There are sand-beaches and silt-shoals which extend from Cape Suckling, up seventy-five miles to Hinchinbrook Island, that stands as a gate-post to the entrance of Prince William’s Sound: here is a long sand-ridge which is more than sixty miles in length and from three to seven miles broad, lying between the ocean and the mainland, which in turn is composed of low wooded uplands and of steep abrupt cliffs and hills that are quickly lost in the lofty snowy range of the Choogatch Alps. Through a section of this dreary sand-wall the impetuous flood of the Copper or Atna River forces its way, carrying its heavy load of glacial mud and silt far into the ocean. How the winds do blow here! How the trader dreads to tarry “off and on” this coast! There are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the great Alaskan interior are the loneliest of them all. Those of Siberia are traversed occasionally by wandering bands, but those of Alaska, never. The severe exigencies of climate there are such as to substantially eliminate savage life, and to rear an impregnable barrier to that of civilization. When Alaska was first transferred, an estimate of many thousands of Indians inhabiting its vast interior was gravely made and as gravely accepted by us; but a thorough investigation made by our traders and officers of our Government during the last fifteen years has exposed that error. Hundreds only live where thousands were declared to exist. The Indians who live on the banks of the Copper River are, perhaps, the most poverty-stricken of all their kind in Alaska. Their shiftless spruce-bark rancheries and rude belongings are certainly the most primitive of their race, and render that weird Russian legend of the massacre of Seribniekov in 1848, which declared them so numerous and savage, absolutely grotesque. They are perfectly safe as they live in their wild habitat. The cupidity of savage or civilized man never has and never will molest them. But if half is true as to what they relate of huge glaciers which empty into their river, then those that have been described in Cross Sound have formidable rivals, which may yet prove to be superiors, perhaps, although it seems incredible. [Illustration: MT. WRANGEL: 20,000 FEET In the Forks of Copper River: it is the loftiest Mountain on the North American Continent] The Suchnito or Copper River has long been a bugbear, for the Russians[38] years ago have returned from several unsuccessful attempts to ascend it, and gave the excuse of being driven out of the valley by savage and warlike natives. Recently it has been thoroughly explored, and the “savages” are found to be less than two hundred inoffensive natives, who constitute the whole population of this mysterious Atna or Maidnevskie region. But navigating the river is terrific labor, inasmuch as it is a continuous, swift rapid throughout its entire course.