Saturday, July 9. Morning. Cold, cloudy, rough--head almost beginning to feel uncomfortable, the boat is tossing so much. A teacher comes aboard with an inflamed hand which I fix; a few questions, the mail bag, and we are off again. Enter a slough where it is less rough and warmer. Later the sun will probably come out again. This evening we shall be at Old Hamilton and then a new anxiety--how to get to St. Michael. Just had a little walk over the roof--my roof, for the other two passengers prefer to sleep in the gassy, dingy room below, though how they can stand it is beyond my medical ken. It is four short steps long, or five half steps in an oblique direction. Every object in distance appears magnified all along the river for many days now. An old snag will look like a boat or a man, hills look higher, a boat looks much more pretentious than she proves to be on meeting. Firs and spruce have now completely disappeared, also forests of birch, etc., are reduced to brush both on flats and lower parts of hills. Very large portion of the hills in distance just greenish with grass and lichens, not even a brush. 9.45 a. m. Meet the _Matanuska_ bound upward. Looked from distance like an ocean steamer; from near, just a lumbering, moderate-sized river boat with a barge in front. But a whole lot better than ours. The scenery has become monotonous. The gray river, although only one of the "mouths," is broad, and the country is all low. Nothing but bushy or grassy cut banks on the right, and mud flats, "smoking" under the wind, to low banks on left. It is a little warmer and the warm sun shows itself occasionally, but I still need the wrapping of a double blanket. The wind luckily is with us and the waves not too bad. Noon. Passing "Fish village"; a few huts and tents. No "camps" here outside the few villages; just an endless dreary waste and water. New Hamilton--a few native huts only now--no whites. Reach Old Hamilton--about a dozen houses with a warehouse, a store of the Northern Commercial Co., and a nice looking but now unoccupied school.