “In memory of -, who died by his own hand.” The lodge door was fastened with a rusty padlock, and the place looked ghoulish.

I think we were all glad to get out of Tongass, though we received our best welcome there. At any rate, we sat on the beach and got our feet wet and our pockets full of sand waiting for the deliberate but dead-sure boatmen to row us to the ship. When we steamed away we left the little bride in her desert island to the serene and sacred joy of her honeymoon, hoping that long before it had begun to wane she might return to the world; for in three brief weeks we were beginning to lust after it. That evening we anchored in a well-wooded cove and took on several lighter-loads of salmon casks. Captain Carroll and the best shots in the ship passed the time in shooting at a barrel floating three hundred yards distant. So ran our little world away, as we were homeward bound and rapidly nearing the end of the voyage.