330 The American Geologist. May, 1882 
position at the time of Malaspina’s and Puget’s visits, and were 
then united so as to completely block the entrance to Disenchant- 
ment bay, which is a continuation of Yakutat bay. These obser. 
vations show conclusively that the glaciers mentioned have re- 
treated five or six miles within the past one hundred years. The 
small recession that has here taken place, in comparison with the 
changes reported in Glacier bay, during the same time, is prob- 
ably due to the fact that the névé from which Muir glacier flows, 
is much lower than the snow fields drained by the Hubbard and 
Dalton glaciers, and presumably more sensitive to climatic: 
changes. 
North Side of the St. Elias Mountains: — Dr. C. Willard Hayes, 
of the U. $8. Geological Survey, in crossing from Selkirk house 
on the Yukon river to Copper river, in 1891, passed for a portion 
of the way along the northern border of the great system of 
mountains which culminate in Mt. St. Elias, and discovered sey- 
eral large glaciers of the alpine type flowing northward from the 
névé field north of Mt. St. Elias, and also other glaciers draining 
névé fields about Mt. Wrangell and flowing southward. Respect- 
ing the evidence of recent changes in these glaciers, Dr. Hayes. 
has kindly supplied the following notes: 
Two large glaciers and many small ones were seen flowing from the- 
St. Elias mountains northward into the White river basin. Another 
flows from the southeast into the pass and drains into both the White- 
and Copper river basins, About the head of the Nizzenah are four large - 
and many small glaciers. Flowing into Copper river from the coast 
range are four or five glaciers, one of them—Miles glacier—being larger 
than any seen further in the interior. Observations were thus made on, 
twelve glaciers, and with one exception to be described later, all show a 
more or less rapid recession. The evidence of this recession in most 
cases is the accumulated moraine covering the terminal edge of the 
glacier; or where there is not sufficient englacial drift to accumulate and: 
form a protective mantle, the stagnant ice melting to a feather edge. 
The White river lobe of Russell glaciers is of the moraine covered: 
type, while the Nizzenah lobe has the feather edge. On the Klut- 
lan and Russell glaciers the outer portion of the moraine covered ice- 
supports a dense vegetation, which becomes gradually more scanty and 
disappears about half a mile from the edge of the ice. The recession 
of the smaller glaciers along the Nizzenah appears to have been. 
more rapid than the advance of the vegetation so that between it and. 
the ice is a belt of bare moraine. 
Miles glacier terminates in an ice cliff fronting upon Copper river- 
and the river has as yet cut only part way through the dam formed by~ 
