About ten or eleven miles south of Sitka, on the mainland, but protected seaward by a breakwater of (Necker) islands, is Hot Springs Bay, on whose shores are springs which give it its name. About six or seven years before we obtained the Territory, the Russian American Fur Company, whose headquarters were at Sitka (since Baron Wrangell established them there in 1832), built a hospital at Hot Springs, which was said to have had wonderful remedial powers in skin and rheumatic diseases; but, for some reasons, the place has been abandoned (probably the lack of government by the United States), and the buildings are reported to be in a state of decay. The Indians used the waters for illness, and thus called the attention of the Russians thereto. The temperature of the water is from 120 to 125 degrees, and it contains a number of elements held in solution, as sulphur, chlorine, manganese, sodium and iron, besides combinations of these, and with other elements. It is worth a visit to see these hot springs, with the thermometer soaring up above the hundreds; for, in a day or two, by way of strange contrast, you will be among glaciers and icebergs towering as far in feet above your head. [Illustration: ALASKA'S THOUSAND ISLANDS, AS SEEN FROM SITKA.] The only way out of Sitka harbor, without putting to sea, is back through Peril Straits again; and, passing back, one can hardly realize that it is the same waterway, so radically different are the views presented. In the harbor of Sitka is Japonskoi (Japanese) Island, which may be identified by the captain's chart of the harbor, and which has a curious history. Here, about eighty years ago, an old Japanese junk, that had drifted across the sea on the Kuro-Siwo, or Japanese current, was stranded, and the Russians kindly cared for the castaway sailors who had survived the dreadful drift, and returned them to their country, after an experience that is seldom equaled, even in the romantic accounts of maritime misfortunes. The drifting of Japanese junks, and those of adjacent countries, is not so infrequent as one would suppose, and this fact might set the reflective man to thinking as to the ethnical possibilities accruing therefrom, the settlement of North America, etc.