Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/172

162 The scene is exactly identical, but the card has been reduced in size by the omission of superfluous sky. It has been rendered much fainter and more ghostlike than the original, and is perhaps taken from a new negative in which the lines of the houses and gravel walks have been purposely made less distinct.

The original edition has the following on the back of the card:

"For the past fifteen years Prof. Richard Willoughby has been a character in Alaska as well known among the whites as he has been familiar to the natives. As one of the early settlers of old Fort Wrangel, in which his individuality was stamped among the sturdy miners who frequented the then important trading port of Alaska, he has grown with the Territory and is to-day as much a part of its history as the totem poles are identified with the deeds of valor or commemorative of the past triumphs of prominent members of the tribes which their hideous and mysterious characters represent.

"To him belongs the honor of being the first American who discovered gold within Alaska's icy-bound peaks, but his greatest achievement from a scientific standpoint is his tearing from the glacier's chilly bosom the 'mirages' of cities from distant climes.

"After four years of labor amid dangers, privations, and sufferings, he accomplished for the civilized world a feat in photography heretofore considered problematic.

" It was on the longest day of June, 1888, that the camera took within its grasp the reproduction of a city remote, if indeed not altogether within the recesses of another world. The

is here presented for the consideration of the public as the wonder and pride of Alaska's bleak hills, and the ever-changing glaciers may never again afford a like opportunity for the accomplishment of this sublime phenomenon."

The picture attracted much attention and met with an encouraging sale. The skeptical bought it as an original document in the natural history of mendacity. The credulous regarded it as a wonder not surpassed by the gigantic glacier itself. The discussion arose in the newspapers as to whether some distant city, as Montreal, could have been brought into view by the freaks of the marvelous Alaskan atmosphere. Many who thought this impossible leaned to the belief that in the heart of Alaska or in British Columbia there is some great settlement of civilized men, as yet undiscovered by geographers. To those who held this opinion neither the nearness of the houses to the observer nor the