92 I. C. Rmsell— Expedition to Mount St. Elias. 



the rugged crests of nearer ranges, many of which would hare 

 been counted magnificent mountains in a less rugged land. This 

 was the first view of the great peak obtained by any of our party. 

 Not a cloud obscured the defination of the mountain ; and the 

 wonderful transparency of the atmosphere, after so many days 

 of mist and rain, was something seldom if ever equalled in less 

 humid lands. 



Much nearer than St. Elias, and a little west of north of my 

 station, rose Mount Cook, one of the most beautiful peaks in the 

 region. Its summit, unlike the isolated pyramid in which St. 

 Elias terminates, is formed of three white domes, with here and 

 there subordinate pinnacles of pure white, shooting up from the 

 snow-fields like great crystals. On the southern side of Mount 

 Cook there are several rugged and angular ridges, which sweep 

 away for many miles and project like headlands into the sea of 

 ice, known as the Malaspina glacier, bordering the ocean to- 

 ward the southwest. Between the main ridges there are huge 

 trunk glaciers, each contriluiting its flood of ice to the great 

 glacier below ; and each secondary valley and each amphitheatre 

 among the peaks, no matter how small, has its individual glacier, 

 and the majority of these are tributary to the larger ice-streams. 

 All the mountains in sight exceeding 2,000 feet in elevation Avere 

 white with snow, except the sharpest ridges and boldest preci- 

 pices. The attention of the geologist is attracted by the fact that 

 all the foot-hills of Mount Cook are composed of gray sandstone 

 and black shale ; and he also observes that the angular mountain 

 crest so sharply drawn against the sky furnishes abundant evi- 

 dence that the mountains were never subjected to the abrasion 

 of a continuous ice-sheet. 



As I stood on the steep-sloped ridge, the Atrevida and Lucia gla- 

 ciers, their surfaces covered from side to side Avith angular masses, 

 of sandstone and shale, lay at my feet ; Avhile farther up the valley 

 the debris on the surface of the ice disappeared, and all above 

 Avas a Avinter landscape. The broAvn, desolate debris-fields on 

 the glacier at my feet extended far southward, and covered the 

 expanded ice-foot in Avhich the glacier terminates. Most curious 

 of all Avas the fact that the moraines on the lower border of the 

 glacier Avere concealed from xieyv by a dense coA'ering of vegeta- 

 tion, and in places Avere clothed Avith forests of spruce trees. 



To the soutliAvard, beyond the end of the Lucia glacier, and 

 separated from it by a torrent-swept boAvlder-bed, lay a A'ast 



