GLACIERS OF THE SECOND CLASS 



121 



Of the great glaciers of the second class, flowing down 

 nearly to the sea but not entering it, there are about a 

 hundred, distributed along the coast from the mouth of 

 the Stikine River to Cook Inlet and thence southwest- 

 ward along the Alaska Peninsula, pouring their majestic 

 crystal floods from far-reaching fountains in the recesses 

 of the peaks, and sweeping down through the forests to 

 the shores of the fiords or of the ocean. The expanded fan- 

 shaped ends of 

 many of them are 

 from two to four 

 miles wide, and 

 all are separated 

 from tide water 

 by mud and 

 gravel flats or 

 terminal mo- 



raines — the waste 

 from melting and 

 evaporation equal- 

 ing or exceeding 

 the supply. The 

 best known of this 

 class are the 

 Baird and Patter- 

 son, at the head 

 of fiords opening 

 into Prince Frederick Sound, and the Auk, Eagle, and 

 Davidson glaciers, seen from Lynn Canal; but the largest 

 front the ocean along the Fairweather and St. Elias ranges. 

 The Malaspina Glacier is the largest of all, being about 

 twenty miles long and sixty-five or seventy wide, a vast 

 plateau of ice at the base of the St. Elias Mountains, 

 separated from the sea by a girdle of forested moraines 



DAVIDSON GLACIER, LYNN CANAL 

 FRONT AND SIDE VIEWS. 



