ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 163 



vices which have a northern aspect. I have not been 

 able to discover, after many enquiries, that glaciers which 

 flow through mountain gorges into the lower country are 

 formed in any part of North America, though travellers 

 who have crossed to California, Oregon, and New Cale- 

 donia, speak of hills clothed with perpetual snow ; and the 

 Copper River, which joins the sea opposite to the peninsula 

 of Alaska, is said by Baer, on the authority of Klimowakij , 

 to issue from a solid mass of ice. Several passes which 

 traverse the chain do not rise more than 6,000 feet above 

 the sea level, and being free from snow in summer may be 

 crossed in that season by pack-horses and even by waggons. 

 The more northern of these passes have long been known 

 to the fur-traders ; the southern ones have lately been 

 explored and used by the multitudes who have hurried 

 from the United States to California in search of gold. 



Up to the 60th degree of latitude the chain runs nearly 

 parallel to the coast of the Pacific, and not far distant 

 from it ; the descent to the level of the sea is consequently 

 rapid on the west, — a configuration which M. Guyot* has 

 noted as peculiar to the New "World, while in the Old 

 Continent the short slopes are turned to the south, and 

 the long ones towards the north. A large triangular 

 corner, which belongs to the empire of Russia, and extends 

 westward to Beering's Straits, has a different physical 

 character, in the existence of a transverse series of active 

 volcanoes, as we shall hereafter have occasion to notice ; 

 at present my remarks will be confined to the continent 

 lying eastward of the mountains. 



The width of the chain is stated at from forty to one 

 hundred miles, and the central parts and peaks are said to 

 consist of granite and other igneous rocks. 



* Phy^. Geogr., p. 50. 

 m 2 



