In addition to these overwhelmingly dominant conifers already specified, a few cottonwoods and swamp-maples and alders are scattered in the jungle which borders the many little streams and the large rivers like the Stickeen, Tahko, and Chilkat. Crab-apples (_Pyrus rivularis_) form small groves on Prince of Wales Island, where the beach is low and capped with good soil. Then on the exposed, almost bare rocks of the western hilltops of the islands of the archipelago, a scrub pine (_Pinus contorta_) is found; it also grows in small clumps here and there just below the snow-line on the mountains generally. Berries abound; the most important being the sal-lal (_Gaultheria shallow_)—they are eaten fresh in great quantities, and are also dried for use in winter—and another small raspberry (_Rubus sp._), a currant (_Ribes sp._), and a large juicy whortleberry. Of course these berries do not have the flavor or body which we prize at home in our small fruits of similar character—but up here they, in the absence of anything better or as good, are eaten with avidity and relish, even by the white travellers who happen to be around when the fruit is ripe; wild strawberries appear in sheltered nooks; a wild gooseberry too is found, but it, like the crab-apple of Prince of Wales Island, is not a favorite—it is drastic. [Illustration: KOOTZNAHOO INLET Characteristic view of scenery in the Sitkan Archipelago. The high lands and peaks of Admiralty Island in the distance; Indians fishing for halibut over rocky shoals in the foreground. An October sketch, looking East from Chatham Straits] We find in many places throughout this district highland moors, which constitute the level plateau-summits of ridges and mountain foothills; these areas are always sparsely timbered, covered by a thick carpet of sphagnous heather, and literally brilliant in June and July with the spangled radiance of an extensive variety of flowering annuals and biennials. In these moorland mantles, which are usually soaked full of moisture so as to be fairly spongy under foot, cranberries flourish, of excellent flavor, and quite abundant, though, compared with our choice Jersey and Cape Cod samples, they are very small. Certainly the scenery of this Venetian wilderness of Lower Alaska is wonderful and unrivalled—the sounds, the gulfs, bays, fiörds, and river-estuaries are magnificent sheets of water, and the snow-capped peaks, which spring abruptly from their mirrored depths, give the scene an ever-changing aspect. At places the ship seems to really be at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of syenite, slate, and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging scrapes, and the passenger’s hand may almost touch—a hundred thousand sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep arms.