logs and planks as those of the whites. Some of them were adorned
with tall totem poles.

The fort was a quadrangular stockade with a dozen block and frame
buildings located upon rising ground just back of the business part
of the town. It was built by our Government shortly after the
purchase of Alaska, and was abandoned in 1872, reoccupied by the
military in 1875, and finally abandoned and sold to private parties
in 1877. In the fort and about it there were a few good, clean homes,
which shone all the more brightly in their sombre surroundings. The
ground occupied by the fort, by being carefully leveled and drained,
was dry, though formerly a portion of the general swamp, showing how
easily the whole town could have been improved. But in spite of
disorder and squalor, shaded with clouds, washed and wiped by rain
and sea winds, it was triumphantly salubrious through all the
seasons. And though the houses seemed to rest uneasily among the miry
rocks and stumps, squirming at all angles as if they had been tossed
and twisted by earthquake shocks, and showing but little more
relation to one another than may be observed among moraine boulders,
Wrangell was a tranquil place. I never heard a noisy brawl in the
streets, or a clap of thunder, and the waves seldom spoke much above
a whisper along the beach. In summer the rain comes straight down,
steamy and tepid. The clouds are usually united, filling the sky, not
racing along in threatening ranks suggesting energy of an overbearing
destructive kind, but forming a bland, mild, laving bath. The
cloudless days are calm, pearl-gray, and brooding in tone, inclining
to rest and peace; the islands seem to drowse and float on the glassy
water, and in the woods scarce a leaf stirs.

The very brightest of Wrangell days are not what Californians