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Show WE took a bunch of books aboard Alaska Ferry at PrinceRu-per- t. hours afloat ought to allow plenty of tinie for reading. We never read one. There was too much to Thirty-fou- r look at. From' the moment the ferry nosed out from between the misty mountains that hemmed in the small Canadian port and turned her broad bow into the north, we kept running from one rail to the other for fear of missing some new sight. It wasn't that there hadn't been scenery to look at in British Columbia. Our eyes were already mountains and crystal , stuffed with lakes and hurrying trout streams. And, from the bus that lurched round the dusty loops of 'the road down from Prince George, we had seen our first glacier.' T ! 3 m n ll aown me oneeiia me gorge ox ranner mver, Indian in a business suit who the cherub-face- d sat behind us suddenly pointed out an odd ani- - . mal waddling across the pebbly river bed. "A bear cub?" asked a passenger. But it had a bushy tail. It was a wolverine. It isn't every day you nan boa a ur1irorina in Hrnaf itavliflrhf But even after the wolverine and' the mountains and the lakes of British Columbia, there was snow-patch- 1 -- 1 ed M 1 huge shapesj you can feel the weight of pushed-u- p schist and dolomite, the grind of stratum against stratum, the wearing away of lava beds. Even as you look, the wind is shaping the waterfalls are scooping out the valleys. These are valleys from which the glaciers have barely retreated. As the ferry eats up the horizons, mountains and bays appear and dissolve and change their shapes the way themes do in a symphony. These shored are still as scantily populated as they were when. Captain Cook (who had aboard young George Vancouver, who was later to chart these intricate channels) cautiously tacked his ship Resolution back and forth through the narrow seas, heaving his lead and making observations with his sextant to pin down the position of harbors and headlands. He was hoping to discover the Northwesjt Passage but what he was discovering was the immensity of the North American continent ' for a covpU of hours the channels are empty, not a house on the rocky shores. Then as we approach Ketchikan, fishing boats swarm. The passage narrows, and the mountains rise higher on either side. There's a pulp mill at the head of an inlet, The slopes that rise behind it are scarred by lumbering. The great boxlike buildings at the water's edge behind the wharves are canneries for salmon. As the day wears on, the channels grow narrower, snow fields gleam behind the nearer mountains. The timber line drops. The spruces become smaller. There is a chill of glacier in the air. By Wrangel, the long twilight has faded into star- gray-blue- ice-col- 12 d Family Weekly, December It, 1965 justify extracting its lit night After breakfast next morning, Juneau, the .state capital, rises into view at the end of an estuary. The town is scattered around the base of a rocky pyramid, which is powdered with fresh snow at its peak. To the left is the great red cage of a new federal building under construction. On an eminence in the middle of town stands an odd neoclassic mansion (painted pea green), which we are told was the old state capitol, now used as police station and county jail. To the right on a steep slope ranked with spruce, stand the switchbacks and tipples and the boarded-u- p structures of the huge Juneau Mine, now abandoned ; " low-gra- de ore. man, who's one of the mining on that site, nostallast employees company's, on the narrow gauge tram a little operates gically to give tourists a glimpse of one of the 18 levels that the railroad served. He boasted to us that twice 10 times the original cost of Alaska had come out of that mine in gold bullion. On the wall of the museum in the statehouse, you can see a photostat pi the check for $7,200,000 which Secretary of State Seward handed the Russian ambassador to consummate the purchase. People called Alaska "Seward's Folly." In Juneau, the air is damp. The wind has gone breeze into the south. The 'warm, moisture-lade- n off the Japanese Current will condense when it hits the great snow fields behind the hills. Already, melting snow pours off in cascades through every runnel in the shaley slopes behind the town. Eighty inches a year is a moderate estimate of the rainfall, here. We take advantage of a last burst of sunlight to catch a glimpse of the unearthly blue fissures in the face of the Mendenhall Glacier 15 miles out of town. A small iceberg in the gray lake beneath burns blue as a Bunsen burner. Then the rain closes in. In the bars in Juneau, the talk's all of fishing, investments in trolls and nets and fishing boats, shares of the catch. Fishing's been pretty good this year. Big money. The Aloskcms or optimistic pooplo. They de-- s light in the rugged country, the rugged climate. They are proud of everything. The biggest state. More than twice the size of Texas. The biggest nsnerman leiis oi a youngster wno stum Dears, bled on a grizzly in a wooded valley near the glacier. Before his brother could come up be hind him to scare the bear off, the bear had' r.newea out lids eyes. While we were in Juneau three schoolboys drowned in the Mendenhall River that pours gray pw vmmwj nim ajvM uvn u VUI UUUC1 UiG IUI IU face of the glacier. One ot them, trying to do u tuts vu a lug, Buyyw uiu 1C11 III. I lie .. two others tried to save him. The water's so cold a man can only live three or four minutes in it All three were swept away and drowned. A rock-face- . Passage that we had hardly been prepared for. There is always something special about land seen from the deck of a ship. Watching the slow .transformation of bays and mountains slipping by is like listening to music. Tho day is sunny with a light northerly breeze heightened by the ferry's 16 knots. The ship pushes smoothly through the quiet, clean reaches. .These channels are immensely deep. Small scal" surface. loped waves sparkle on the sea water in our There is the tang of nostrils. Culls catch the sun as thev bank srrace- ' . , fully overhead. swells cut the off To seaward, lofty islands from the North Pacific. On either side, headlands jut out and coves open and widen into bays. Hillsides, bristling with a dense growth of spruce, rise to rocky ranges. because the price of gold isn't high enough to 1 gray-haire- a "iuij A J d 1 A a. 1 |