This has been in some period, long ago, a very active volcanic region, as the lofty peaks, both among the Aleutian Islands and on the mainland, which emit more or less smoke and ashes, clearly testify; not only suggestive of the past, but significant of possible contingencies in the future. There are, in fact, according to the best authorities, sixty-one volcanic peaks in Alaska. One of the extinct volcanoes near Sitka, Mount Edgecombe, according to the Coast Pilot, has a dimension at the ancient crater of two thousand feet across, and an elevation of over three thousand feet above the sea. The depth of the crater is said to be three hundred feet. From the top, radiating downwards in singular regularity, are the deep red gorges scored by the burning lava in its fiery course, as thrown out of the crater less than a hundred years ago. This is a Mount Olympus for the natives, about which many ancient myths are told by these imaginative aborigines. For more than twenty-four hours after sailing from Victoria the irregular, kelp-fringed shore of Vancouver, which is three hundred miles long, is seen on our left, until presently the large, iron-bearing island of Texada, with its tall summit, appears on the right of our course. The magnetic ore found here in abundance is of such purity as to render it suitable for the manufacture of the highest grade of steel, and it is shipped to the furnaces at Seattle and elsewhere for this purpose. It is found in pursuing the voyage northward that the fierce tide-way prevailing in some of the deep, narrow channels produces such turbulent rapids that steamers are obliged to wait for a favorable condition of the waters before attempting their passage, as the adverse current runs at the rate of nine miles an hour. This was especially the case in the Seymour Narrows, which is about nine hundred yards wide, and situated at no great distance from Nanaimo, in the Gulf of Georgia. It is a far more tumultuous water-way, at certain stages of the tide—which has a rise and fall of thirteen feet—than the famous Maelstrom on the coast of Norway. The latter is also caused by the power of the wind and tide, though it was long held as the mystery and terror of the ocean. The author remembers in his school geography a crude woodcut, which depicted a ship being drawn by some mysterious power into a gaping vortex of the ocean, and already half submerged. It was intended to represent the terrible perils of passing too near the Maelstrom, off the Lofoden Islands. In after years he sailed quietly across this once dreaded spot in the North Sea, without experiencing even an extra lurch of the ship. Thus do the marvels and terrors of youth melt away. Travel and experience make great havoc in the wonderland of our credulity, and yet modern discovery outdoes in reality the miracles of the past.