We make our way through the winding channels of the Alexander Archipelago, of which the Prince of Wales Island is one of the largest and most mountainous. It is about a hundred and seventy-five miles long by fifty miles in width; that is to say, it is as large as the State of New Jersey, and in fact contains more square miles. It is mostly covered with dense forests of Alaska cedar, the best of ship-timber. The shores are indented on all sides by fjords extending a considerable distance into the land. Salmon abound in and about this island, which has led to the establishment of several large fish-canning factories, two new ones being added during the past season. The principal native tribe upon the island is known as the Haidas, whose villages are scattered along the coast. The interior of the island is not only uninhabited, but it is unexplored. The shore hamlets are called “rancheries.” Each sub-tribe has a special one representing its capital, where the head chiefs live. Their laws seem to be simply a series of conventionalities. The houses of these Haidas are better structures than those of most natives of the Territory, and they surround themselves, as a rule, with more domestic comforts. Woolen blankets appear to be the investment in which all the spare means of the members of this, as well as most other tribes, are placed, and by the number they possess they estimate their wealth. Woolen blankets, in fact, averaging in value from two dollars and a half to three and a half, are the native currency or circulating medium, being received as such when in good condition; and also given out at the trading stations as payment to natives for furs or for any service, unless specie is preferred. The meandering course of the steamer brings us now before one Indian hamlet and island, and now another; but these villages are very few in number, hours, and even a whole day, being sometimes passed, while on our course, without meeting a solitary canoe or seeing a human being outside the vessel’s bulwarks. These islands, as a rule, have no gravelly or sandy beach, but spring abruptly from out the almost bottomless sea, in their proportions ranging from an acre to the size of a European principality. Now and again we come upon a reach of the shore where it is shelving, and for a mile or more it is bastioned by a course of stones, of such uniform height and even surface as to seem like the work of clever stone-masons. Skilled workers with plummet and line could produce nothing more regular.