GLACIERS OS THE PACIFIC COAST. 39 



quite destitute of motion, and the circumstances appeared to 

 point to one conclusion, that there is here a ridge of solid ice 

 rising several hundred feet above the sea and higher than any 

 of the land about it and older than the mammoth and fossil 

 horse, this ice taking upon itself the functions of a regular 

 stratified rock. The formation, though visited before, has not 

 hitherto been intelligibly described from a geological stand- 

 point. Though many facts may remain to be investigated, 

 and whatever be the conclusions as to its origin and mode of 

 preservation, it certainly remains one of the most wonderful 

 and puzzling geological phenomena in existence. 



The same author elsewhere writes that the continuity of 

 this deposit "is broken between Kotzebue Sound and Icy 

 Cape by rocky hills composed chiefly of carboniferous lime- 

 stones, which bear no glaciers, and do not seem to have been 

 glaciated. The absence of bowlders and erratics over all this 

 area has been noted by Franklin, Beechy, and all others who 

 have explored it." * 



During the period of the Russian occupancy of Alaska 

 scarcely anything was added to our knowledge of its glaciers 

 further than what is to be found in the notes of Vancouver's 

 voyage. Even the existence of Glacier Bay, which is to 

 form the subject of the next chapter, was not suspected till a 

 comparatively recent time, and it is not noted on any map 

 drawn previous to 1880. Muir Glacier, which is now the 

 object of greatest interest to the host of summer tourists who 

 crowd the steamers making the round trip from Portland, 

 Oregon, through the waters of southeastern Alaska, was 

 brought to the notice of the ' outside world by the California 

 gentleman whose name it bears, as late as 1879, when he and 

 Rev. Mr. Young, of the Presbyterian mission at Fort Wran- 

 gel, made a voyage of discovery around the archipelago in 

 a dug-out canoe. 



* " Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington," vol. vi, p. 33 

 quoted in Russell, as above, p. 354. 



