278

ODD CORNERS OF THE EARTH

Mrs. Peattie's Address at Rescue Hall on Places of Living Interest.

Strange Things About [?]--Travels From the Palm to the Glacier--Purple Speres of Sea.

This paper was read before an audience of working men--some of whom have work, and many of whom have not--at Rescue Hall last Monday evening, and is one of a series of little lectures to be given there Monday evenings during the winter, this arrangement having been made by Rev. Mr. Clark, the superintendent of Rescue hall:

The world, they tell me, is round. I have never proved it myself, but I would not be surprised if there were before me several men who have done so, and who know it is round for the reason that by going straight ahead, they have finally returned to the place from which they started. To have a round world which no one forbids us to wanted over, to know that it whirls and whirls endlessly through space, to know that the secrets of it can never all be discovered by us, do the best we may, affects our imaginations, when we come to think of it, with feelings of mingled terror and pleasure. To begin with, it is very wonderful that we cannot leave the earth, but are held on it fast with the invisible but unbreakable chains of graduation. We are prisoners here. We may wander about the prison yard as much as we choose, but not one of us may step off into the "wind that blows between the worlds." We are not allowed to visit those pleasant neighbors of ours in Mars, no matter how much we may want to do so. As yet we have not even been able to signal to them, although a little while ago they were so near that we could even see their irrigating ditches--or what we were pleased to consider must be such. M. Flammarion, the French astronomer, did, indeed, have an idea that they were trying to signal to us, because he saw, with the aid of his telescope, great lights blazing there on the mountains, so placed that they formed the shape of a triangle. And perhaps some day we of earth and they of Mars will be able to let each other know that we are looking at one another. The thought will certainly be very interesting. But the fact remains that we are prisoners here on earth, and cannot escape. We therefore amuse ourselves here as best we can, and sometimes succeed so well that we forget all about being prisoners, and feel like free men.

There is a great difference of opinion as to whether or not the earth is a pleasant place in which to live. I have heard those who insisted that it was just what you made it. There's a good deal in that--but it's only half a truth. The world is certainly very different in different places, who have tried your hands at various trades and occupations, are apt to have your heads crammed with knowledge of strange lands and curious men. You have seen the wharves where the sailors of a half hundred different nationalities crowd together; you know the dining camp, the [?] city, the mountains, the prairies, the river life, the traveling show life. In fact, you have eaten a much bigger meal, so to speak, at the table of life than those men who have stopped calmly into a fired occupation in the town with which they have always been associated, and who have stayed there, contest with their little prosperity, and free from curiosity about how the other half of the world looks, and what the world outside of their [?] is like. And you know that the world is not entirely what you make it. If I had been a man, instead of a woman, I should have prowled around the world a good deal. I shouldn't have cared particularly about packing my trunks and enrolling among the passengers of the "City of Paris," the marvelous ocean steamer, and going to Europe to visit the usual places along the line of travel, with a guidebook in one hand and, a fat purse in the other. Although even that probably has pleasures. But I would have liked to have lived with the Indians, to have climbed South American mountains, to have visited the islands of the Pacific, and to have gone to the diamonds fields of Africa. I would find out just how cold Siberia is, and how hot it is in Martinique. I would not take the world of anyone about the "heathen" of Burman or Khartoum, but I would find out for myself if they were not really fine fellows. And I am quite certain that I should find them not half bad. I would know the world from Congo to [?], from Kamchatka to Terra del Fuego. But a woman has to take things more slowly than a man, and I am afraid it will be a long time before I have covered the ground I am ambitious to go over.

But I have been in a few curious places, and perhaps you would enjoy hearing about two or three of them. Now listen to this. I will describe a place to you and leave you to decide from my description whether you have ever been there or not.

A bay, shut in with ice. A bay so wide it seemed the sea, except that the sea was just behind, warmer, and less terrible than this bay. The water, a brooding blue; the sky a blue of deeper tint. The mountains circling round the bay, wrapped in mists of blue, and the tremulous air a liquid sapphire diluted with tender and etherial radiance. The cakes of ice floating around the veering ship, all white, whiter than any whiteness save that of a diamond. And down the crevices of them, a blueness quivering as bright as a jewel and as luminous as a beautiful eye. These cakes of ice groaned and fretted. They knocked viciously against the copper bottom of the staunch, but trembling ship. Many streams flowed out from the glaciers and crossed and recrossed each other. The water was full of vexed currents. The bergs were the victims of their caprice and tossed this way and that in the so two copper-colored orbs burned dully through the ether. One of those was the sun. The other, equally bright, was a muck sun, fashioned by a trick of the atmosphere, which doubled the object looked at as the excited optic nerve of a drunken man sometimes does. One had to look closely to determine which of these two strange, dully bright bodies were the substance and which the shadow. Thus, by the mystic light of two suns, the vessel forced its way through the clustering bergs to where the engulphing blueness seemed to concentrate itself into an intensity [?] than any mid-summer sky, more radiant than any lady's eyes, more splendid than any tint of wave in sun-lit depths. The roar of falling ice dropping in the sea stirred one as if he were hearing the great mechanic working at his world. And all around this thunderous noise hung silence. No letter clamor broke in to make these crashed of ice and water less terrible. The mountains, the sea, the glacier, the wind and the sky had it all their own way there, and warred together, and were contemptuous of man and his interruptions. And up before the ship arose a mountain of ice, cut through with moraine and [?], [?], beautiful, yet fearful.

Do you recognize the place? It is the Muir glacier of Alaska. Frederick Schwatks, standing in that bay, said, "You can take what we see here, and put it down in Switzerland, and it will hide the mountain scenery of Europe."

Alaska, which seems made of silence, and forests, ice, and sea and skit, reaches its climax here---at the glacier. Its immensity is hardly to be appreciated. Year in and year out, the ice moves down from its mysterious source, never growing less, and falls thundering into the bay, and floats there in shining bergs, which wear at last into mere blocks of ice that float out to sea, and dissolve in the warmer currents of the ocean. Let me read you Joaquin Miller's poem of Alaska:

Ice-built, ice-bound and ice-bounded,
Such cold sense of silence! Such [room?]
Such snow light? Such sea light confounded
With thunders that strike like a doom!
Such grandeur, such glory, such gloom!
Hear that boom! hear that deep distant boom
Of an avalanche buried
Down this unfinished world!

Ice sense and ice summits! ice spaces
In splendor of white, as God's throne
Ice worlds to the pole! and ice places,
Untracked, and unnamed, and unknown!
Hear that boom! Hear the grinding, the groan
Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan
Of you ice mountain buried,
Down this unfinished world

Not that Alaska is all ice and snow. In the interior it is mostly a frightful [chapparel?], made of moss, ice and decay, and is almost uninhabitable, but along the vast coast line stretches a bit of fertile land, lying between the sea and the mountains. For there is hardly an opening in the coast mountains of Alaska! This coast line is 7,800 miles long. The country is 1,100 miles from east to west, and 800 from north to south. This enormous area has in it only about 34,000 native Indians. These Indians are not of the North American Indian tribes. They appear rather to be orientals. Their slant eyes, their short, thick bodies, their superstitions, traditions and habits point to an Asiatic origin rather than an association with the North American Indian tribes. They have none of that independence of spirit which distinguishes the Indian we know. They have broad faces, squat noses, low forehead, fleshy bodies, and gestures which suggest the Japanese, except of course that the difference between the civilized man and the savage one--that is to say, between the clever Japanese and the stupid Alaskan--is to be taken into consideration. They live in huts of logs or boards. The steps which lead to the doors, bring you only to a sill, and not to the floor, and once inside the door you have to [?] again. In fact, two or three great lodges of dirt or of logs run around the entire length of the room, and these are used to place furniture upon. The second ledge will contain the beds. The third lodge will have the stores of clothes, food, fishing, [?] and hunting traps. While the ledge nearest the floor will be given up to eating utensils and the food, and clothes needed for immediate use. In the center of the but is the place for the fire. Above it is an opening in the roof. Around this fire site the family. At the head, or facing the door is the master of the house. His sons and nephews, his daughters and nieces and his wife sit around hi. Opposite, at the far end from him are the slaves--for almost all prosperous Alaskan families have slaves. They estimate their wealth in various ways, just as we do. Except that they do not seem to greatly prize land. They prefer silver dollars, and woven blankets, or rings of silver and carved hunting knives. They are a duty people, both in their homes and out. They live the year around in the midst of rotting fish [?]. Their huts are surrounded with ropes from which bang the drying salmon and other fish.

But for all their dirt they have a certain love for the beautiful. Their boats are lost as graceful as the Venetian gondola. The prow is curved like the neck of a swan, and the head of an animal, usually the insignia of the tribe, appears at the end of this graceful projection. They have dyes made of roots and herbs which are as durable and almost as exquisite as the Persian dyes, and they combine the colors in their blankets and in their baskets with something of the same instinct for art that many of the orientals do. They are skillful carvers, but it s noticeable that a very grotesque and fierce figure appeals to them more than a graceful shape. They are clever workers in gold and silver, and have even made a notice bronze. They understand the fusing of metals, the wielding of them and the use of them. Their hand-woven blankets are as strong as Persian rugs, and many of them are beautiful.

Civilization is, however, taken from them these native arts. The missionaries have discouraged the carving of totem poles, or the genealogical trees, because they considered that they kept up too strongly the race feeling in them. And the knives of these curious artists do not seem to take naturally to our tamer, if more pleasing art. The weaving of their wonderful blankets has been discouraged, and instead the women are taught to make dresses in miserable imitation of such as American women wear. The effect is not desirable. The Alaskan women looks best in a blanket, with [?] of wild goat or lynx, with a ring in her nose and her arms heavy with bangles of silver. Civilization simply makes her unendurable in appearance. As a save, she is rather interesting. The men have also given up the weaving of the baskets made from the rot of the white cedar. These they wove so close in textures that water will not run through them, and they decorated them with fantastic borders of exceeding attractiveness. But they have now become apprentices in the mission carpenter shops, from which they turn out ugly furniture. It may be that I do not appreciate the advantages of civilization.

but I am bound to say that the deliberate detection of national traits has always seemed to me pitiful. A savage is a happy man. Why not let hi stay a savage? Why make a mongrel out of him--a creature fit neither for civilization, nor savagery.

Sitka, as you all know, is the capital of Alaska. It was founded by that extraordinary Russian, Baranoff, in 1839. And under the administration of this American czar the islands of Alaska were developed to such an extent that the years of unscientific depletion which this country has been guilty of since it came into possession of Alaska, have not been able to entirely undo the work this man accomplished.

Sitka is a ghostly place, take it for all in all. Across the little blue, island dotted bay in front of it, a burned out voclano still shows the traces of dead fires. Back of the town other mountains [?], and on one of them is a specter cross, where the snow lies in gulches. For sixty years the monks of the Russian church, who live in the monastery at Sitka, have made a yearly pilgrimage to this cross of snow, in penance for their sins, encountering many dangers in their journey. Amid the freak oaks just out of Sitka is an old battle ground where the Russians and the fierce Thinglets, one of the tribes of native Alaskans, had their last battle, and at which the Russians conquered utterly. The natives will tell you that any dark night the ghosts of their dead ancestors appear there among the mighty trees. The rotting wharves of Sitka speak of vanished industries, the strange foreign houses speak of vanished civilization, the dismantled castle of a vanished power. Truly, Sitka is a town of ghosts. Baranoff's castle stands where he built it, when Emperor Paul VIII of Russia sent him out to conquer the wilderness and pour money into the Russian coffers from the killing of the sea, and the salmon, the importation of silver, ivory and timber. This castle upon a cleft rock. The rock was not always a cleft. Another castle once stood there, and the rock opened one day in an earthquake and swallowed it up. But as the rock was a natural [?], and an island in the midst of the bay, that could be defended from attack with the utmost advantage to the besieged, another castle was erected in the same place.

Around it the blue bay burns with arctic splendor of color under a bluer sky. The melancholy shores, with their fringe of cedars and cypresses are mirrored in the water. To climb to the castle rock which hangs above the town it is necessary to surmount many rotting and creaking steps. Once on top one feels that he could defend himself against the world It is a little Gibraltar. It is a natural fortress. Within the castle are still some remains of the splendor with which Baranoff surrounded himself. This man, who could live sit winter in a hut, without much food, and with poor clothing, who could fight savages, who could defy his own government, keep loyal a band of exiled soldiers, tame the spirit even to the most arrogant insurrectionists, made a mimicking of himself in his castle. His dining hall was hung in fire. His porcelain stoves reached to the ceiling. A few of the fine old paintings and jewels, the robes and arms which he had are still preserved in the little Greek church there. This peculiar man, about whom Americans know so little, was really of the most interesting pioneers this country has seen. He was a man of the people, a man of low birth. Yet, because he had executive ability united with financial enterprise, he became as independent as an island king, lie imported a train of bishops and clergymen to conduct his worship,and he had a harem of the most expensive courtesans of St. Petersburg with him. His wines were above reproach, and their limit was inexhaustible. He had a considerable people, made of savages and of Rusian adventures, scattered on a hundred islands. He kept them in subjection and comparative contentment. As a man he was recklessly extravagant, as a ruler scientifically economical as a friend the soul of honor, as a lover the heart, of treachery, as a pioneer and a warrior, the most skillful, intrepid, adventurous, diplomatic of men, made at once of precaution and daring, wisdom and guilt; he built up around him a productive commonwealth, and a reckless, profligate and brilliant court, barbaric in its splendor. The ghost of this man is the chiefest of the ghosts that seem to the mind's eye to parade the quiet streets of the present Sitka.

Sitka now is only a naval station with the accessories of a United States court, the mission and a few stores. The Greek church is still there and the Russians and some of the Indians attend it. There are many Indians in the mission, which is of the Presbyterian faith. The great United States men-of-war occasionally stop there, and the tourists invade the place. But the streets are only filled with ghosts for me.

On this western continent where the impetus of fresh, active pioneering still makes itself felt in every direction. It is seldom, indeed, that one encounters a city which has paused its prime and fallen into decay. Ruins always surprise one, therefore, Sitka has left an indelible impression on my mind. I saw much else of Alaska. I saw Juneau, its most thriving town. And Douglas island, with its extensive low grade gold quartz, and many a little town, set on an inlet of the ocean, surrounded with woods and mountains, and with the salmon canneries for sustenance. I visited gold mines that could only be reached by climbing three miles up mountain roads, then going hand over hand up ladders for 300 feet, and creeping in under the lid of a glacier. I saw mountains, grand, melancholy, with fires yet fuming in their hearts, and endless, endless reaches of bay and sounds, haunted by the white gull, and shadowy and still. But it was of Sitka that I wished to tell you--Sitka, the city of ghosts.

That is one odd corner of the world that I have seen. The next one of which I will speak shall be in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, and in te topic, not the arctic zone. Instead of low huts of logs, there are low huts of white coral rock. Instead of cedars and cypress, there are coconut palms, with plume-like leaves, and [?] vitae, with flowers the color of heliotrope. Instead of melancholy blue waters, there are glimmering, glittering waters of translucent green, so clear that one can see the slightest article upon the bottom. No ribbon of mist twists about the shores, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours upon the [?] and so bounteously that the white air quivers with heat and everything that can bear blossom or fruit riots in plenty.

The place is Nassau on the island of New Providence. This, as you of course know, is one of the Bahamas, comprised in the great Archipelago of the West Indies. It is a coral reef rising out of the ocean, and is as splendid as a garden. Fancy, if you, a city cut out of a rock, as if the rock were cheese. The streets are of it, and no maccaddam ever rivaled it for beauty or smoothness. It is a cream white very beautiful to see, in color. The huts of negroes are many of them quarried out of this stone and the walks are some times made by taking the stone away from the houses, leaving the house-block of rock standing. Great boulders of stone form the gateways. The high walls are of the rock. And houses, huts, walls and pillars are tinted in delicate washes to subdue the glare that would result, if the rock were left its native color of white. And over the walls droop the splendid palms. The century plant and the great [?] hemp grow in yards. Passionate blossoms of purple and crimson fling themselves over the walls. The royal palm rises as delicately and symmetrically as a vase of flowers among the straggling palmetto. And most striking of all the trees is the silk cotton wood. This grows as large as the banyan. Its trunk has many chambers, in each of which a horse could be stalled.

Its bark is as smooth as [?]. And from it drips the Spanish moss, gray and soft, [?] these delicate chambers.

But how shall I make you know the life in this ocean island? How give you any idea of how it seems with people and fruits? No one lives in the house. Everyone is out on the streets. The faces of the people are black, for they are negroes. Among them are the few of the natives of the island, in the sense of being aborigines. For the gentle race which was found on the island when Columbus landed there is gone--extinct. Of the island and the people on it, Columbus wrote to Isabella: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and affectionate are they that I swear to your highness, there is not a better people in the world." But this gentleness and sweetness did not save them from the greed of the dominant Spaniard, for 40,000 of them were at one time and another entrapped by promises to take them to the heavenly land, where they would meet spirits of their departed friends, and were thus conveyed to the mines of Hispanics, where they miserably perished. Since the English took the islands in 1641, the Bahamas have known many vicissitudes. Now the French have owned them, now the Spanish, now again the English Great naval battles have been fought in those beautiful bays. Governors have been captured, guns spiked, towns burned, ships sunk, and every inhabited of the island of New Providence forced to yield to the demand of arms and embark in the enemies' ships. Pirates have made it their home and have rioted there in the reckless luxury acquired by robbery on the high seas.

At the time of our war of independence, many families colonized here with their slaves. They took with them the habits of elegance and the production for education native to them. A commodore of the American navy meanwhile took the Bahamas by force of arms. The Spaniards got them away again. A South Carolina loyalist once more recovered them for the American colonies. And finally, in 1787, the English got them by conveyance, and have held them ever since. Here they have had one of their great naval hospitals. And here is a cathedral, in which the English sailors [?] by the half hundred. The plague, shipwreck and battle have all played their part in covering walls, floor and churchyard with memorial tablets of sailors who died in the service of England.

Nineteen out of every twenty persons now there are negroes. At the time of the civil war the contraband found refuge there. Many slave holders ran their slaves to the island, thinking to keep them from capture till after the war when victory having crowned the cause of the confederacy, they could bring them safe home again. These negroes have multiplied there as fast as have the [?], the pineapples and the oranges. And a merry race they are. These are not the [?], and negroes we know, dressed like ourselves in somber colors, and walking and talking with conscious dignity. Far from it. They are a black, vigorous, inordinately gay people. To live and to laugh seems to them enough for anyone. They eat the fruit that grows all about them. They wear clothes of the gayest tints. The women are splendid in scarlet and orange. The men wear shirts of red, and white braided hats. The children wear nothing at all. The soldiery is native, and the police are also negroes, and both of them the English government attire in splendid and brilliant uniforms. When it comes to a question of colonization. England knows her business. She knows that if you are dealing with a semi-savage, one of the easiest ways to keep him loyal is to put a red fez on his head and a glittering sword at his side.

Fancy, then, if you can, how up and down the street group these gay people, talking, screaming, laughing! The sunlight pours upon them. The gay awnings of the bazars flutter in the wind. Just out beyond the narrow winding street lies the bay, green and brilliant. It is hemmed in by a white bar of the coral rock, with lighthouses on it, and waving palms. Beyond is the ocean, dark-blue, tossing high waves up to the wonderful tropical sky. The people

ODD CORNERS OF THE EARTH

Mrs. Peattie's Address at Rescue Hall on Places of Living Interest.

Strange Things About [?]--Travels From the Palm to the Glacier--Purple Speres of Sea.

This paper was read before an audience of working men--some of whom have work, and many of whom have not--at Rescue Hall last Monday evening, and is one of a series of little lectures to be given there Monday evenings during the winter, this arrangement having been made by Rev. Mr. Clark, the superintendent of Rescue hall:

The world, they tell me, is round. I have never proved it myself, but I would not be surprised if there were before me several men who have done so, and who know it is round for the reason that by going straight ahead, they have finally returned to the place from which they started. To have a round world which no one forbids us to wanted over, to know that it whirls and whirls endlessly through space, to know that the [?] of it can never all be discovered by us, do the best we may, affects our imaginations, when we come to think of it, with feelings of mingled terror and pleasure. To begin with, it is very wonderful that we cannot leave the earth, but are held on it fast with the invisible but unbreakable chains of graduation. We are prisoners here. We may wander about the prison yard as much as we choose, but not one of us ay step off into the "wind that blows between the worlds." We are not allowed to visit those pleasant neighbors of ours in Mars, no matter how much we may want to do so. As yet we have not even been able to signal to them, although a little while ago they were so near that we could even see their irrigating ditches--or what we were pleased to consider must be such. M. Flammarion, the French astronomer, did, indeed, have an idea that they were trying to signal to us, because he saw, with the aid of his telescope, great lights blazing there on the mountains, so placed that they formed the shape of a triangle. And perhaps some day we of earth and they of Mars will be able to let each other know that we are looking at one another. The thought will certainly be very interesting. But the fact remains that we are prisoners here on earth, and cannot escape. We therefore amuse ourselves here as best we can, and sometimes succeed so well that we forget all about being prisoners, and feel like free men.

There is a great difference of opinion as to whether or not the earth is a pleasant place in which to live. I have heard those who insisted that it was just what you made it. There's a good deal in that--but it's only half a truth. The world is certainly very different in different places, who have tried your hands at various trades and occupations, are apt to have your heads crammed with knowledge of strange lands and curious men. You have seen the wharves where the sailors of a half hundred different nationalities crowd together; you know the dining camp, the [?] city, the mountains, the prairies, the river life, the traveling show life. In fact, you have eaten a much bigger meal, so to speak, at the table of life than those men who have stopped calmly into a fired occupation in the town with which they have always been associated, and who have stayed there, contest with their little prosperity, and free from curiosity about how the other half of the world looks, and what the world outside of their [?] is like. And you know that the world is not entirely what you make it. If I had been a man, instead of a woman, I should have prowled around the world a good deal. I shouldn't have cared particularly about packing my trunks and enrolling among the passengers of the "City of Paris," the marvelous ocean steamer, and going to Europe to visit the usual places along the line of travel, with a guidebook in one hand and, a fat purse in the other. Although even that probably has pleasures. But I would have liked to have lived with the Indians, to have climbed South American mountains, to have visited the islands of the Pacific, and to have gone to the diamonds fields of Africa. I would find out just how cold Siberia is, and how hot it is in Martinique. I would not take the world of anyone about the "heathen" of Burman or Khartoum, but I would find out for myself if they were not really fine fellows. And I am quite certain that I should find them not half bad. I would know the world from Congo to [?], from Kamchatka to Terra del Fuego. But a woman has to take things more slowly than a man, and I am afraid it will be a long time before I have covered the ground I am ambitious to go over.

But I have been in a few curious places, and perhaps you would enjoy hearing about two or three of them. Now listen to this. I will describe a place to you and leave you to decide from my description whether you have ever been there or not.

A bay, shut in with ice. A bay so wide it seemed the sea, except that the sea was just behind, warmer, and less terrible than this bay. The water, a brooding blue; the sky a blue of deeper tint. The mountains circling round the bay, wrapped in mists of blue, and the tremulous air a liquid sapphire diluted with tender and etherial radiance. The cakes of ice floating around the veering ship, all white, whiter than any whiteness save that of a diamond. And down the crevices of them, a blueness quivering as bright as a jewel and as luminous as a beautiful eye. These cakes of ice groaned and fretted. They knocked viciously against the copper bottom of the staunch, but trembling ship. Many streams flowed out from the glaciers

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and crossed and recrossed each other. The water was full of vexed currents. The bergs were the victims of their caprice and tossed this way and that in the so two copper-colored orbs burned dully through the ether. One of those was the sun. The other, equally bright, was a muck sun, fashioned by a trick of the atmosphere, which doubled the object looked at as the excited optic nerve of a drunken man sometimes does. One had to look closely to determine which of these two strange, dully bright bodies were the substance and which the shadow. Thus, by the mystic light of two suns, the vessel forced its way through the clustering bergs to where the engulphing blueness seemed to concentrate itself into an intensity [?] than any mid-summer sky, more radiant than any [?]'s eyes, more splendid than any tint of wave in sun-lit depths. The roar of falling ice dropping in the sea stirred one as if he were hearing the great mechanic working at his world. And all around this thunderous noise hung silence. No letter clamor broke in to make these crashed of ice and water less terrible. The mountains, the sea, the glacier, the wind and the sky had it all their own way there, and warred together, and were contemptuous of man and his interruptions. And up before the ship arose a mountain of ice, cut through with moraine and [?], [?], beautiful, yet fearful.

Do you recognize the place? It is the Muir glacier of Alaska. Frederick Schwatks, standing in that bay, said, "You can take what we [?] here, and put it down in Switzerland, and it will hide the mountain scenery of Europe."

Alaska, which seems made of silence, and forests, ice, and sea and skit, reaches its climax here---at the glacier. Its immensity is hardly to be appreciated. Year in and year out, the ice moves down from its mysterious source, never growing less, and falls thundering into the bay, and floats there in shining bergs, which wear at last into mere blocks of ice that float out to sea, and dissolve in the warmer currents of the ocean. Let me read you Joaquin Miller's poem of Alaska:

Ice-built, ice-bound and ice-bounded,
Such cold sense of silence! Such [room?]
Such snow light? Such sea light confounded
With thunders that strike like a doom!
Such grandeur, such glory, such gloom!
Hear that boom! hear that deep distant boom
Of an avalanche buried
Down this unfinished world!

Ice sense and ice summits! ice spaces
In splendor of white, as God's throne
Ice worlds to the pole! and ice places,
Untracked, and unnamed, and unknown!
Hear that boom! Hear the grinding, the groan
Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan
Of you ice mountain buried,
Down this unfinished world

Not that Alaska is all ice and snow.
In the interior it is mostly a frightful [chapparel?], made of moss, ice and decay, and is almost uninhabitable, but along the vast coast line stretches a bit of fertile land, lying between the sea and the mountains. For there is hardly an opening in the coast mountains of Alaska! This coast line is 7,800 miles long. The country is 1,100 miles from east to west, and 800 from north to south. This enormous area has in it only about 34,000 native Indians. These Indians are not of the North American Indian tribes. They appear rather to be orientals. Their slant eyes, their short, thick bodies, their superstitions, traditions and habits point to an Asiatic origin rather than an association with the North American indian. They have none of that independence of spirit which distinguishes the Indian we know. They have broad faces, squat noses, low forehead, fleshy bodies, and gestures which suggest the Japanese, except of course that the difference between the civilized man and the savage one--that is to say, between the clever Japanese and the stupid Alaskan--is to be taken into consideration. They live in huts of logs or boards. The steps which lead to the doors, bring you only to a sill, and not to the floor, and once inside the door you have to [?] again. In fact, two or three great lodges of dirt or of logs run around the entire length of the room, and these are used to place furniture upon. The second ledge will contain the beds. The third lodge will have the stores of clothes, food, fishing, [?] and hunting traps. While the ledge nearest the floor will be given up to eating utensils and the food, and clothes needed for immediate use. In the center of the but is the place for the fire. Above it is an opening in the roof. Around this fire site the family. At the head, or facing the door is the master of the house. His sons and nephews, his daughters and nieces and his wife sit around hi. Opposite, at the far end from him are the slaves--for almost all prosperous Alaskan families have slaves. They estimate their wealth in various ways, just as we do. Except that they do not seem to greatly prize land. They prefer silver dollars, and woven blankets, or rings of silver and carved hunting knives. They are a duty people, both in their homes and out. They live the year around in the midst of rotting fish [?]. Their huts are surrounded with ropes from which bang the drying salmon and other fish.

But for all their dirt they have a certain love for the beautiful. Their boats are lost as graceful as the Venetian gondola. The prow is curved like the neck of a swan, and the head of an animal, usually the insignia of the tribe, appears at the end of this graceful projection. They have dyes made of roots and herbs which are as durable and almost as exquisite as the Persian dyes, and they combine the colors in their blankets and in their baskets with something of the same instinct for art that many of the orientals do. They are skillful carvers, but it s noticeable that a very grotesque and fierce figure appeals to them more than a graceful shape. They are clever workers in gold and silver, and have even made a notice bronze. They understand the fusing of metals, the wielding of them and the use of them. Their hand-woven blankets are as strong as Persian rugs, and many of them are beautiful.

Civilization is, however, taken from them these native arts. The missionaries have discouraged the carving of totem poles, or the genealogical trees, because they considered that they kept up too strongly the race feeling in them. And the knives of these curious artists do not seem to take naturally to our tamer, if more pleasing art. The weaving of their wonderful blankets has been discouraged, and instead the women are taught to make dresses in miserable imitation of such as American women wear. The effect is not desirable. The Alaskan women looks best in a blanket, with [?] of wild goat or lynx, with a ring in her nose and her arms heavy with bangles of silver. Civilization simply makes her unendurable in appearance. As a save, she is rather interesting. The men have also given up the weaving of the baskets made from the rot of the white cedar. These they wove so close in textures that water will not run through them, and they decorated them with fantastic borders of exceeding attractiveness. But they have now become apprentices in the mission carpenter shops, from which they turn out ugly furniture. It may be that I do not appreciate the advantages of civilization.

but I am bound to say that the deliberate detection of national traits has always seemed to me pitiful. A savage is a happy man. Why not let hi stay a savage? Why make a mongrel out of him--a creature fit neither for civilization, nor savagery.

Sitka, as you all know, is the capital of Alaska. It was founded by that extraordinary Russian, Baranoff, in 1839. And under the administration of this American czar the islands of Alaska were developed to such an extent that the years of unscientific depletion which this country has been guilty of since it came into possession of Alaska, have not been able to entirely undo the work this man accomplished.

Sitka is a ghostly place, take it for all in all. Across the little blue, island dotted bay in front of it, a burned out voclano still shows the traces of dead fires. Back of the town other mountains [?], and on one of them is a specter cross, where the snow lies in gulches. For sixty years the monks of the Russian church, who live in the monastery at Sitka, have made a yearly pilgrimage to this cross of snow, in penance for their sins, encountering many dangers in their journey. Amid the freak oaks just out of Sitka is an old battle ground where the Russians and the fierce Thinglets, one of the tribes of native Alaskans, had their last battle, and at which the Russians conquered utterly. The natives will tell you that any dark night the ghosts of their dead ancestors appear there among the mighty trees. The rotting wharves of Sitka speak of vanished industries, the strange foreign houses speak of vanished civilization, the dismantled castle of a vanished power. Truly, Sitka is a town of ghosts. Baranoff's castle stands where he built it, when Emperor Paul VIII of Russia sent him out to conquer the wilderness and pour money into the Russian coffers from the killing of the sea, and the salmon, the importation of silver, ivory and timber. This castle upon a cleft rock. The rock was not always a cleft. Another castle once stood there, and the rock opened one day in an earthquake and swallowed it up. But as the rock was a natural [?], and an island in the midst of the bay, that could be defended from attack with the utmost advantage to the besieged, another castle was erected in the same place.

Around it the blue bay [?] with arctic splendor of color under a bluer sky. The melancholy shores, with their fringe of cedars and cypresses are mirrored in the water. To climb to the castle rock which hangs above the town it is necessary to surmount many rotting and creaking steps. Once on top one feels that he could defend himself against the world It is a little Gibralter. It is a natural fortress. Within the castle are still some remains of the splendor with which Baranoff surrounded himself. This man, who could live sit winter in a hut, without much food, and with poor clothing, who could fight savages, who could defy his own government, keep loyal a band of exiled soldiers, tame the spirit even to the most arrogant insurrectionists, made a mimicking of himself in his castle. His dining hall was hung in fire. His porcelain stoves reached to the ceiling. A few of the fine old paintings and jewels, the robes and arms which he had are still preserved in the little Greek church there. This peculiar man, about whom Americans know so little, was really of the most interesting pioneers this country has seen. He was a man of the people, a man of low birth. Yet, because he had executive ability united with financial enterprise, he became as independent as an island king, lie imported a train of bishops and clergymen to conduct his worship,and he had a harem of the most expensive courtesans of St. Petersburg with him. His wines were above reproach, and their limit was inexhaustible. He had a considerable people, made of savages and of Rusian adventures, scattered on a hundred islands. He kept them in subjection and comparative contentment. As a man he was recklessly extravagant, as a ruler scientifically economical as a friend the soul of honor, as a lover the heart, of treachery, as a pioneer and a warrior, the most skillful, intrepid, adventurous, diplomatic of men, made at once of precaution and daring, wisdom and guilt; he built up around him a productive commonwealth, and a reckless, profligate and brilliant court, barbaric in its splendor. The ghost of this man is the chiefest of the ghosts that seem to the mind's eye to parade the quiet streets of the present Sitka.

Sitka now is only a naval station with the accessories of a United States court, the mission and a few stores. The Greek church is still there and the Russians and some of the Indians attend it. There are many Indians in the mission, which is of the Presbyterian faith. The great United States men-of-war occasionally stop there, and the tourists invade the place. But the streets are only filled with ghosts for me.

On this western continent where the impetus of fresh, active pioneering still makes itself felt in every direction. It is seldom, indeed, that one encounters a city which has paused its prime and fallen into decay. Ruins always surprise one, therefore, Sitka has left an indelible impression on my mind. I saw much else of Alaska. I saw Juneau, its most thriving town. And Douglas island, with its extensive low grade gold quartz, and many a little town, set on an inlet of the ocean, surrounded with woods and mountains, and with the salmon canneries for sustenance. I visited gold mines that could only be reached by climbing three miles up mountain roads, then going hand over hand up ladders for 300 feet, and creeping in under the lid of a glacier. I saw mountains, grand, melancholy, with fires yet fuming in their hearts, and endless, endless reaches of bay and sounds, haunted by the white gull, and shadowy and still. But it was of Sitka that I wished to tell you--Sitka, the city of ghosts.

That is one odd corner of the world that I have seen. The next one of which I will speak shall be in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, and in te topic, not the arctic zone. Instead of low huts of logs, there are low huts of white coral rock. Instead of cedars and cypress, there are coconut palms, with plume-like leaves, and [?] vitae, with flowers the color of heliotrope. Instead of melancholy blue waters, there are glimmering, glittering waters of translucent green, so clear that one can see the slightest article upon the bottom. No ribbon of mist twists about the shores, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours, as in Alaska. Instead, the sunlight pours upon the [?] and so bounteously that the white air quivers with heat and everything that can bear blossom or fruit riots in plenty.

The place is Nassau on the island of New Providence. This, as you of course know, is one of the Bahamas, comprised in the great Archipelago of the West Indies. It is a coral reef rising out of the ocean, and is as splendid as a garden. Fancy, if you, a city cut out of a rock, as if the rock were cheese. The streets are of it, and no maccaddam ever rivaled it for beauty or smoothness. It is a cream white very beautiful to see, in color. The huts of negroes are many of them quarried out of this stone and the walks are [?]

times made by taking the stone away from the houses, leaving the house-block of rock standing. Great boulders of stone form the gateways. The high walls are of the rock. And houses, huts, walls and pillars are tinted in delicate washes to subdue the glare that would result, if the rock were left its native color of white. And over the walls droop the splendid palms. The century plant and the great [?] hemp grow in yards. Passionate blossoms of purple and crimson fling themselves over the walls. The royal palm rises as delicately and symmetrically as a vase of flowers among among the straggling palmetto. And most striking of all the trees is the silk cotton wood. This grows as large as the banyan. Its trunk has many chamber, in each of which a horse could be stalled.

Its bark is as smooth as [?]. And from it drips the Spanish moss, gray and soft, [?] these delicate chambers.

But how shall I make you know the life in this ocean island? How give you any idea of how it seems with people and fruits? No one lives in the house. Everyone is out on the streets. The faces of the people are black, for they are negroes. Among them are the few of the natives of the island, in the sense of being aborigines. For the gentle race which was found on the island when Columbus landed there is gone--extinct. Of the island and the people on it, Columbus wrote to Isabella: "This country excels all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor; the natives love their neighbors as themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling; and so gentle and affectionate are they that I swear to your highness, there is not a better people in the world." But this gentleness and sweetness did not save them from the greed of the dominant Spaniard, for 40,000 of them were at one time and another entrapped by promises to take them to the heavenly land, where they would meet spirits of their departed friends, and were thus conveyed to the mines of Hispanics, where they miserably perished. Since the English took the islands in 1641, the Bahamas have known many vicissitudes. Now the French have owned them, now the Spanish, now again the English Great naval battles have been fought in those beautiful bays. Governors have been captured, guns spiked, towns burned, ships sunk, and every inhabited of the island of New Providence forced to yield to the demand of arms and embark in the enemies' ships. Pirates have made it their home and have rioted there in the reckless luxury acquired by robbery on the high seas.

At the time of our war of independence, many families colonized here with their slaves. They took with them the habits of elegance and the production for education native to them. A commodore of the American navy meanwhile took the Bahamas by force of arms. The Spaniards got them away again. A South Carolina loyalist once more recovered them for the American colonies. And finally, in 1787, the English got them by conveyance, and have held them ever since. Here they have had one of their great naval hospitals. And here is a cathedral, in which the English sailors [?] by the half hundred. The plague, shipwreck and battle have all played their part in covering walls, floor and churchyard with memorial tablets of sailors who died in the service of England.

Nineteen out of every twenty persons now there are negroes. At the time of the civil war the contraband found refuge there. Many slave holders ran their slaves to the island, thinking to keep them from capture till after the war when victory having crowned the cause of the confederacy, they could bring them safe home again. These negroes have multiplied there as fast as have the [?], the pineapples and the oranges. And a merry race they are. These are not the [?], and negroes we know, dressed like ourselves in somber colors, and walking and talking with conscious dignity. Far from it. They are a black, vigorous, inordinately gay people. To live and to laugh seems to them enough for anyone. They eat the fruit that grows all about them. They wear clothes of the gayest tints. The women are splendid in scarlet and orange. The men wear shirts of red, and white braided hats. The children wear nothing at all. The soldiery is native, and the police are also negroes, and both of them the English government attire in splendid and brilliant uniforms. When it comes to a question of colonization. England knows her business. She knows that if you are dealing with a semi-savage, one of the easiest ways to keep him loyal is to put a red fez on his head and a glittering sword at his side.

Fancy, then, if you can, how up and down the street group these gay people, talking, screaming, laughing! The sunlight pours upon them. The gay awnings of the bazars flutter in the wind. Just out beyond the narrow winding street lies the bay, green and brilliant. It is hemmed in by a white bar of the coral rock, with lighthouses on it, and waving palms. Beyond is the ocean, dark-blue,