In July, 1892, with our two children, we made a most enjoyable tour of Alaska, by way of Seattle and the steamship "Queen," through the inner deep water channels with their still water and surrounding mountains covered with inexhaustible cedar. We visited dense forests of timber near Sitka, where the warm Chinook winds carry sufficient moisture to keep them damp through the entire year, so that no forest fires ever occur. The moss accumulated over fallen trees, which did not decay. Huge trees several hundred years old grow upon others, as large and as ancient, though dead. Fallen logs preserve so well that many are as available as the standing trees for lumber. Cattle live the year around on this constantly growing moss. We stopped at Wrangell and Juneau, and spent some time at Sitka, visiting Treadwell, the great silver mine. We stopped a couple of days to see the wonderful Muir glacier, traveling several miles over the surface of the solid ice mass. Twenty-seven miles long and several miles wide, it moves gradually downward to the sea by force of gravity, averaging seventy feet per day. As it moves, this great mass tears from the solid granite below huge masses of rocks, and pedestrians can hear the crushing of the rocks. On reaching the salt water, which is very deep, the ice begins to soften and disintegrate, and periodically falls in great shales, sometimes two miles in length and nine hundred feet deep, into the water, only two hundred feet being above the water line. The captain stood off two miles from the glacier for us to see a berg break off, which happened in the afternoon. We could plainly see this immense body of ice fall into the water. It careened, disappeared, broke into many parts and finally appeared on the surface as bergs moving out to sea. The waves caused by this immense movement of ice rocked the ship as if we were in a storm. I was promoted colonel of cavalry, not assigned, while I held command of the 4th. On the colonel's restoration, in February, 1893, I was assigned as colonel of the 3d Cavalry at Fort McIntosh, and joined February 28, 1893, where I had as adjutant Thomas B. Dugan and as quartermaster John T. Knight, both efficient officers. The Garza Mexican troubles on the Rio Grande were then in full force, and my regiment was assigned to duty along the lower Rio Grande, leaving two companies of infantry at McIntosh. Numerous bands of Mexicans, half from Mexico and half from the United States, committed depredations, stole property and killed Americans all along the river to Brownsville. This so-called Garza war kept my troops busy marching, and in the difficult effort to punish them we lost a number of men.