Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/169

 Conscientious men still linger on who find comfort in holding fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession. The sturdy declaration in the last century by John Wesley, that "giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible," is echoed feebly in the latter half of this century by the eminent Catholic ecclesiastic in France who declares that "to deny possession by devils is to charge Jesus and his apostles with imposture," and asks, "How can the testimony of apostles, fathers of the Church, and saints who saw the possessed and so declared, be denied?" And a still fainter echo lingers in Protestant England.

But, despite this conscientious opposition, science has in these latter days steadily wrought hand in hand with Christian charity in this field, to evolve a better future for humanity. The thoughtful physician and the devoted clergyman are now constantly seen working together; and it is not too much to expect that Satan, having been cast out of the insane asylums, will ere long disappear from monasteries and camp-meetings, even in the most unenlightened regions of Christendom.

 

ORTHWARD from Washington Territory the coast is everywhere very rugged, being formed by the lofty peaks of an extension of the Cascade Range; while the thousands of islands which fringe the coast of British Columbia and Alaska are but the partially submerged peaks of an extension of the Coast Range, from which the great glaciers of former times have scraped off nearly all the fertile soil. It is estimated that there are ten thousand islands between Washington Territory and Mount St. Elias, and all the larger of them bear snow-covered summits during the whole year. The water in the narrow channels separating these islands is ordinarily several hundred feet deep, affording, through nearly the whole distance, a protected channel for navigation.

Three great rivers interrupt the mountain barrier of British Columbia facing the Pacific—the Eraser, the Skeena, and the Stickeen—and the interior is penetrated for some distance by innumerable fiords. The Canadian Pacific Railroad follows the course of the Eraser for a long distance, and passes within sight of glaciers of considerable extent, and every fiord receives the drainage 