4 8 
ALASKA GLACIERS 
more readily than the rocks about Glacier Bay. For this 
reason the finer details of ice sculpture are preserved only 
on surfaces from which the glaciers have somewhat re¬ 
cently retreated. It is probably because of the rapid 
weathering that vegetation occupies ice-freed surfaces 
rather quickly, but this remark applies only to herba¬ 
ceous plants and to willows and alders having the habit 
of bushes. The spruces, whose dense forests cover the 
detrital foreland east of the bay and climb the seaward 
slope of the adjacent mountain, have accomplished little 
toward the invasion of the most freshly glaciated faces of 
the same mountain which are turned toward Yakutat Bay 
and Russell Fiord. 
So far as known by direct observation, the recent glacial 
history is one of waning and retreat. From a careful 
compilation of early records, made by Russell, it appears 
that Malaspina in 1792 and Vancouver in 1794, attempting 
to penetrate Disenchantment Bay in boats, found a glacier 
front at Haenke Island. This was essentially the face of 
Hubbard Glacier, to which the Turner was then trib¬ 
utary. Completely filling the head of Disenchantment 
Bay, it acted as a dam separating Russell Fiord from 
Yakutat Bay, and the fiord was then occupied by a lake. 
The discharge of the lake must have been southward over 
the gravel lowland, and during its existence the wash of 
its waves produced beaches which are still to be seen as 
terraces about the southern part of the fiord. Russell 
estimates their height above tide-water at 150 feet. 
From 1792 to 1899 the face of Hubbard Glacier re¬ 
treated about five miles, but there is no reason to suppose 
that its position in the days of Malaspina represented a 
maximum. Haenke Island, which was not wholly cov¬ 
ered by the ice at the time of Malaspina’s visit, neverthe¬ 
less preserves glacial striation over the whole of its crest, 
and in places even polish; and this could hardly be the 
