RUSSELL ON MALASPINA GLACIER. 195 



This glacier extends with unbroken continuity from Yakutat bay seventy miles 

 westward, and has an average breadth of between twenty and twenty-five miles ; 

 its area is approximately 1,500 square miles, ... a vast, nearly horizontal 

 plateau of ice, with a general elevation of about 1,500 feet. The central portion is 

 free from moraines and dirt, but is rough and broken by thousands and tens of 

 thousands of small crevasses. Its surface is broadly undulating, and recalls the 

 appearance of portions of the rolling prairie lands west of the Mississippi. . . . 

 On looking down on the glacier from an elevation of two or three thousand feet on 

 the hills bordering it on the north, even on the wonderfully clear days that follow 

 storms, its limits are beyond the reach of vision. From any commanding station 

 overlooking the Malaspina glacier, as from the summit of the Chaix hills, for ex- 

 ample, one sees that the great central area of clear, white ice is bordered on the 

 south by a broad, dark band formed of bowlders and stones. Outside of this, and 

 forming a belt concentric with it, is a forest-covered area, in many places four or 

 five miles wide. . . . 



The moraines not only cover all of the outer border of the glacier, but stream off 

 from the mountain spurs that project into its northern border. . . . The stones 

 and dirt previously contained in the glacier are . . . concentrated at the sur- 

 face, owing to the melting of the ice that contains them. This is the history of all 

 of the moraines of the Malaspina glacier. They are formed of the debris brought 

 out of the mountains by the tributary Alpine glaciers, and concentrated at the sur- 

 face by reason of the ablation of the ice. . . . 



The outer and consequently older portions of the fringing moraines are covered 

 with vegetation, which in places, particularly near the outer margin of the belt, has 

 all the characteristics of old forests. It consists principally of spruce trees, some of 

 which are three feet in diameter, and cottonwood, alder and a great variety of 

 shrubs and bushes, together with rank ferns, which grow so densely that one can 

 scarcely force a passage through them. The vegetation grows on the moraines rest- 

 ing on the ice, which in many places is not less than a thousand feet thick. . . . 

 It is only on the stagnant border of the ice-sheet that forests occur. The forest- 

 covered area is, by estimate, between twenty and twenty-five square miles in 

 extent. 



The drainage of the Malaspina glacier is almost entirely interglacial or subglacial. 

 There is no surface drainage, excepting in a few localities where there is a surface 

 slope, but even in such places the streams are short and soon plunge into a crevasse 

 or a moulin and join the drainage beneath. 



On the lower portions of the Alpine glaciers, tributary to the Malaspina, there 

 are sometimes small streams coursing along in ice channels, but they are short- 

 lived. ( )u the borders of these tributaries there are frequently important streams, 

 flowing between the ice and a mountain slope, but where these come down to the 

 Malaspina they flow into tunnels and are lost to view. 



Alongthe southern margin of the Malaspina glacier, between the Yahtse and 

 Point Manby, there are hundreds of streams which pour out of the escarpment 

 formed by the border of the glacier, or rise like great fountains from the gravel and 

 bowlders at its base. All of these streams are brown and heavy with sediment and 

 overloaded with bowlders and stones. 



One of the largest streams draining the glacier is the Yahtse. This rises in two 

 principal branches at the base of the Chaix hills, and, flowing through a tunnel 

 some six or eight miles long, emerges at the southern border of the glacier as a 



