When Captain Cook—who, with Captain Kidd, nearly monopolizes the young ladies' ideal romance of the seas—was in these waters, he asked the natives what land it was that lay about them, and they replied: "Alaska"—great land. It is a great land, lying loosely along the northwest coast,—great in area, great in the magnitude and beauty of its forests and in the fruitfulness of its many waters; great in the splendor of its ice fields; the majesty of its rivers, the magnificence of its snow-clad peaks; great also in its possibilities, and greatest of all in its measureless wealth of gold.

In the good old days of the Muscovite reign—1811,—Governor Baranoff sent Alexander Kuskoff to establish a settlement in California where grain and vegetables might be raised for the Sitka market. The ruins of Fort Ross are all that remain to tell the tale of that enterprise. The Sitkan of to-day manages to till a kitchen-garden that suffices; but his wants are few, and then he can always fall back on canned provision if his fresh food fails.

The stagnation of life in Alaska is all but inconceivable. The summer tourist can hardly realize it, because he brings to the settlement the only variety it knows; and this comes so seldom—once or twice a month—that the population arises as a man and rejoices so long as the steamer is in port. Please to picture this people after the excitement is over, quietly subsiding into a comatose state, and remaining in it until the next boat heaves in sight. One feeds one's self mechanically; takes one's constitutional along the shore or over one of the goat-paths that strike inland; nodding now and again to the familiar faces that seem never to change in expression except during tourist's hours; and then repairs to that bed which is the salvation of the solitary, for sleep and oblivion are the good angels that brood over it. In summer the brief night—barely forty winks in length—is so silvery and so soft that it is a delight to sit up in it even if one is alone. Lights and shadows play with one another, and are reflected in sea and sky until the eye is almost dazzled with the loveliness of the scene. I believe if I were banished to Alaska I would sleep in the daytime—say from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,—and revel in the wakeful beauty of the other hours.

But the winter, and the endless night of winter!—when the sun sinks to rest in discouragement at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and rises with a faint heart and a pale face at ten or eleven in the forenoon; when even high noon is unworthy of the name—for the dull luminary, having barely got above the fence at twelve o'clock, backs out of it and sinks again into the blackness of darkness one is destined to endure for at least two thirds of the four and twenty! Since the moon is no more obliging to the Alaskans than the sun is, what is a poor fellow to do? He can watch the aurora until his eyes ache; he can sit over a game of cards and a glass of toddy—he can always get the latter up there; he can trim his lamp and chat with his chums and fill his pipe over and over again. But the night thickens and the time begins to lag; he looks at his watch, to find it is only 9 p.m., and there are twelve hours between him and daylight. It is a great land in which to store one's mind with knowledge, provided one has the books at hand and good eyes and a lamp that won't flicker or smoke. Yet why should I worry about this when there are people who live through it and like it?—or at least they say they do.

In my mind's eye I see the Alaska of the future—and the not far-distant future. Among the most beautiful of the islands there will be fine openings; lawns and flowers will carpet the slopes from the dark walls of the forest to the water's edge. In the midst of these favored spots summer hotels will throw wide their glorious windows upon vistas that are like glimpses of fairy land. Along the beach numerous skiffs await those who are weary of towns; steam launches are there, and small barges for the transportation of picnic parties to undiscovered islands in the dim distance. Sloop yachts with the more adventurous will go forth on voyages of exploration and discovery, two or three days in length, under the guidance of stolid, thoroughbred Indian pilots. There may be an occasional wreck, with narrow escapes from the watery grave—let us hope so, for the sake of variety. There will be fishing parties galore, and camping on foreign shores, and eagle hunts, and the delights of the chase; with Indian retinues and Chinese cooks, and the "swell toggery" that is the chief, if not the only, charm of that sort of thing. There will be circulating libraries in each hotel, and grand pianos, and private theatricals, and nightly hops that may last indefinitely, or at least until sunrise, without shocking the most prudent; for day breaks at 2 a.m.

There will be visits from one hotel to the other, and sea-voyages to dear old Sitka, where the Grand Hotel will be located; and there will be the regular weekly or semi-weekly boat to the Muir glacier, with professional guides to the top of it, and all the necessary traps furnished on board if desired. And this wild life can begin as early as April and go on until the end of September without serious injury. There will be no hay fever or prickly-heat; neither will there be sunstrokes nor any of the horrors of the Eastern and Southern summer. It will remain true to its promise of sweet, warm days, and deliciously cool evenings, in which the young lover may woo his fair to the greatest advantage; for there is no night there. Then everyone will come home with a new experience, which is the best thing one can come home with, and the rarest nowadays; and with a pocketful of Alaskan garnets, which are about the worst he can come home with, being as they are utterly valueless, and unhandsome even when they are beautifully symmetrical.

Oh, the memory of the voyage, which is perhaps the most precious of all!—this we bring home with us forever. The memory of all that is half civilized and wholly unique and uncommon: of sleepy and smoky wigwams, where the ten tribes hold powwow in a confusion of gutturals, with a plentiful mixture of saliva; for it is a moist language, a gurgle that approaches a gargle, and in three weeks the unaccustomed ear scarcely recovers from the first shock of it; a memory of totem poles in stark array, and of the high feast in the Indian villages, where the beauty and chivalry of the forest gathered and squatted in wide circles listening to some old-man-eloquent in the very ecstasy of expectoration; the memory of a non-committing, uncommunicative race, whose religion is a feeble polytheism—a kind of demonolatry; for, as good spirits do not injure one, one's whole time is given to the propitiation of the evil. This is called Shamanism, and is said to have been the religion of the Tartar race before the introduction of Buddhism, and is still the creed of the Siberians; a memory of solitary canoes on moonlit seas and of spicy pine odors mingled with the tonic of moist kelp and salt-sea air.

A memory of friends who were altogether charming, of a festival without a flaw. O my kind readers! when the Alaska Summer Hotel Company has stocked the nooks and corners of the archipelago with caravansaries, and good boats are filling them with guests who go to spend the season in the far Northwest, fail not to see that you are numbered among the elect; for Alaska outrivers all rivers and out-lakes all lakes—being itself a lake of ten thousand islands; it out-mountains the Alps of America, and certainly outdoes everything else everywhere else, in the shape of a watering place. And when you have returned from there, after two or three months' absence from the world and its weariness, you will begin to find that your "tum-tum is white" for the first time since your baptismal day, and that you have gained enough in strength and energy to topple the totem pole of your enemy without shedding a feather. There is hope for Alaska in the line of a summer resort.

As ghosts scent the morning air and are dispersed, so we scented the air, which actually seemed more familiar as we approached Washington in the great Northwest; and the spirit of peace, of ease and of lazy contentment that had possessed our souls for three weeks took flight. It was now but a day's sail to Victoria, and yet we began to think we would never get there.

We were hungry for news of the world which we had well-nigh forgotten. Three weeks! It seemed to us that in this little while cities might have been destroyed, governments overthrown, new islands upheaved and old ones swallowed out of sight. Then we were all expecting to find heaps of letters from everybody awaiting us at Victoria or Port Townsend, and our mouths fairly watered for news.

We took a little run into the sea and got lost in a fog; but the pilot whistled for the landmarks, and Echo answered; so that by the time the fog was ready to roll away, like a snowy drop-curtain, we knew just where we were, and ran quietly into a nook that looked as if it would fit us like a bootjack. The atmosphere grew smoky; forest fires painted the sky with burnt umber, and through this veil the sun shone like a copper shield. Then a gorgeous moonlight followed. There was blood upon that moon, and all the shores were like veins in moss-agate and the sea like oil. We wound in and out, in and out, among dreamy islands; touched for a little while at Nanaimo, where we should have taken in a cargo of coal for Portland, whither the Ancon was bound; but Captain Carroll kindly put us all ashore first and then returned for his freight.

We hated to sleep that night, and did not sleep very much. But when we awakened it was uncommonly quiet; and upon going on deck—lo! we were at Victoria. What a quiet, pretty spot! What a restful and temperate climate! What jutting shores, soft hills, fine drives, old-countrified houses and porters' lodges and cottages, with homely flowers in the door-yards and homely people in the doors!—homely I mean in the handsomest sense, for I can not imagine the artificial long survives in that community.

How dear to us seemed civilization after our wanderings in the wilderness! We bought newspapers and devoured them; ran in and out of shops just for the fun of it and because our liberty was so dear to us then. News? We were fairly staggered with the abundance of it, and exchanged it with one another in the most fraternal fashion, sharing our joys and sorrows with the whole ship's company. And deaths? What a lot of these, and how startling when they come so unexpectedly and in such numbers! Why is it, I wonder, that so many people die when we are away somewhere beyond reach of communication?

But enough of this. A few jolly hours on shore, a few drives in the suburbs and strolls in the town, and we headed for Port Townsend and the United States, where we parted company with the good old ship that carried us safely to and fro. And there we ended the Alaskan voyage gladly enough, but not without regret; for, though uneventful, I can truly say it was one of the pleasantest voyages of my life; and one that—thanks to every one who shared it with me—I shall ever remember with unalloyed delight.