CAPE RUSSELL. 
101 
yond it is a large headland, the highest visible from 
the late position of our brig, shutting out all points 
farther north. It is indicated on my chart as Cape 
Francis Hawks. We found the table-lands were twelve 
hundred feet high by actual measurement, and interior 
plateaus were seen of an estimated height of eighteen 
hundred. 
I determined to seek some high headland beyond the 
cape, and make it my final point of rcconnoissance. 
I shall never forget the sight, when, after a hard 
day’s walk, I looked out from an altitude of eleven 
hundred feet upon an expanse extending beyond the 
eightieth parallel of latitude. Far off on my left was 
the western shore of the Sound, losing itself in dis¬ 
tance toward the north. To my right, a rolling 
primary country led on to a low dusky wall-like ridge, 
which I afterward recognised as the Great Glacier 
of Humboldt; and still beyond this, reaching north¬ 
ward from the north-northeast, was the land which 
now bears the name of Washington: its most pro¬ 
jecting headland, Cape Andrew Jackson, bore four¬ 
teen degrees by sextant from the farthest hill, Cape 
John Barrow, on the opposite side. The great area 
between was a solid sea of ice. Close along its shore, 
almost looking down upon it from the crest of our 
lofty station, we could see the long lines of hummocks 
dividing the floes like the trenches of a beleaguered 
city. (26) Farther out, a stream of icebergs, increasing in 
numbers as they receded, showed an almost impene¬ 
trable barrier; since I could not doubt that among 
