There are no “Palace” hotels in Alaska.  One will have no desire to remain over there a trip.  The tourist goes necessarily when and where the steamer goes, will have an opportunity to see all there is of note or worth seeing in Southeastern Alaska.  The steamer sometimes goes north as far as Chilcat, say up to about the 58th degree of north latitude.  The pleasure is not so much in the stopping as in the going.  One is constantly passing through new channels, past new islands, opening up new points of interest, until finally a surfeit of the grand and magnificent in nature is reached.

A correspondent of a western journal signing himself “Emerald” has written a description of this Alaskan tour in September, 1888.  It is so charmingly done, so fresh, so vivid, and so full of interesting detail, that it is given herewith entire: 

On steamship “George W. Elder,”

Puget sound, September, 1888.

We have all thought we were fairly appreciative of the wealth and wonders of Uncle Sam’s domain.  At Niagara we have gloried in the belief that all the cataracts of other lands were tame; but we changed our mind when we stood on the brink of Great Shoshone Falls.  In Yellowstone the proudest thought was that all the world’s other similar wonders were commonplace; and at Yosemite’s Inspiration Point the unspeakable thrill of awe and delight was richly heightened by the grand idea that there was no such majesty or glory beyond either sea.  But after all this, we now know that it yet remains for the Alaskan trip to rightly round out one’s appreciation and admiration of the size and grandeur of our native land.

Some of our most delighted voyageurs are from Portland, Maine.  When they had journeyed some 1,500 miles to Omaha they imagined themselves at least half way across our continent.  Then, when they had finished that magnificent stretch of some 1,700 miles more from Omaha to Portland, Oregon, in the palace cars of the Union Pacific, they were quite sure of it.  Of course, they confessed a sense of mingled disappointment and eager anticipation when they learned that they were yet less than half way.  They learned what is a fact—­that the extreme west coast of Alaska is as far west of Sitka as Portland, Maine, is east of Portland, Oregon, and the further fact that San Francisco lacks 4,000 mile’s of being as far west as Uncle Sam’s “Land’s End,” at extreme Western Alaska.  It is a great country; great enough to contain one river—­the Yukon—­about as large as the Mississippi, and a coast line about twice as long as all the balance of the United States.  It is twelve times as large as the State of New York, with resources that astonish every visitor, and a climate not altogether bad, as some would have it.  The greatest trouble is that during the eighteen years it has been linked to our chain of Territories it has been treated like a discarded offspring or outcast, cared for more by others than its lawful protector.  But, like many a refugee, it is carving for itself a place which others will yet envy.  But, to