Much of our way down the Yukon is in and out among islands. The stream is continually building up and tearing down the land through which it flows, and the islands are in every stage of formation. Here they are sand bars as bare as the desert of Sahara; there they are dusted with the green of their first vegetation. A little farther on are patches of land with bushes as high as your waist, and farther still are islands covered with forest. Each island has its own shade of green, from the fresh hue of the sprouts of a wheatfield to the dark green mixed with silver that is common in the woods of Norway and Sweden. Not a few of the islands are spotted with flowers. Some from which the trees have been cut are covered with fireweed, and a huge quilt of delicate pink rises out of the water, the black stumps upon it standing out like knots on the surface. Such islands are more gorgeous than the flower beds of Holland. In places the Yukon is bordered by low hills, behind which are mountains covered with grass, and, still farther on, peaks clad in their silvery garments of perpetual snow. At one place far back from the river, rising out of a park of the greenest of green, are rocky formations that look like castles, as clean cut and symmetrical as any to be seen on the banks of the Rhine. Down in the river itself are other great rocks, more dangerous than that on which the Lorelei sat and with her singing lured the sailors on to their destruction. One such formation is known as the “Five Fingers.” It consists of five mighty masses of reddish-brown rock that rise to the height of a six-story building directly in the channel through which the steamers must go. The current is swift and the ship needs careful piloting to keep it from being dashed to pieces against the great rocks. The captain guides the barge of cattle to the centre of the channel. He puts the barge and the steamer in the very heart of the current and we shoot with a rush between two of these mighty fingers of rock down into the rapids below. As we pass, it seems as though the rocks are not more than three feet away on each side of our steamer. A little farther on we ride under precipices of sand that extend straight up from the water as though they were cut by a knife, with strata as regular as those of a layer cake. They seem to be made of volcanic ash or glacial clay. They rise to the height of the Washington Monument and are absolutely bare of vegetation, save for the lean spruce and pine on the tops.