Astoria, Oregon, July 31st, 1883.

I was very much surprised at Alaska. In common with many other people in the East, I had come to look on the seven millions or so which the United States paid Russia for Alaska, as so much money all but thrown away - and even the reports of government officials as given in public documents, written even in the interest of the purchase, give no good sort of an idea of the great value of this far north-western corner of our dominions. I am satisfied that the seven millions are not thrown away - nor would twenty millions have been - and I feel that our country owes a debt it can never repay to the sagacity of W. H. Seward for negotiating this strip of land for us.

I had supposed it was a miserable country, fit only for fish and seal-skins, and locked up in ice and snow for the best part of the year. I found a country far superior, in many respects, to Switzerland; and with a climate and elements of greatness, at least equal to those which have given Great Britain and all her commercial and industrial prosperity, so great an elevation in the history of the world. Precisely the same conditions exist here as in England. That part of the world is in a high latitude, but a warm stream of water rushes against its shores from the Gulf of Mexico, and thus gives it a temperature and an atmospheric moisture so favorable to a good many products. Alaska has just such a warm sea poured around its Western face, by the sea of Japan, and the results are just about the same. The summer temperature is just about as high, and the temperature in winter goes no lower than in England. We are told that it is very wet there, and that it always rains. Well, we were four weeks going from place to place through it, and we had but two rainy days in all that time! Writing this as I am in Oregon, I have no exact data to hand, but I believe our goings to and fro over it, could not have been short of 2500 or 3000 miles - and we reached a point as high as the mouth of the Chilcat River, which is little short of 6o° - north latitude.

Chiefly because there has been no government given to the territory by Congress, and there is no law to sell property or defend life - and no one knows why, except that it is surmised not to be to the interest of one or two powerful commercial companies to permit the government to do it, - there can be no settlement of white men there; yet the attractions of the place have drawn about 500 or 600 white men. There are perhaps 40,000 or 50,000 Indians, a large number of whom have been civilized, and work and cultivate to some extent as white men do. We occasionally met with little garden patches, and thus saw, by actual observation what could be grown there. There was however one particularly nice garden at Wrangel, cultivated by Colonel Crittenden, formerly of the Confederate army, which showed very well what could be done. There were cabbages, turnips, beets, peas, potatoes, and indeed one might say in a few words, all the vegetables that would do well in the open air of England. Col. C.' had found onions and spinage not to do well; but I feel sure this is from some non-adapt-iveness, on the part of the cultivator, rather than from any serious objection on the part of soil or climate. Cauliflowers do enormously well.

The Indians, according to Mr. Crittenden, are very fond of raising these things. He often makes them gifts of potatoes, turnips, and flower seeds for their wives and children, which they take hundreds of miles, sometimes into the country, and return the next year to him, with some of the products of the soil to show him that they had appreciated and profited by his kind thoughtfulness. These Indians are very grateful for kindnesses. One may travel through their whole country safely on this platform. It is only when one comes in conflict with the customs engendered by their theological notions, or treats them with what they consider injustice, that what is called their savage nature retorts in cruelty on the white man. Of course, their views of justice are often unjust, but one should endeavor to put himself in their place before running a tilt against their desires.

The destruction of one of their villages last spring, by the United States ship " Adams," has embittered them somewhat. For instance, the Indians believe that when anyone is killed intentionally or accidentally, his spirit does not rest in peace till the person by whom death was caused, or his friends, pay over to the relatives of the deceased person 200 blankets - a blanket being the Indian measure of value, meaning $3. An Indian was killed by the accidental explosion of a mortar, and a demand was made on the United States for 200 blankets accordingly. But they were given to understand that United States laws were different from the Indian laws, no blankets or $600 could be given. The Indians then seized two white men, and held them as hostages till 200 blankets were paid. The commander of the ship then sent word that the men must be restored, and 200 blankets besides, within a certain time or he would blow their village down. It did not come within a certain time, when the commander sent word that he would now demand 400 blankets.

The Indians, getting frightened at the big ship, returned the two men and two hundred blankets - but the commander sent word that "their great father in Washington always kept his word, and having demanded 400 blankets must have them." As they did not immediately respond, the ship opened fire on the poor wretches, and the village was blown to pieces.

I suppose it was right to show these creatures that their great father is the most honorable of all beings, in keeping his word - but would it not have been better to have met their very humanitarian demand, in the first instance, in a more conciliatory spirit? Better have spent two hundred blankets, in the shape of 5600 worth of seed potatoes and turnip seed, than some thousands, probably, on powder and ball. Some of the settlers are very fond of flowers and have occasionally nice things in their gardens. One lady, in Sitka, showed me, with much elation, a nice growing plant of Hydrangea paniculata, which she said came by mail from Dingee & Conard nursery - only think of it, six thousand miles safely by mail! What will our English friends think who are now and then discussing in their journals the wonderful fact related by some correspondent, that plants have actually come three thousand miles across the Atlantic in safety.

The wild fruits of Alaska are very varied. I will not give the botanical names with certainty, as, at this distance from books of reference, I may not identify them correctly. The crab-apple has ovoid fruit, about the size of a medium cherry. I could not learn that it was used except in the form of a preserve. I found the alpine strawberry, Fragaria vesca, just over the boundary, in British Columbia, and I suppose it is also common in Alaska. But there is another species I have never collected before in the United States, with dark shining upper surface to the leaves, and silvery white beneath. The stems supporting the cluster of fruit, are of immense length - eighteen inches in one instance - and the fruit depressed-globose, and pale, say greenish-red. I suppose it is the Chili strawberry. The Indians collect them. They will sell anything they have. For trial I asked a young girl to sell me her silver ear-rings, the silver ring which they wear through their nose, and the silver pin which, after they become adults, they wear through their lower lip. To my surprise she sold them to me for "four bits." After some words in her own tongue with an older woman she returned with the half dollar, and by signs demanded them back - but the offer of " two bits" more secured the jewelry.

Wherever I could I endeavored to get the Indian names of the fruits and vegetables used. Of an old Indian woman who was gathering these strawberries I asked the name, but she would only offer a small shell full and say "one bit." This was all the English she knew as a general thing, except "half dollar." Our people soon learned a little in this line also, and when an Indian asked a dollar for anything he or she had to sell, and our party would say "sik-kum tolla" (half dollar), it was evident by the contemptuous turning of the Indian on his heel that so much of the language had been learned thoroughly and well. The raspberry here most prevalent is the Salmon berry, but though a raspberry botanically the flavor is precisely that of our blackberry, - not as good, however, as a first-class Lawton. A singular fact is, that while our raspberries and blackberries are normally black or red and sometimes change to salmon (white) - here the normal color is salmon and the exceptional changes red. In some places the red departures are not uncommon. There is a species of Black cap raspberry here which has quinate leaves, - sometimes the five leaflets arranged in a pinnate manner. Perhaps it is R. leucodermis.

The fruit is about the size of our best Black caps, and to my mind the best wild fruit in the territory. A white flowered species, probably Nut-kanus, resembles our flowering raspberry (odor-atus) and fruit is of about the same quality. The common blackberry has a much smaller fruit than ours, with the leaves gray like the Black caps. I suppose it is Rubus ursinus. There are numbers of species of currants, two of which of the black currant class are much prized. One of these is very strong. In Pyramid Harbor, near the mouth of the Chilcat, I came across a plant that was ten feet high; the leaves were as large as luxuriant Concord grapes, and the racemes of fruit six inches long. The Indians pound the fruit up, with what I suppose to be grease, and dry it in cakes. Then they take a piece, put it in water and whip it up, when it looks like purplish ice cream. They seem very fond of it. There are many species of wild gooseberries - one with very large fruit - fully as large as the best English gooseberries, and the surface so clammy that a large berry will almost stick to the hand without falling to the ground. They are deep red, and very tempting. I tried to taste one, when a strong flavor of formic acid told me I had eaten an ant with the berry.

I found numerous insects all over the berries afterwards. I can imagine that a leaf may have these glands for the purpose of catching insects to use as food - but what a ripening fruit wants with such a covering is more than I can tell. It keeps insects from eating them.

Bears abound here, and they are very fond of gooseberries, as I myself can testify to, by seeing one black fellow daintily pulling the branches down with his claws, and picking them off with his mouth - this was a small black gooseberry, as large as a pea - but these clammy fruited kinds were loaded where bears abound, so I suppose they are not touched by them. The flavor is not much to boast of - something like a cactus fruit. There are several kinds of huckleberry and a cranberry. The huckleberries are fair. One with a bright coral-red berry, Vaccinium parvifolium perhaps, is extremely ornamental; but not as good to eat as the others. The Salal berry is Gaultheria Shallon - Shal-lon being the name as originally pronounced, or supposed to be pronounced by the Indians, among whom it was first found - though "Salal" is the name they use now. Our Gaultheria procumbens, or "Teaberry," has an aromatic taste which this has not. Indeed, it is slightly acidulous; and does not seem to be a favorite among the bears. They like sweet things, and a lump of white sugar is a capital lure towards the bear-trap. Usually this Gaultheria grows but about two feet high - but in some parts of Alaska, I saw them six feet or more high, and making dense thickets, through which it was impossible to pass.

I found a few bushes of the Amelanchier - the June Berry or Indian cherry, as large as our best huckleberries, quite as good and just as black - on the borders in British Columbia, and I suppose it penetrates to Alaska also. A wild cherry also, is in the Dominion, which may go to Alaska.

This was all the real fruit I saw wild, though there are numerous berries and fruits eaten by the Indians. Indeed they eat nearly everything that grows. I met with an Indian woman gathering an armful of the young tops of the Salmon berry canes. I made signs to know what she did with them; she laughed and put the ends of the shoots between her teeth, and I suppose they cook and eat them. They always looked on curiously at my gathering plants for my herbarium, and anxious to know what I did with them. It was difficult to make each other understand, in the absence of all oral language. Once, in desperation, I "stretched" the case by pointing to myself and saying, "me Doc-tin," - I had learned that much Indian, as their name for medicine man. Like all " stretches," this one only got me into further trouble, for they would pick at my handful of plants, and want to know what this was good for and what was the good of that, till I became convinced I had better be a "Doc-tin" no more, and shook my head thereafter when my botanical pursuits were questioned.