20 OUR ARCTIC PROYIKCE. 



from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen 

 bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a 

 mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick ! 



Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the en- 

 tire northern continent' — a vivid picture of the actual process of 

 degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during 

 that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of 

 death just about half of the globe.* This startling exhibition of a 

 mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross 

 Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to be- 

 hold it, and it alone. There is not I'oom in this narrative for fur- 

 ther dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of 

 such a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume. 



Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest 

 tidal currents prevail : they flow at places like mill-races, and again 

 they scarcely interfere with the shij) or canoe. The flood-tides usu- 

 ally run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon's 

 Entrance ; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean 

 side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never 

 ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and 

 the best indication of these tidal currents is atforded by the stream- 

 ing fronds of kelp that grow abundantly in all of these multitudi- 

 nous fiords, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a 

 few feet to that of seventy fathoms : when the tide is running through 

 some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the 

 whip-like stems of seaweed, a true rapid with much white water, 

 boiling and seething in its wild rushing ; these alternations between 

 high and low water here are exceedingly variable — the spring-tides 

 at some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles 

 beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than 

 three or four feet. 



Those bafiiing tides and the currents they create, together with 

 gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render the 

 navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for sailing- 

 vessels — they gladly seek the open ocean where they can haul and 

 fill away to advantage even if it does blow "great guns ;" the high 

 mural walls of the Alexander ficirds on both sides, usually, of the 



* I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view, whicli was the 

 doctrine of Agassiz. 



