I had pleasant company on the Pueblo and sat at the chief engineer's
table, who was a good and merry talker. An old San Francisco lawyer,
rather stiff and dignified, knew my father-in-law, Dr. Strentzel.
Three ladies, opposed to the pitching of the ship, were absent from
table the greater part of the way. My best talker was an old
Scandinavian sea-captain, who was having a new bark built at Port
Blakely, - an interesting old salt, every sentence of his conversation
flavored with sea-brine, bluff and hearty as a sea-wave, keen-eyed,
courageous, self-reliant, and so stubbornly skeptical he refused to
believe even in glaciers.
"After you see your bark," I said, "and find everything being done to
your mind, you had better go on to Alaska and see the glaciers."
"Oh, I haf seen many glaciers already."
"But are you sure that you know what a glacier is?" I asked.
"Vell, a glacier is a big mountain all covered up vith ice."
"Then a river," said I, "must be a big mountain all covered with
water."
I explained what a glacier was and succeeded in exciting his
interest. I told him he must reform, for a man who neither believed
in God nor glaciers must be very bad, indeed the worst of all
unbelievers.
At Port Townsend I met Mr. Loomis, who had agreed to go with me as
far as the Muir Glacier. We sailed from here on the steamer Queen. We
touched again at Victoria, and I took a short walk into the adjacent
woods and gardens and found the flowery vegetation in its glory,
especially the large wild rose for which the region is famous, and
the spiraea and English honeysuckle of the gardens.
June 18. We sailed from Victoria on the Queen at 10.30 A.M. The
weather all the way to Fort Wrangell was cloudy and rainy, but the
scenery is delightful even in the dullest weather. The marvelous
wealth of forests, islands, and waterfalls, the cloud-wreathed
heights, the many avalanche slopes and slips, the pearl-gray tones of
the sky, the browns of the woods, their purple flower edges and mist
fringes, the endless combinations of water and land and ever-shifting
clouds - none of these greatly interest the tourists. I noticed one of
the small whales that frequent these channels and mentioned the fact,
then called attention to a charming group of islands, but they turned
their eyes from the islands, saying, "Yes, yes, they are very fine,
but where did you see the whale?"
The timber is larger and apparently better every way as you go north
from Victoria, that is on the islands, perhaps on account of fires
from less rain to the southward. All the islands have been overswept
by the ice-sheet and are but little changed as yet, save a few of the
highest summits which have been sculptured by local residual
glaciers.
