THE STIKINE RIVER IN 1898 5 



told of the Klondikers trembling and becoming breathless as 

 they landed on Cottonwood's shores, as frantic and crazed as if 

 Dawson City and the gold nuggets were in sight. 



All along the Stikine there is such a panorama and sky line 

 of snow peaks on either hand as would be enough to make the 

 fame of a whole territory, save in Alaska, where scenery con- 

 tinues on such a scale and with such unusual features that one 

 takes snow peaks and glaciers almost for granted, as obligatory, 

 conventional backgrounds for every scene. The first object of 

 special distinction along these river walls is the Popoff or Little 

 Glacier, ten miles above Pt Rothsay, a narrow blue tongue thrust 

 from great snow-fields and showing in profile beyond forested 

 slopes, whose greens intensify the exquisite pale pure blue of 

 this star-sapphire mass — this slender, steeply-plunging cataract 

 of ice seemingly arrested on the mountain's side. It shows a 

 dirty terminal moraine and a grimy forefoot to those who land 

 and approach it, but from the river this blue ribbon, unrolled 

 from- the clouds and the snow-fields, is most exquisite of Stikine 

 glaciers, the color of its hard clear ice divinely blue in the early 

 morning, fading at midday, and intensifying again as the shadows 

 stretch across it. With the windings of the river, one has the 

 Popoff in view from many points as the boat progresses toward, 

 faces, and manoeuvres within range. None of the Stikine gla- 

 ciers have been explored to their sources, mapped, measured, or 

 studied in any sense, and they are virtually unknown glaciers, 

 the region a paradise and happy hunting ground for the glacial 

 geologist. Prof. W. P. Blake, the geologist, who chanced to be 

 in Japan in 1863, was asked to accompany the corvette Eynda, 

 which Admiral Popoff despatched to the American coast by order 

 of the Czar to learn if Stikine miners were working within the 

 thirty-mile strip of Russian soil, which had so long been leased 

 to the Hudson's Bay Company. Professor Blake examined the 

 bars and rock formations and made a running survey of the river, 

 naming the glaciers and principal landmarks, and his map was 

 published with his report on the Stikine as a congressional doc- 

 ument at the time of the purchase of Russian America by the 

 United States. Dr John Muir made a canoe trip up the river in 

 1879, '* prospecting for glaciers" in a general way, and making 

 notes and thumbnail sketches for his own entertainment. Cana- 

 dian surveyors have made general maps of the river, and Messrs 

 Tittmann and Ogden, of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 have surveyed and mapped the lower end of the Stikine in con- 



