travels in Alaska 



parnassia, epilobium, bluebell, solidago, habenaria, 

 strawberry with fruit half grown, arctostaphylos, 

 mertensia, erigeron, willows, tall grasses and alder 

 are the principal species. There are many butterflies 

 in this garden. Gulls are breeding near here. I saw 

 young in the water to-day. 



On my way back to camp I discovered a group of 

 monumental stumps in a washed-out valley of the 

 moraine and went ashore to observe them. They are 

 in the dry course of a flood-channel about eighty feet 

 above mean tide and four or five hundred yards back 

 from the shore, where they have been pounded and 

 battered by boulders rolling against them and over 

 them, making them look like gigantic shaving- 

 brushes. The largest is about three feet in diameter 

 and probably three hundred years old. I mean to 

 return and examine them at leisure. A smaller stump, 

 still firmly rooted, is standing astride of an old crum- 

 bling trunk/showing that at least two generations of 

 trees flourished here undisturbed by the advance or 

 retreat of the glacier or by its draining stream-floods. 

 They are Sitka spruces and the wood is mostly in a 

 good state of preservation. How these trees were 

 broken off without being uprooted is dark to me at 

 present. Perhaps most of their companions were up- 

 rooted and carried away. 



July 7. Another fine day; scarce a cloud in the sky. 

 The icebergs in the bay are miraged in the distance to 

 look like the frontal wall of a great glacier. I am writing 

 letters in anticipation of the next steamer, the Queen. 



[ 292 ] 



