30 



The alpenstock is an indispensable adjunct for climbing. Inexperi- 

 enced men invariably consider a gun or rifle very desirable in climbing, 

 " to shoot a bear, don't you know." Suffice it to say, no bears were shot 

 while mountain climbing. The picture presented to one, on one of the 

 summits, is well described by a recent writer thus : 



"What a scene of desolation 



I saw from the mountain peak, 

 Crags, snowfields, glaciation 



Unutterable to speak." 



Scarcely a vestige of verdure is in sight, arctic are the surround- 

 ings. What grand upheavals of nature come under the topographer's 

 gaze ! Dozens, nay, hundreds of ice-bound and mountain-hemmed lakes 

 come under his view and tell of receding glaciers. He traces from the 

 neve and melting glacier, rills to creeks, creeks to streams, and streams 

 to rivers, until they enter whence they came, the ocean. 



Camping along the Ottawa is considered sport and healthy out- 

 door exercise ; in Alaska with the incessant rains, it is considerably the 

 reverse. Clothes, boots, provisions, everything gets mouldy in camp. 

 The precipitous nature of the shores makes good camping ground very 

 scarce, and an undue regard for the high or spring tides caused some 

 rude awakenings at night, to find oneself unceremoniously a dweller in 

 the Pacific or living in Venice. Nearly all the ascents were made 

 directly from the sea-shore. 



The highest mountain climbed was within a few feet of 7,000 feet 

 above the sea. The experienced climber covers about a thousand feet 

 an hour. The descent, when over snow fields, is sometimes made at a 

 dangerous velocity, by squatting down and tobogganing, using the alpen- 

 stock for steering. This method is rather risky, for an unseen precipice 

 may some day be the cause of an untimely end to the topographer's 

 career. 



Several hot springs were encountered on the work. I took the tem- 

 perature of a sulphurous one near the coast, and found it to register 

 164 F., a temperature sufficient to boil eggs. Hot springs and 

 glaciers, a peculiar combination ! 



On account of the continued saturated conditionjof the atmosphere 



