the sloppy wharf for my little bundle of baggage, laid it on the shop
floor, and felt glad and snug among the dry, sweet-smelling shavings.

The carpenter was at work on a new Presbyterian mission building, and
when he came in I explained that Dr. Jackson [Dr. Sheldon Jackson,
1834-1909, became Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions in Alaska
in 1877, and United States General Agent of Education in 1885. [W. F.
B.]] had suggested that I might be allowed to sleep on the floor, and
after I assured him that I would not touch his tools or be in his
way, he goodnaturedly gave me the freedom of the shop and also of his
small private side room where I would find a wash-basin.

I was here only one night, however, for Mr. Vanderbilt, a merchant,
who with his family occupied the best house in the fort, hearing that
one of the late arrivals, whose business none seemed to know, was
compelled to sleep in the carpenter-shop, paid me a good-Samaritan
visit and after a few explanatory words on my glacier and forest
studies, with fine hospitality offered me a room and a place at his
table. Here I found a real home, with freedom to go on all sorts of
excursions as opportunity offered. Annie Vanderbilt, a little doctor
of divinity two years old, ruled the household with love sermons and
kept it warm.

Mr. Vanderbilt introduced me to prospectors and traders and some of
the most influential of the Indians. I visited the mission school and
the home for Indian girls kept by Mrs. MacFarland, and made short
excursions to the nearby forests and streams, and studied the rate of
growth of the different species of trees and their age, counting the
annual rings on stumps in the large clearings made by the military
when the fort was occupied, causing wondering speculation among the