MEMOIR OF ISRAEL C. RUSSELL 585 



geology within easy reach had no attraction for liim. Better an hour on 

 that frost-fettered virgin height tlian a year in the haunts of men. 

 Through the cooperation of the National Geographic Society and the 

 U. S. Geological Survey, his purpose of exploration was realized and he 

 twice visited the region. He did not attain the highest summit, being 

 driven back repeatedly by storms, and the last time when all the difficul- 

 ties of the ascent had been overcome; but he yielded only to irresistible 

 conditions and made a record of indomitable pluck and perseverance. 

 The experience which he gathered at cost of extreme effort and risk he 

 placed freely at the service of others, and a share in the honor of the suc- 

 cessful ascent made by the Duke of the Abruzzi is justly granted by the 

 latter to Eussell. 



In the course of his second expedition Eussell was se^^arated from his 

 companions on the slopes of moi;nt Saint Elias and proceeded alone to a 

 camp they had established above the ice cascades of the glaciers beneath 

 the cliffs that define the peak. The others were to Join him there, but a 

 heavy storm interfered and Eussell was isolated among the wildest scenes 

 of alpine crags and ice. His tent was crushed and he burrowed in the 

 snow, where he measured out his scant supplies into eight days' rations 

 and prepared himself to await the issue. Afterward, in discussing Cham- 

 berlin's suggestion that heat waves might be transmitted through glacial 

 ice, he once remarked that none penetrated the snowbank in which he 

 passed three days. Storm winds whirled through the amphitheater; 

 avalanches shot from the cliffs ; the isolation was utter and to many men 

 would have been terrible; but Eussell's was a spirit that rose with the 

 battling elements and exulted in challenging Nature's most savage mood. 



The expeditions to Saint Elias were made across the Malaspina, the 

 great confluent glacier which receives the alpine ice-streams of the range 

 and extends to the coast, where it is in part covered by primeval forest. 

 The opportunity to study glacial phenomena was unrivaled and was fully 

 exploited by Eussell, who thus by direct observation made us acquainted 

 with the piedmont type of ice-sheet, which was formerly of common occur- 

 rence throughout the northern hemisphere. 



The exploration of mount Saint Elias was the most striking, but not 

 the most fruitful of Eussell's campaigns against the unknown. He con- 

 tinued his sallies into unexplored regions during the 3'ears following 1901, 

 going out each summer, as the vacation season permitted. He repeatedly 

 made reconnaissances in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho for the U. S. 

 Geological Survey, and there are extensive areas which we know only 

 through his publications. 



In 1892 Eussell succeeded Alexander Winchell in the chair of Geology 



