Wonderland; or, Alaska and the inland passage: With a description of the country traversed by the Northern Pacific RailroadHyde, John
History
Wonderland; or, Alaska and the inland passage: With a description of the country traversed by the Northern Pacific Railroad
Hyde, John
Alaska -- Description and travel; Northern Pacific Railroad Company; Northwest, Pacific -- Description and travel
the panorama, that overwhelms and confuses the observer. It is too great
to be separated into details, and everything is platted on such a
gigantic scale that all former experiences are dwarfed, and the
imagination rejects the adjectives that have heretofore served for other
scenes: to employ them here is only to mislead."
"As one gentleman, a veteran traveler, remarked to me, as we stood
looking north at the entrance to Glacier Bay, with the St. Elias Alps in
full view, and Mounts Crillon and Fairweather overtopping the
snow-covered peaks of that remarkable range:
"'You can take just what we see here, and put it down on Switzerland,
and it will hide all there is of mountain scenery in Europe.' And then
he added: 'I have been all over the world; but you are now looking at a
scene that has not its parallel elsewhere on the globe.'
"I cite this incident, as it is more descriptive, and gives a better
idea of contrast than anything of my own could do, giving, as it does,
to the reader, a conception of the vastness and immensity of the
topographical aspect of the shores of the inland seas through whose
labyrinthine passages we have for ten days past, and for ten days more
to come will be lost to the outside world, where nature reigns
undisturbed and unfretted by the hand of civilization."
Here, under the solemn influence of Mount St. Elias, and in the
northernmost waters of the greatest ocean of our planet, we turn
southward to repeat in inverse order the things we have seen; or
perchance, as often happens, down a number of new channels, with their
varied scenery, before home is reached again.
I have given a certain order in which the few ports of Alaska are
visited; but the reader must not for a moment think that this is always
rigidly followed. Sometimes some of them are left for the return
journey, and much depends on the amount of freight, and the number and
character of passengers. In the winter the trips are made wholly with
reference to mails, freight, and the few passengers; but in the spring,
summer, and fall these are wholly subordinate, and the trips are
converted into excursions in the broadest sense of the word. While
thousands of little channels remain almost wholly unexplored, which
probably would make the fortune of excursion companies if transported
elsewhere, yet it is evident that the greater attractions of the great
inland passage have been discovered, and are now shown to the tourists
to the Wonderland of the World.
FRED'K SCHWATKA.
* * * * *
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