or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with interest, and the next turn of the ship’s rudder most likely throws into full view a “rancherie,” in which these Indians permanently reside; your kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with much vehemence upon the frailties and shortcomings of “Siwashes” in general—at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still, unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland—then rapidly shooting out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long, unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares that Wrangel[7] town lies just around it, and you speedily make your inspection of an Alaskan hamlet. Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen, only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle, do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about three to six feet above present high-water mark; they become, in most cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the Indians love to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions. [Illustration: GRAND GLACIER: ICY BAY View looking across a profile of its sea-wall face, two and a half miles: ice cliffs from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet high above the water; depth of sea from sixty to eighty fathoms where it is sounded under the steamer’s keel. An October picture, when all its surface cavities and pinnacles are concealed by snow and smoothed by frozen sleet]