Large Deposits Of Magnetic Iron Ore And Brown Hematite, Together With Limestone, Had Been Discovered In Advantageous Proximity To The Coal, Making A Bright Outlook For The Sound Region In General In Connection With Its Railroad Hopes, Its Unrivaled Timber Resources, And Its Far-Reaching Geographical Relations.

After spending a few weeks in the Puget Sound a friend from San Francisco, we engaged passage on the little mail steamer California, at Portland, Oregon, for Alaska.

The sail down the broad lower reaches of the Columbia and across its foamy bar, around Cape Flattery, and up the Juan de Fuca Strait, was delightful; and after calling again at Victoria and Port Townsend we got fairly off for icy Alaska.

Chapter II

Alexander Archipelago and the Home I found in Alaska

To the lover of pure wildness Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. No excursion that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so marvelous an abundance of noble, newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to view as on the trip through the Alexander Archipelago to Fort Wrangell and Sitka. Gazing from the deck of the steamer, one is borne smoothly over calm blue waters, through the midst of countless forest-clad islands. The ordinary discomforts of a sea voyage are not felt, for nearly all the whole long way is on inland waters that are about as waveless as rivers and lakes. So numerous are the islands that they seem to have been sown broadcast; long tapering vistas between the largest of them open in every direction.

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