n smoke-room or saloon. Swathed in
oil-skins, however, I braved the downpour, and visited one of the
numerous canneries to which the _Topeka_ tied up for a few minutes, and
here I was surprised to find that Chinese labour is almost exclusively
employed. And the ease and celerity with which a fish was received, so
to speak, fresh from the sea, cleaned, steamed, and securely soldered in
a smartly labelled tin, all by machinery, within the space of a few
minutes, was marvellous to behold. Before the days of Klondike, the
fisheries of this coast were the chief source of wealth in Alaska, where
sea-board, lakes, and rivers teem with fish, the wholesale netting of
which seem in no way to diminish the number. The yearly output of these
coast canneries is something stupendous, and they are, undoubtedly, a
far better investment than many a claim of fabulous (prospective) wealth
in the gold-fields of the interior. For the establishment of a cannery
is not costly, labour and taxes are low, and fish of every description,
from salmon and trout to cod and halibut, can be caught without
difficulty in their millions. Codfish which abound in Chatham Creek are
the most profitable, also herrings, of which six hundred barrels were
once caught in a single haul, off Killisnoo. But the number of canneries
on this coast is increasing at a rapid rate, and five or six years hence
large fortunes will be a thing of the past. The now priceless sea-otter
was once abundant along the south-eastern coast of Alaska, the value of
skins taken up to 1890 being thirty-six million dollars, but the
wholesale slaughter of this valuable animal by the Russians, and later
on by the Americans, has driven it away, and almost the only grounds
where it is now found are among the Aleutian Islands and near the mouth
of the Copper River. A good sea-otter skin now costs something like L200
in the European market.

Juneau and Port Wrangell were the only towns of any size touched at
during the two days' trip from Skagway to Port Townsend. The former was
once the fitting-out place for miners bound for the Yukon, but Skagway
has now ruined its commercial prosperity, and it is now a sleepy,
miserable settlement which appeared doubly unattractive viewed through a
curtain of mist. The rain poured down here in such sheets that Douglas
Island, only a couple of miles away, was invisible. Here is the famous
Treadwell mine, where the largest quartz mill in the world crushes six
hund