We Arrived At The Head Of The Strait About Daybreak.
The tide
was falling, and rushing down with the swift current as if descending
a majestic cataract was a memorable experience.
We reached Sitka the
same night, and there I paid and discharged my crew, making allowance
for a couple of days or so for the journey back home to Fort
Wrangell, while I boarded the steamer for Portland and thus ended my
explorations for this season.
Part III
The Trip of 1890
Chapter XVII
In Camp at Glacier Bay
I left San Francisco for Glacier Bay on the steamer City of Pueblo,
June 14, 1890, at 10 A.M., this being my third trip to southeastern
Alaska and fourth to Alaska, including northern and western Alaska as
far as Unalaska and Pt. Barrow and the northeastern coast of Siberia.
The bar at the Golden Gate was smooth, the weather cool and pleasant.
The redwoods in sheltered coves approach the shore closely, their
dwarfed and shorn tops appearing here and there in ravines along the
coast up to Oregon. The wind-swept hills, beaten with scud, are of
course bare of trees. Along the Oregon and Washington coast the trees
get nearer the sea, for spruce and contorted pine endure the briny
winds better than the redwoods. We took the inside passage between
the shore and Race Rocks, a long range of islets on which many a good
ship has been wrecked. The breakers from the deep Pacific, driven by
the gale, made a glorious display of foam on the bald islet rocks,
sending spray over the tops of some of them a hundred feet high or
more in sublime, curving, jagged-edged and flame-shaped sheets.
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