Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

The Author returns thanks to the Editor of the Ave Maria for the privilege of republishing these notes of travel and adventure.

CONTENTS.

Chapter. Page. I. Due West to Denver 7 II. In Denver Town 18 III. The Garden of the Gods 29 IV. A Whirl across the Rockies 40 V. Off for Alaska 47 VI. In the Inland Sea 56 VII. Alaskan Village Life 66 VIII. Juneau 74 IX. By Solitary Shores 86 X. In Search of the Totem-Pole 98 XI. In the Sea of Ice 111 XII. Alaska's Capital 124 XIII. Katalan's Rock 136 XIV. From the Far North 148 XV. Out of the Arctic 159

CHAPTER I.

Due West to Denver.

Commencement week at Notre Dame ended in a blaze of glory. Multitudes of guests who had been camping for a night or two in the recitation rooms--our temporary dormitories--gave themselves up to the boyish delights of school-life, and set numerous examples which the students were only too glad to follow. The boat race on the lake was a picture; the champion baseball match, a companion piece; but the highly decorated prize scholars, glittering with gold and silver medals, and badges of satin and bullion; the bevies of beautiful girls who for once--once only in the year--were given the liberty of the lawns, the campus, and the winding forest ways, that make of Notre Dame an elysium in summer; the frequent and inspiring blasts of the University Band, and the general joy that filled every heart to overflowing, rendered the last day of the scholastic year romantic to a degree and memorable forever.

There was no sleep during the closing night--not one solitary wink; all laws were dead-letters--alas that they should so soon arise again from the dead!--and when the wreath of stars that crowns the golden statue of Our Lady on the high dome, two hundred feet in air, and the wide-sweeping crescent under her shining feet, burst suddenly into flame, and shed a lustre that was welcomed for miles and miles over the plains of Indiana--then, I assure you, we were all so deeply touched that we knew not whether to laugh or to weep, and I shall not tell you which we did. The moon was very full that night, and I didn't blame it!

But the picnic really began at the foot of the great stairway in front of the dear old University next morning. Five hundred possible presidents were to be distributed broadcast over the continent; five hundred sons and heirs to be returned with thanks to the yearning bosoms of their respective families. The floodgates of the trunk-rooms were thrown open, and a stream of Saratogas went thundering to the station at South Bend, two miles away. Hour after hour, and indeed for several days, huge trucks and express wagons plied to and fro, groaning under the burden of well-checked luggage. It is astonishing to behold how big a trunk a mere boy may claim for his very own; but it must be remembered that your schoolboy lives for several years within the brass-bound confines of a Saratoga. It is his bureau, his wardrobe, his private library, his museum and toy shop, the receptacle of all that is near and dear to him; it is, in brief, his sanctum sanctorum, the one inviolate spot in his whole scholastic career of which he, and he alone, holds the key.

We came down with the tide in the rear of the trunk freshet. The way being more or less clear, navigation was declared open. The next moment saw a procession of chariots, semi-circus wagons and barouches filled with homeward-bound schoolboys and their escorts, dashing at a brisk trot toward the railroad station. Banners were flying, shouts rent the air; familiar forms in cassock and biretta waved benedictions from all points of the compass; while the gladness and the sadness of the hour were perpetuated by the aid of instantaneous photography. The enterprising kodaker caught us on the fly, just as the special train was leaving South Bend for Chicago; a train that was not to be dismembered or its exclusiveness violated until it had been run into the station at Denver.

After this last negative attack we were set free. Vacation had begun in good earnest. What followed, think you? Mutual congratulations, flirtations and fumigations without ceasing; for there was much lost time to be made up, and here was a golden opportunity. O you who have been a schoolboy and lived for months and months in a pent-up Utica, where the glimpse of a girl is as welcome and as rare as a sunbeam in a cellar, you can imagine how the two hours and forty-five minutes were improved--and Chicago eighty miles away. It is true we all turned for a moment to catch a last glimpse of the University dome, towering over the treetops; and we felt very tenderly toward everyone there. But there were "sweet girl graduates" on board; and, as you know well enough, it required no laureate to sing their praises, though he has done so with all the gush and fervor of youth.