78 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



savage is content with shooting a few mountain sheep, a wandering 

 moose or two, and, perhaps, a stray bear in the course of the year. 

 Also, huckleberries and salmon berries are abundant on the sun- 

 shiny slopes of the high glacial river-terraces during August and 

 September. 



West of the Copper River mighty masses of the Choogatch 

 Mountains rise directly from the sea without any intervening low- 

 land, save at three tiny points upon which savage man has hastened 

 to fix his abode. Many crests to this range on the north side 

 of Prince William's Sound must have a mean elevation of over ten 

 thousand feet, densely wooded with semper-virent coniferous for- 

 ests up to a height of one thousand feet above sea-level, and covered 

 with everlasting snow}'' blankets to within three or four thousand 

 feet of the ocean at their bases. The body of Prince William's 

 Sound is so forbidding in its dark grandeur that even the stolid 

 Russians never tired of narrating its stirring impression upon their 

 senses. Although the interior of this gulf is completely landlocked, 

 being sheltered from the south by the islands of Noochek and Mon- 

 tague, yet it is by no means a safe or pleasant sheet of water to 

 navigate, inasmuch as furious gales and " woollies " sweep down 

 upon it fi'om the steep mountain sides and caiions, so that, without 

 even a moment's warning, the traveller's craft is suddenly stricken, 

 and compelled to instantly run for shelter under the lee of some 

 one of the hundreds of islands and capes which stud its waters or 

 point its coast. Immense glaciers are descending from the cavern- 

 ous inlets of the northern and eastern shores, and shedded frag- 

 ments of ice, large and small, are cemented by the tide into large 

 sheets, which are finally swept out and lost in the ocean. 



The shores of these canals are formed of high, stupendous moun- 

 tains that rise abruptly from the water's edge perpendicularly, and 

 often overhanging. The dissolving snow upon their summits gives 

 rise to thousands upon thousands of little cataracts, which fall with 

 great impetuosity down their seamed sides and over sheer and rug- 

 ged px-ecipices. This fresh water, clear as crystal and cold as win- 

 ter, thus descending into the green and blue salt sea, changes that 

 tone to one of a strange whitish hue in its vicinity, as it also does 

 in many fiords of the Sitkan region. This peculiar flood always 

 arrests attention and excites the liveliest curiosity in the mind of 

 him who beholds it for the first time. Everywhere, save to the 

 southward, mountains can be seen looming up in the background 



