A PLEASANT COUNTRY

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21581, 18 September 1935, Page 5

A PLEASANT COUNTRY

HOLIDAY IN ALASKA MR LANCE B. STEVENS RETURNS A pleasant country and a rather unusual one was chosen by Mr Lance B. Stevens, of the firm of H. F. Stevens, Ltd., for part of a holiday from which he has just returned. Besides visiting the United States of America, California, and Canada, Mr Stevens spent 10 days in Alaska, which he found to be a very interesting country, and not at all conforfning with his preconceived ideas of it. Looking back on it yesterday, Mr Stevens found that its pisturesqueness had been the feature of Alaska which had impressed itself most deeply on his mind. The country was much like the Marlborough Sounds to look at—tall, bush-clad hills rising from the water's edge—but the climate was not so pleasant. The air was considerably cooler, and there was often fog and a cold rain. Up near the region of the famous "trail of '9B" the weather was very cold. Yet, in the summer Alaska had an enormous amount of sunlight, and flowers, vegetables, and other plants grew plentifully and well. Mr Stevens spoke of pansies four inches in diameter and rhubarb four feet high with sticks three inches thick. There were, of course, certain fruits and vegetables, like the tomato, which would not grow at all because of the frosts, from which the country was free for only a few weeks. The population of Alaska was very small, and most of the people who did not make a living from the tourist industry lived by fishing. Everywhere factories for packing salmon for export were to be seen. The villages themselves were curious little places. Beginning on the hillsides, most of them were built down to the water's edge, and then out over the water on wooden scaffolds. The streets and footpaths in the waterfront parts of the villages were of wood. The people still made a romance out of the old goldmining days, Mr Stevens said, and the tourist was taken to many places of which tales of stirring adventures were told.