Page:The National geographic magazine (IA nationalgeograph21890nati).pdf/216

 fellow-members of the Geographic Society as they were novel and instructive to myself.

Before beginning my narrative, however, let me give you an idea of the extent of the shore-line of the territory or semi-colonial province along which so much of our cruise was made.

Alaska has an area of about 580,000 square miles, consisting of a large mainland with a coast-line 6,650 miles in length, and also of more than 1,100 islands, with a coast-line of 2,950 miles, the entire coast-line being 9,600 miles. The coast-line of the rest of the United States, including islands, is only 6,580 miles, thus making the coast-line of Alaska 3,020 miles more than the coast-line of all of the rest of the United States.

Of this great country the part known best and visited annually by tourists is that insignificant portion of southeastern Alaska which consists of the Alexander archipelago and its neighboring main coast-line, differing in its scenery, topography, climate, and native inhabitants, from the greater part of this vast territory.

It is fortunate, however, that this corner of Alaska is so easily and comfortably reached by the summer traveler, as, with the exception of the coast-line and inlets between Sitka and Kodiak, which includes the Fairweather ground and the St. Elias range of mountains, this portion contains perhaps the finest and most striking scenery and the largest and grandest glaciers in the territory, if not in all North and South America.

The U. S. S. Thetis was assigned in 1889 to the duty of looking out for the commercial and whaling interests of the United States in Bering sea and the Arctic ocean, to which was subsequently added the duty of assisting in the establishment and erection of a house of refuge in the vicinity of Point Barrow, the most northerly point of our Arctic possessions. The duty assigned to the Thetis did not include the protection of the sealing interests of the United States, nor of those interests enjoyed by the Alaska Commercial Company as the regular lessees from the United States of the Pribyloff group of islands. This was confided to the Revenue Marine Service of the Treasury Department.

The Thetis left San Francisco on the 20th of April, 1889, and after a detention of a month at Tacoma, upon the placid waters of Puget sound, awaiting supplementary orders, reached Port Tongass, in extreme southeastern Alaska, on the 31st of May, and Sitka, the territorial capitol, upon the 2d of June. After a stay