The Wrangell sentinel., 1922-10-12
Wrangell As
 Seen By An
 Eastern Man
Dr. Hill Writes an Interest ing Article for the Salem
 (Mass.) Evening News

What does the tourist get out of his trip to Alaska? What are his feelings when he beholds the North ern Lights by night, or sees strange sights by day? What are the things that he so eagerly tells his friends about when he returns home after a trip to this wonderland?
 Questions like the foregoing are answered to some extent every time a returned tourist writes an article for a newspaper or magazine. Rev. James l.. Hill, D.D. of Salem, Mass |, who with Mrs. Hill spent week in Wrangell in July, is very keen ob- server and a man who also possesses unusual descriptive powers. Readers of the Sentinel will therefore enjoy some excerpts from an article which Dr. Hill wrote during the week he was in Wrangell. The letter was published in the Salem (Mass Evening News. Dr. Hill was so full of his subject that he wrote more than three columns, and his letter was so interesting from beginning to end that we would gladly re- produce it in full if we had more time for typesetting. But the following paragraphs will give the reader a fair idea of the nature of Dr. Hills letter:
 In the morning the first sight look ing from the window is by chance, real, living, stately raven," "perched upon" an ancient totem pole, ten yards in height and standing not 100 feet from the hotel. To be instantly faced with a thing so unfamiliar, causes one to lift up his hand to find out if he is not dreaming. These weather beaten, time-worn melan- choly objects present wierd strange appeance when seen glaring down upon you in the wet gray dawn of an early Alaska morning.
 These totem poles are the most re- markable feature of the extreme ha tions and peculiar picturesque cus- toms are abolished, the world be- comes less interesting. Here is ex- hibited the skill of wild and posi- tive kind, such as guides the wood- becker in drilling round holes and the bee in neatly forming it's cell. The figures with large proportion that decorate these huge poles, are not only highly colored with singu- lar native paints but they are won derously carved. The natives possess artistic ability of the first class. Their talent in carving in wood and ivory and bone is the more obvious as they used only tools ofstone or at best native copper. The figures from life are exaggerated and grotesque but that is the native taste. It would be no sin to fall down and worship these totems for they are unlike anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth"
 Dickens, in his stories, always over draws his characters so that the reader will see them distinctly. The totem is their coat of arms and is like the family crests paraded on the stationery and dinner service of many distinguished families. We have a perfect living example of the totem in the order of the Elks. The fine piece of carving that stands be- fore me belongs to the Order of the Raven. We find, too. hereabouts the clan of the Eagle, of the Bear, of the fish and of the wolf.
 And they painted on the graveposts
 of the graves yet unforgotten.
 Each his own ancestral totem,
 Each the symbol of his household Figures of the bear and reindeer. Of the turtle. crane or beaver
 These totem poles are the most dis tinctive and remarkable, man-made feature in our new territory and are the least understood. The mysteri- ous things are never found else where, and they excite an absorbing interest which grows with the years. When they told Jacob certain facts about the land of Egypt, he believed them not, but when he saw the Egyptian wagons actually standing