102 I. C. Russell — Expedition to Mount St. Elias. 



ice at the bottom exceeds its strength, and pieces break off and 

 rise to tlie surface. The water about the ends of the glaciers is 

 so intensely muddy that the submerged ice-foot is hidden from 

 view, and its presence would not be suspected were it not for the 

 fragments occasionally rising from it. TKe sudden appearance of 

 these masses of bottom ice at the surface is always startling. 

 While watching the ice-cliffe and admiring the play of colors in 

 the deep crevasses which penetrate them in every direction, or 

 tracing in fancy the strange history of the silent river and won- 

 dering in what age the snows fell on the mountains, which are 

 now returning to their parent, the sea, one is frequently awakened 

 by a commotion in the waters below, perhaj^s several hundred 

 feet in front of the ice-cliffs. At first it seems as if some huge 

 sea-monster had risen from the deep and was lashing the waters 

 into foam ; but soon the waters part, and a blue island rises to 

 the surface, carrying hundreds of tons of water, which flows down 

 its sides in cataracts of foam. Some of the bergs turn completely 

 over on emerging, and thus add to the tumult and confusion 

 that attends their birth. The waves roll away in widening circles, 

 to break in surf on the adjacent shores, and an island of ice of 

 the most lovely blue floats serenely away to join the thousands 

 of similar islands that have preceded it. The fragments of the 

 glacier rising from the bottom in this manner are usually larger 

 than those brokeii from the faces of the ice-cliffs, sometimes 

 measuring 200 or 300 feet in diameter. Their size and the sud- 

 denness with which they rise would insure certain destruction of 

 a vessel venturing too near the treacherous ice-walls. 



At the time of our visit to Haenke island, the entire surface of 

 Disenchantment bay and all of Yakutat bay as far southward as 

 we could see formed one vast field of floating ice. Most of the 

 bergs were small, but here and there rose masses which measured 

 150 by 200 feet on their sides and stood 40 or 50 feet out of the 

 water. The bergs are divided, in reference to color, into three 

 classes — the white, the blue, and the black. The white ones are 

 those that have fallen from the face of the ice-walls or those that 

 have been sufficiently exposed to the atmosphere to become 

 melted at the surface and filled with air cavities. The blue bergs 

 are of many shades and tints, finding their nearest match in 

 color in AntAverp blue. These are the ones that have recently 

 risen from the submerged ice-foot, or have turned over owing to 

 a change of position in the center of gravity. Rapid as is the 



