On Douglas Island there is a large mill of 240 stamps, all
run by one small water-wheel, which, however, is acted on by water at
enormous pressure. The forests around the mill are being rapidly
nibbled away. Wind is here said to be very violent at times, blowing
away people and houses and sweeping scud far up the mountain-side.
Winter snow is seldom more than a foot or two deep.
June 21. We arrived at Douglas Island at five in the afternoon and
went sight-seeing through the mill. Six hundred tons of low-grade
quartz are crushed per day. Juneau, on the mainland opposite the
Douglas Island mills, is quite a village, well supplied with stores,
churches, etc. A dance-house in which Indians are supposed to show
native dances of all sorts is perhaps the best-patronized of all the
places of amusement. A Mr. Brooks, who prints a paper here, gave us
some information on Mt. St. Elias, Mt. Wrangell, and the Cook Inlet
and Prince William Sound region. He told Russell that he would never
reach the summit of St. Elias, that it was inaccessible. He saw no
glaciers that discharged bergs into the sea at Cook Inlet, but many
in Prince William Sound.
June 22. Leaving Juneau at noon, we had a good view of the Auk
Glacier at the mouth of the channel between Douglas Island and the
mainland, and of Eagle Glacier a few miles north of the Auk on the
east side of Lynn Canal.
