meadow, or a cascade in its dell; or even a grand
master view of mountains beheld from some com-
manding outlook after climbing from height to height
above the forests. These may be attempted, and
more or less telling pictures made of them; but in these
coast landscapes there is such indefinite, on-leading
expansiveness, such a multitude of features without
apparent redundance, their lines graduating delicately
into one another in endless succession, while the
whole is so fine, so tender, so ethereal, that all pen-
work seems hopelessly unavailing. Tracing shining
ways through fiord and sound, past forests and water-
falls, islands and mountains and far azure headlands,
it seems as if surely we must at length reach the very
paradise of the poets, the abode of the blessed.

Some idea of the wealth of this scenery may be
gained from the fact that the coast-line of Alaska is
about twenty-six thousand miles long, more than
twice as long as all the rest of the United States.
The islands of the Alexander Archipelago, with the
straits, channels, canals, sounds, passages, and fiords,
form an intricate web of land and water embroidery
sixty or seventy miles wide, fringing the lofty icy chain
of coast mountains from Puget Sound to Cook Inlet;
and, with infinite variety, the general pattern is har-
monious throughout its whole extent of nearly a
thousand miles. Here you glide into a narrow chan-
nel hemmed in by mountain walls, forested down to
the water's edge, where there is no distant view, and
your attention is concentrated on the objects close
about you--the crowded spires of the spruces and

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