The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka.—The Value and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska.—The Old “Redoubt” or Russian Jail.—The Treadwell Mine.—Futility of Predicting what may, or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery.—Goal of Alaska not fit for Steaming Purposes.—Salmon Canneries.—The Great “Whaling Ground” of Fairweather.—Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant.—Mount Fairweather so named as the Whalemen’s Barometer.—The Storm here in 1741 which Separated Bering and his Lieutenant.—The Grandeur of Mount St. Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet.—A Tempestuous and Forbidding Coast to the Mariner.—The Brawling Copper River.—Mount Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North American Continent.—In the Forks of this Stream.—Exaggerated Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives.—Frigid, Gloomy Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound.—The First Vessel ever built by White Men on the Northwest Coast, Constructed here in 1794.—The Brig _Phœnix_, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint or Tar.—Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil, Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Deacons of the Greek Church on Board.—Every Soul Lost.—Love of the Natives for their Rugged, Storm-beaten Homes. A bronzed humming-bird[30] lies upon the author’s table, that once hovered and darted over the waters of Sitka Sound. Its torn and rudely stuffed skin was given to him at Fort Simpson with the remark that it came from the hot springs just below New Archangel; and that nowhere else in all of a vast wilderness, outside of the immediate vicinity of these springs, ever did or could a humming-bird be found. Should, therefore, a visitor to this Alaskan solitude chance to travel within it during the months of April and May, if he will but follow the path of that wee brave bird, he will be led into a veritable green and fragrant oasis, encircled all round about with savage icy mountains and snowy forests. Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, in a pretty little bay sheltered by a score of tiny islets, there—from the sloping face of a verdant bank, the finest hot springs known to Alaska flow up and out to the sea. Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat; the luxuriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here, when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it, create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure—the waters of the bay in front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse, secluded in the jungle.