THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS. 75 



the Alaskan region — wLat a chapter of disappointment, of hardship, 

 and of death ! 



That bluffy sea-wall which forms a face to the low coast pla- 

 teau at the feet of the St, Elias Alps is cut by no great river, nor 

 indented by any noteworthy gulf or inlet, except at Yakootat Bay. 

 Here a succession of precipitous glaciers sweep down from the lofty 

 cradles of their birth to the waters of the sea, making an icy cliff of 

 more than fifteen miles in breadth, where it breaks in constant rever- 

 beration and repetition. At the mouth of Copper River all silt car- 

 ried down from old eroded glacial paths has been deposited for thou- 

 sands and thousands of years, until a big deltoid chart of sea-water 

 channels in muddy relief of bank and shoal has been foi-med, and 

 through which the flood of an ice-chilled river takes its rapid 

 course. 



The gloomy, savage wildness of this region of supreme moun- 

 tainous elevation, with its vast gelid sheets and precipitous caiions, 

 its sombre forests and eternal snows, all as yet wholly unexplored, 

 and only faintly appreciated as we can from the remote distance 

 of shipboard observation — this region cannot remain much longer 

 untrodden by the geologist and the naturalist, while the artist must 

 accompany them if an adequate presentation is ever to be given of 

 its weird, titanic realities. 



The Mount St. Elias shore-line is made up of small projecting 

 points, awash. These alternate with low cliffy or else white sandy 

 beaches, which border a flat, rolling woodland country that extends 

 back from the sea ten to thirty miles, where it suddenly laps and 

 rises upon the lofty flanks of the Elias Alps. Into the ocean many 

 rocky shoals and long sandy bars stretch for miles, and streams of 

 white muddy glacial or snow waters rush into the surf at frequent 

 intervals — hundreds of them. 



There are sand-beaches and silt-shoals which extend from 

 Cape Suckling, up seventy-five miles to Hinchinbrook Island, that 

 stands as a gate-post to the entrance of Prince William's Sound : 

 here is a long sand-ridge which is more than sixty miles in length 

 and from three to seven miles broad, l^'ing between the ocean and 

 the mainland, which in turn is composed of low wooded uj)lands 

 and of steep abrupt cliffs and hills that are quickly lost in the lofty 

 snowy range of the Choogatch Alps. Through a section of this 

 dreary sand-wall the impetuous flood of the Copper or Atna River 

 forces its way, carrying its heavy load of glacial mud and silt far 



