1 III I. C. RUSSELL QRFACE GEOLOGY OF A.LASKA. 



extrusion, arc the only ones thai seem familiar to my eve- in the Unalaska 

 landscape. 



Many pages might be devoted to describing the .scenery of this region, and 

 ecially the magnificent elifls overlooking the sea, hut ray visit was too 

 hasty to admit of such study a< this subject demands. 



The characteristics of the scenery about Iliuliuk, as it appears to an 

 observer on Mount Wood, have been graphically described by II. W. Elliott.* 



•■ Turning right about and looking south, our eyes fall upon a radically different 

 landscape — a bewildering, labyrinthian maze of Oonalashkan mountain peak- and 

 ranges, rising in defiance to all law and order of position, with that lovely island- 

 studded water of the head to Captain's harbor in the foreground. Ridge after ridge- 

 Bummit after Bummit, fades out one behind the other into the oblivion of distance, 

 where the suggestion of a continuance to tlii- same wild interior is vividly made, in 

 spite of wreath- of fog and lines of snowy sheen, relieved so brightly by that greenish- 

 blue of the mosses and sphagnum in which they are set. A few pretty snow-buntings 

 flutter over the rocks to the leeward of our position ; their white, restless forms are 

 the only evidence or indication of animal life in our rugged vista of an Oonalashkan 

 interior." 



To my mind it is plain that the scenery described by Elliott is incompati- 

 ble with Muir's hypothesis of a former ice sheet flowing southward over the 

 A leutian islands. 



Absence of Clm-hil I}r<-<n-<1* about St. Michaels. — The region ahout St. 

 Michaels is so completely buried beneath tundra deposits that opportunities 

 for observing glacial records, if any exist, are rare. The stratum of blue 

 clay beneath the humus layer of the tundra, however, mentioned on page — , 

 shows no evidence of glacial origin. The volcanic craters near at hand 

 which rise above the tundra still retain their characteristic forms, and are 

 without Btriation, perched bowlder.-, or other evidences of glacial action. 



Absence of Glacial Records along the Yukon. — During the voyage up the 

 Yukon I looked attentively for evidences of glaciation, but saw no indication 

 of a former occupation of that region by ice until after passing the mouth 

 of Little Salmon river, in the North WV-t Territory, approximately in 

 latitude 62 N. Along the Yukon and the Lewes above this locality there 

 are abundant records of the former presence of a northward Mowing ice 

 die ( t. The limit of the nonglaciated region on the Yukon has not been 

 definitely determined, but provisionally it may be taken as stated above. 



A.long the Yukon from its mouth to where it is joined by the Little Salmon, 



a distance of about 1,500 miles, there is an absence of striated rock Burfa 

 "perched bowlders", bowlder clay, moraines, and all other evidence of an 

 ice invasion. This aegative evidence i- corroborated by the presence, along 



the river bin If- and OD the mountain-, of numerous pinnacle- ami spires due 



to long-continued Bubae rial erosion, and by vast tains slopes about the steeper 



< >i , irctio Province. New I | 



