248 REPORT OF THE MEETINGS FOR 1900 



to Skapfnay, in Alaska. I have now returned from a Bhort, bnt very 

 interesting, sojourn in Alaska (American) and Yukon territory (British) ; 

 and after many days of steamboat and railway travelling am now settled 

 down here at 4500 feet above sea-level in the Selkirk range, for a 

 few days " rest," which I hope to devote to mountain climbing and to 

 such observation of nature as is becoming in a Berwickshire Naturalist. 

 I met the Govenor General, Lord Minto, here to-day, and we were able 

 to compare notes, not only about Tweedside, bnt also about the Yukon 

 goldfields, from which he has just returned on an official tour. He 

 went off with his family and A.D.C.'s in a special train for the 

 Kootenay District this afternoon, on his way back to Ottawa. 



As a geologist of the amateur species I have been greatly impressed 

 by my jonrneyings hitherto. The "Glacial Epoch" is a thing one 

 takes for granted, and one knows it as a geological period : bnt the 

 glacial area is what is here exhibited. On the Journey up the St. 

 Lawrence, from Cape Gaspe to Quebec, I could not help seeing the 

 immense area of ice-work shown by both banks when I could see 

 them sufficiently clearly from the steamer's deck : that is a length 

 of 400 miles of coast. Then between Toronto and Lake Huron, and 

 again, after crossing Lake Superior, from Fort William for 150 miles 

 westwards towards Winnipeg, the railway passed through a rocky 

 country that must at one time have been pressed down by millions 

 of tons of slow-moving superincumbent ice : roches montonnees, or 

 (perhaps better) " wliale-backs," appeared everywhere, raising their 

 smooth round humps above the surface of vegetable mould. Lastlj"^, 

 along the 1000 miles of coast from Vancouver northwards, the rocky 

 shores and rocky islands equally bore traces of the same mammoth 

 ice-pressure : and the sides of the narrower fiords further north were 

 smoothed to a great height above sea-level. Indeed, when I had left 

 the fiords 40 miles behind me, and had reached Lake Bennett, which 

 is crossed by the parallel of 60° North Latitude, I found the ice-evidence 

 more conspicuous than ever. Lake Bennett runs north and south for 

 a distance of 20 miles between high rocky mountains, and the slopes 

 of these were glacially smoothed and rounded to the height of quite 

 1000 feet above the lake, leading one to imagine that the lake had 

 been at one time a channel for an onward flow of ice 1000 feet or 

 more in depth. When this glacial period was, or how it was occasioned, 

 the amateur ventureth not to suggest, bnt he remains profoundly 

 impressed by the enormous area and power of the glacial action. 



Then, geologically, the gold mining was interesting. I regret that 

 I have been unable to bring home any large specimens of native gold. 

 But I was a spectator of the finding of a dozen or more nuggets 

 varying in size from that of a pea to that of a pigeon's egg, which 

 were i)icked up in a few minutes from their natural position on the 

 bed rock of an alluvial deposit, in McKee creek near Atlin Lake. 

 The miners diverted the water of the stream a short way above the 



