"Travels in Alaska 



reach, and clusters of higher peaks here and there 

 closely crowded together; clusters, too, of needles and 

 pinnacles innumerable like trees in groves. Every- 

 where the peaks seem comparatively slender and 

 closely packed, as if Nature had here been trying to 

 see how many noble well-dressed mountains could be 

 crowded into one grand range. 



The black rocks, too steep for snow to lie upon, 

 were brought into sharp relief by white clouds and 

 snow and glaciers, and these again were outlined and 

 made tellingly plain by the rocks. The glaciers so 

 grandly displayed are of every form, some crawling 

 through gorge and valley like monster glittering ser- 

 pents; others like broad cataracts pouring over cliffs 

 into shadowy gulfs; others, with their main trunks 

 winding through narrow caiions, display long, white 

 finger-like tributaries descending from the summits 

 of pinnacled ridges. Others lie back in fountain 

 cirques walled in all around save at the lower edge, 

 over which they pour in blue cascades. Snow, too, lay 

 in folds and patches of every form on blunt, rounded 

 ridges in curves, arrowy lines, dashes, and narrow 

 ornamental flutings among the summit peaks and in 

 broad radiating wings on smooth slopes. And on 

 many a bulging headland and lower ridge there lay 

 heavy, over-curling copings and smooth, white domes 

 where wind-driven snow was pressed and wreathed and 

 packed into every form and in every possible place 

 and condition. I never before had seen so richly- 

 sculptured a range or so many awe-inspiring inacces- 

 sible mountains crowded together. If a line were 



[94l 



