136 CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



nearly to the level of tbe sea, and pouring a stream opaque with Glacial mud into the head of 



Puget Sound. 



On through British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska the broad sustained mountain chain 

 extending along the coast is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly every one 

 of the main cahous are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in size and descend lower 

 until the lofty region between Mount Fairweather and Mount Saint Elias is reached, where a 

 considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean. 



This is the region of greatest glacial abundance on the west side of the continent, while to the 

 north of latitude 02° few, if any, glaciers remain in existence, the ground being comparatively low 

 and the annual snowfall light. 



Between latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more than five thousand glaciers, great and 

 small, hundreds of the largest size descending through the forests nearly to the level of the sea, 

 though, as far as my own observation has reached, not more than twenty-five discharge into the 



sea. 



All the long, high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are of 

 course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached at intervals of a few 

 minutes, but these are small as compared with those of Greenland, and only a few escape from 

 the intricate labyrinth of channels with which this portion of the coast is fringed into the open 

 ocean. Nearly all of them are washed and drifted back and forth by wind and tide until finally 

 melted by the sun and the copious warm rains of summer. 



The southmost of the glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow fiord about 20 miles to the 

 northwest of the mouth of the Stickine River, in latitude 5(3° 50'. It is called " Hutli," or Thunder 

 Bay, by the natives, from the noise made by the icebergs hf rising and tailing from the inflowing 

 glacier. About one degree farther north there are four at the heads of branches of Holkam Bay, 

 at the head of Takou Inlet one, and at the head and around the sides of a large bay trending in a 

 general northerly direction from Cross Sound, first explored by Mr. Young and myself, there are 

 no less than five of these complete glaciers reaching tide-water, the largest of which is of colossal 

 size, having upwards of a hundred tributaries and a width of trunk below the confluence of the 

 main tributaries of from 3 to 8 miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the ocean all the 

 ground, high and low, with the exception of the summits of the mountain peaks, is covered by a 

 mantle of ice from 1,000 to 3,000 feet thick, which discharges to the eastward aud westward through 

 many distinct mouths. 



This ice-sheet, together with the multitude of distinct glaciers that load the lofty mountains of 

 the coast, evidently once formed part of one grand continuous ice sheet that flowed over all the 

 region hereabouts, extending southward as far as the Straits of Juan do Fuoa, for all the islands 

 of the Alexander Archipelago, great aud small, as well as the headlands and promontories of the 

 mainland, are seen to have forms of greatest strength with reference to the action of a vast press 

 of over-sweeping ice, aud their surfaces have a smooth, rounded, over-rubbed appearance, generally 

 free from angles. The marvelous labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds, &c, 

 between the islands manifest, in their forms aud trends aud general characteristics, the same 

 subordination to the grinding action of a continuous ice-sheet, and differ from the islands as to 

 their origin only in being portions of the general pre-Glacial margin of the continent, more deeply 

 eroded, and, therefore, covered with the ocean waters, which flowed into them as the ice was melted 

 out of theui. 



That the dominion of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of its shores 

 is well known, but in these northern regions the coast rocks have been so short a time exposed to 

 wave-action they are but little wasted as yet, the extension of the sea effected by its own action in 

 post-Glacial time in this region being probably less than the millionth part of that effected by 

 glacial action daring the last Glacial period. 



Traces of the ancient glaciers made during the period of greater extension abound on the 

 California Sierra as far south as latitude 36°. Even the most evanescent of them, the polished 

 surfaces, are still found, in a marvelously perfect state of preservation, on the upper half of the 

 middle portion of the range, occurring iu irregular patches, some of which are several acres in 

 extent, and, though they have been subjected to the weather with all its storms for thousands of 



