In addition to the wild flowers there are many cultivated ones. In Skagway, Fairbanks, and the other large towns, the garden flowers grow profusely. Their only enemy is the southerly trade winds which, on summer afternoons, frequently rise suddenly and keep everybody busy devising some means of protection for the tall growing plants. For the plants grow very tall. Think of sweet peas nine feet high which have had no special cultivation! Pansies three inches across! Asters seven and dahlias ten inches in diameter! I have in mind one garden I saw which contained nineteen different kinds of flowers blooming at once, among them some gorgeous roses, and they were in bloom from June first to October first. No. We are not shut away from the beautiful because we live within sight of the Arctic Circle! Garden parties here rival those I have attended in the States, and I find that human nature is the same the world over! There is no nook or corner of God's earth where one, if he seeks, will not find exquisite beauty lavished impartially and unstintedly by Mother Nature, and warm and kindly hearts as well!
The birds of Alaska are many and beautiful. In fact, in one section or another of the country most of the birds common to the north temperate zone are to be found. Of the larger ones the ptarmigan, grouse, gulls and carrier pigeons are most common. A few years ago the owners of carriers discovered to their astonishment and dismay that the latter were mating with the gulls to the ruination of both birds and it became necessary to separate them. Alaska is also the home of the raven and the crow. And the former is quite the most talkative creature in the country! When he has no other birds to chatter with he talks to himself, and like the buzzard of the southern countries, he acts as scavenger. The ravens are much more numerous than the crows.
There is a long, low, wooded stretch of land twenty miles below Muir Glacier in which ornithologists have observed and collected specimens of more than forty species of birds. Of song birds, we have the golden-crowned sparrow, the Alaska hermit and russet-back thrush. The plaintive song of the hermit thrush is so appealing. It consists of but three notes. But its song is full of beauty, of mystery, of pathos. There are also the grossbeak, the gray-cheeked thrush, the Oregon robin, the western robin, kinglet, warbler, redstart, Oregon junco, and a species of sparrow not to be found elsewhere.