DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS 1 29 



nels, sounds, fiords and so on, between the islands manifest 

 in their forms and trends and general characteristics the 

 same subordination to the grinding action of a continuous 

 ice-sheet, being simply the portions of the margin of the 

 continent eroded below the sea level and therefore cov- 

 ered with the ocean waters, which flowed into them as 

 the ice was melted out. And, as we have seen, this 

 action is still going on and new islands and new chan- 

 nels are being added to the famous archipelago. The 

 steamer trip to the fronts of the glaciers of Glacier Bay 

 is now from two to eight or ten miles longer than it was 

 only twenty years ago. That the domain of the sea is 

 being extended over the land by the wearing away of its 

 shores is well known, but in 

 this region the coast rocks 

 have been so short a time ex- 

 posed to wave action that the 

 more resistant of them are 

 as yet scarcely at all wasted. 



Fven nq far smith ^ Virtnrifl LARGE Rock carried from distant 



iiven as iar sourn as v ictoria mountains to the sea by a 

 the superficial glacial scor- glacier. 



ing and polish may still be seen on the hardest of the 

 harbor rocks below the tide-line. The extension here- 

 abouts of the sea by its own action in post-glacial time 

 is probably less than a millionth part as much as that 

 effected by recent glacial action. 



On our way up the coast to Yakutat the majestic Fair- 

 weather Mountains we had so often admired from the 

 Glacier Bay side were buried in clouds, but the broad 

 outspread lower portions of the glaciers were clearly dis- 

 played beneath the clouds up to an elevation of about 

 2,000 feet. All of them are cut off from the sea by en- 

 ormous moraine deposits, except a mile or two of the 

 front of La Perouse Glacier which presents a bold crystal 

 wall to the waves at high tide. Not a single iceberg 



