“Nature alone is antique,” says Carlyle. The past history of Alaska, except for a comparatively short period, is a blank to the people of the nineteenth century. Day after day there is a continuous and unbroken chain of mountain scenery. On the right of our course is a broad strip of the mainland, an Alpine region, thirty miles in width, which forms a part of southern Alaska, bounded on the east by British Columbia, and on the west by the many spacious islands, which create so perfect a breakwater that the constant swell of the contiguous ocean is not felt. Some of these islands lie within a quarter of a mile of each other, on either side of our way, and yet the water is far too deep to admit of anchoring, the peaks rising abruptly from unknown depths to thousands of feet above the sea. The channels seem still more narrow from the great height of the mountains which line the course. The eye catches with delight the bright ribbons of waterfalls tumbling down their sides, in gleeful uproar, foaming and sparkling towards the depths below. These are fed by melting snow and hidden lakes far up in the cloud-screened summits. Some of these waterfalls, narrow and swift, leap from point to point, now forming small cascades, and now continuing in a perpendicular form like a column of crystal. Others, so abrupt and precipitous are the heights from which they are launched, fall in an unbroken stream, clinging to the cliffs at first, but quickly expanding into a thin sheet rivaling the Bridal Veil of the Yosemite, and reaching the base in a constant gauzelike spray. The wide, open tracks seen now and then on the steep, thickly-wooded mountain sides, reaching from high up to the snow-line down to the very surface of the water, are the pathways swept by giant avalanches. What immense power and lightning-like speed are suggested by the broad, clean swath that is left! The wind caused by the rushing avalanches is almost equally resistless, the trees on either side of the track being torn into splinters by it. Now and again, above the tops of the giant pines, one can see moving objects on the exposed peaks and cliffs, almost too far away and too small for identification, but we know them to be wild mountain goats,— the Alaskan chamois,—quite safe from the hunters in these perilous heights, never trod by the foot of man. The tender glow of twilight enshrouding mountain peaks, emerald isles, and the gently throbbing bosom of the sea, added daily a witching charm to a scene which already seemed perfect in beauty.