'Travels in Alaska 



westward the magnificent Fairweather Range is dis- 

 played in all its glory, lifting its peaks and glaciers 

 into the blue sky. Mt. Fairweather, though not the 

 highest, is the noblest and most majestic in port and 

 architecture of all the sky-dwelling company. La 

 Pe rouse, at the south end of the range, is also a mag- 

 nificent mountain, symmetrically peaked and sculp- 

 tured, and wears its robes of snow and glaciers in 

 noble style. Lituya, as seen from here, is an immense 

 tower, severely plain and massive. It makes a fine 

 and terrible and lonely impression. Crillon, though 

 the loftiest of all (being nearly sixteen thousand feet 

 high), presents no well-marked features. Its ponder- 

 ous glaciers have ground it away into long, curling 

 ridges until, from this point of view, it resembles a 

 huge twisted shell. The lower summits about the 

 Muir Glacier, like this one, the first that I climbed, are 

 richly adorned and enlivened with flowers, though 

 they make but a faint show in general views. Lines 

 and dashes of bright green appear on the lower slopes 

 as one approaches them from the glacier, and a fainter 

 green tinge may be noticed on the subordinate sum- 

 mits at a height of two thousand or three thousand 

 feet. The lower are mostly alder bushes and the top- 

 most a lavish profusion of flowering plants, chiefly 

 cassiope, vaccinium, pyrola, erigeron, gentiana, 

 campanula, anemone, larkspur, and columbine, with 

 a few grasses and ferns. Of these cassiope is at once 

 the commonest and the most beautiful and influential. 

 In some places its delicate stems make mattresses 

 more than a foot thick over several acres, while the 



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