32 TARE AND MARTIN— CHANGES OF LEVEL IN YAKUTAT REGION 



change of level so far recorded; and the fact that it is possible to assign 

 to it an exact date is of considerable importance. 



LOCATION AND GENERAL PHYSIOGRAPHY 



Yakntat bay is a deep indentation in the unbroken concave stretch of 

 coastline between Cross sound and Controller bay. This smooth coast is 

 backed by the lofty Fairweather and Saint Elias ranges, which reach their 

 culminating heights in mounts Saint Elias and Logan, 18,000 and 19,540 

 feet respectively. The mountains do not, however, rise directly from the 

 sea, but are faced by a low foreland, or coastal plain, of glacial debris, 

 broadening toward the northwest, and on the northwest side of Yakutat 

 bay still occupied by the ice plateau of Malaspina glacier. Yakutat bay, 

 which lies about 40 miles southeast of mount Saint Elias, pierces the 

 Yakutat foreland as a V-shaped bay. On its western side the bay is bor- 

 dered by the low foreland (here glacial gravels from the Malaspina and 

 other existing glaciers) ; but on the eastern and southeastern sides the 

 foreland forms the coast for only about half its length (see plate 23, oppo- 

 site page 54). This part of the southeastern shoreline (see plate 16, 

 figure 2) is very irregular and is fronted by an archipelago of low islands 

 of glacial debris. The northern half of the bay has for its eastern shore 

 a mountainous land rising abruptly to elevations of 3,000 to 4,550 feet. 

 This shore is straight and precipitous, and the mountain front, against 

 which the foreland is built, also rises abruptly along a straight line which 

 truncates the mountain spurs* (see plate 22, figure 1). 



Yakutat bay merges northward into a narrower arm, called Disen- 

 chantment bay, which is a true fiord, walled on both sides by steeply ris- 

 ing mountains. It extends from points Eunston and Latouche on the 

 south to Hubbard glacier, which forms its head with an ice cliff about 

 4 miles in length. A second tidal glacier, the Turner, enters the fiord 

 through a valley in its west wall. 



At Hubbard glacier the inlet turns at a high angle, and thence on to 

 its head is called Eussell fiord. North, northeast, and northwest of this, 

 mountains rise to elevations of 10,000 to 16,000 feet, but along the imme- 

 diate shores of the fiord the mountains rise abruptly to elevations of only 

 2,000 to 6,000 feet. Russell fiord, which extends back toward the Pacific, 

 roughly parallel to Disenchantment and Yakutat bays, is divisible into 

 three sections: (1) a northwest arm, with straight mountainous shores; 

 (2) a longer south arm, with a much more irregular mountainous 

 shoreline; and (3) the head of the bay, an expanded extension of the 



* Russell (see Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. iii, 1891. pp. 57 and 83) infers faulting here on 

 the basis of topographic form and geological structure. 



