Miss Field's experience in Juneau must have been, indeed, a contrast to the scenic setting of her girlhood, when, in Florence, Italy, she studied music and art; where Walter Savage Landor taught her Latin and wrote classic verse to her; where Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning welcomed her to their poets' home in Casa Guidi; and where she met George Eliot, whose genius kindled her own. With her literary talent stimulated and all aglow in this radiant atmosphere, Miss Field wrote that exquisite series of monographs on Landor, Mrs. Browning, Madame la Marchesa Ristori, and several of the Italian poets, which were published in the _Atlantic {214} Monthly_ (then the magazine which was the very arbiter of American literary destiny), a series that has been often erroneously attributed to the eminent sculptor and poet, William Wetmore Story, as in those days the _Atlantic Monthly_ preserved the silence of the gods regarding the identity of its contributors. It is something to have passed one's early youth in Arcady; and between those Florentine days, and her appearance as the first lecturer in Alaska, there lay a series of richly varied years and achievements. Kate Field seemed to be always winging her shining way, and it was during an interlude in Hawaii, whose beauty steeped her in gladness, that she fared forth, on a golden day in the Maytime of 1896, on still another journey; a mystic journey into those realms of the Life More Abundant, and entered on a new phase of experiences, even those of the Adventure Beautiful. From Juneau the Grand Trunk Pacific Line of steamers proceeds to Skagway, through the Lynn Canal, considered, all in all, the most beautiful of the fiords of Alaska. Skagway rejoices in the poetic designation of "the flower City of Alaska" from the amazing luxuriance and loveliness of the riotous floral growth in the gardens of the town and also in the outlying country. Skagway is the gateway to the Yukon, and the tourist who wishes to visit Canada's portion of this great Northland embarks on the White Pass and Yukon Railway, which affords easy access to Lake Atlin and down the Yukon to Dawson, the capital of Yukon Territory. {215}