"Travels in Alaska 



midnight, tired and cold. Sailing across the inlet in a 

 cranky rotten boat through the midst of icebergs was 

 dangerous, and I was glad to get ashore. 



July 4., I climbed the east wall to the summit, 

 about thirty-one hundred feet or so, by the northern- 

 most ravine next to the yellow ridge, finding about 

 a mile of snow in the upper portion of the ravine and 

 patches on the summit. A few of the patches probably 

 lie all the year, the ground beneath them is so plant- 

 less. On the edge of some of the snow-banks I noticed 

 cassiope. The thin, green, mosslike patches seen from 

 camp are composed of a rich, shaggy growth of cas- 

 siope, white-flowered bryanthus, dwarf vaccinium 

 with bright pink flowers, saxifrages, anemones, blue- 

 bells, gentians, small erigeron, pedicularis, dwarf 

 willow and a few species of grasses. Of these, Cassiope 

 tetragona is far the most influential and beautiful. 

 Here it forms mats a foot thick and an acre or more 

 in area, the sections being measured by the size and 

 drainage of the soil-patches. I saw a few plants an- 

 chored in the less crumbling parts of the steep-faced 

 bosses and steps — parnassia, potentilla, hedysarum, 

 lutkea, etc. The lower, rough-looking patches half 

 way up the mountain are mostly alder bushes ten or 

 fifteen feet high. I had a fine view of the top of the 

 mountain-mass which forms the boundary wall of 

 the upper portion of the inlet on the west side, and 

 of several glaciers, tributary to the first of the eastern 

 tributaries of the main Muir Glacier. Five or six of 

 these tributaries were seen, most of them now melted 



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