The easy proximity of Prince Rupert to Alaska is one of the most important things in connection with this unique and brilliant young seaport of the Pacific. Seattle and Skagway are 1000 miles apart, {201} and thus the round trip between Seattle and Skagway is 2000 miles; but from Prince Rupert to Skagway is of course a sail of far less distance. The trip is one of entrancing scenery, fiords, bays all mountain-locked in supreme majesty and beauty, arms of the sea extending into coast indentations with an unexcelled panorama of glancing lights, play of colours, and moving-picture panoramas of grandeur and picturesqueness. Between Seattle, Prince Rupert, and Skagway the entire round trip occupies some eleven days. It is a voyage unmatched on the entire globe. In the distance the towering peaks clothed in snow of dazzling whiteness rise beyond the mountain ranges in their royal purple with evanescent flitting gleams of gold and rose from the brilliant sun; the green water of the bays is alive with thousands of leaping salmon; and the shores are defined by the dark pine forests, standing in an impenetrable tangle of ferns and trailing undergrowth. Through this "Inside Passage," as it is called, a fleet of steamers has been employed by the Grand Trunk Pacific in a splendid coast service between Seattle and Skagway. "I am in the writing-room on the upper deck of the _Prince George_ sailing amid such ineffable glory that I only write about one word to every ten minutes," said an enthusiastic voyager in a personal letter to a friend in the early September days of 1915; "only one word in ten minutes will be allotted to you, for I must LOOK! It is the time of my life, and I can write letters (at {202} all events to you, to whom they write themselves) anywhere. But this voyage--it is the dream of a lifetime! I have sailed the enchanted Mediterranean with our rapturous callings at Algiers, rising on terraced hills in her unspeakable beauty; at Naples, with all the Neapolitan coast a very vision of the ethereal realms; I have sailed on to Genoa, with Ischia, dream-haunted by Victoria Colonna, Italy's immortal woman-poet, and made my pilgrimage to the island and over the ancient Castel d'Ischia by local boats from Naples; I once sailed through the Ionian Isles in the late afternoon of a May day that was all azure and gold; I have sailed the Italian lakes and cruised about on the Alpine lakes of Switzerland: but it still remained for this one enchanted voyaging to give me that thrill of untranslatable ecstasy. This combination of the sea and mountains in what they call the 'Inside Passage' is simply superb. And the _Prince George_ is perfectly ideal in all conditions.