In British Columbia, Glacier Station, upon the Canadian Pacific Railroad, in the Selkirk Mountains, is within half a mile of the handsome Illicilliwaet Glacier, while others of larger size are found at no great distance. The interior farther north is unexplored to so great an extent that little can be definitely said concerning its glacial phenomena. The coast of British Columbia is penetrated by numerous fiords, each of which receives the drainage of a decaying glacier; but none are in sight of the tourist-steamers which thread their way through the intricate network of channels characterising this coast, until the Alaskan boundary is crossed and the mouth of the Stickeen River is passed.
A few miles up from the mouth of the Stickeen, however, glaciers of large size come down to the vicinity of the river, both from the north and from the south, and the attention of tourists is always attracted by the abundant glacial sediment borne into the tide-water by the river itself and discolouring the surface for a long distance beyond the outlet. Northward from this point the tourist is rarely out of sight of ice-fields. The Auk and Patterson Glaciers are the first to come into view, but they do not descend to the water-level. On nearing Holcomb Bay, however, small icebergs begin to appear, heralding the first of the glaciers which descend beyond the water’s edge. Taku Inlet, a little farther north, presents glaciers of great size coming down to the sea-level, while the whole length of Lynn Canal, from Juneau to Chilkat, a distance of eighty miles, is dotted on both sides by conspicuous glaciers and ice-fields.
The Davidson Glacier, near the head of the canal, is one of the most interesting for purposes of study. It comes down from an unknown distance in the western interior, bearing two marked medial moraines upon its surface. On nearing tide-level, the valley through which it flows is about three-quarters of a mile in width; but, after emerging from the confinement of the valley, the ice spreads out over a fan-shaped area until the width of its front is nearly three miles. The supply of ice not being sufficient to push the front of the glacier into deep water, equilibrium between the forces of heat and cold is established near the water’s edge. Here, as from year to year the ice melts and deposits its burdens of earthy débris, it has piled up a terminal moraine which rises from two hundred to three hundred feet in height, and is now covered with evergreen trees of considerable size. From Chilkat, at the head of Lynn Canal, to the sources of the Yukon River, the distance is only thirty-five miles, but the intervening mountain-chain is several thousand feet in height and bears numerous glaciers upon its seaward side.
About forty miles west of Lynn Canal, and separated from it by a range of mountains of moderate height, is Glacier Bay, at the head of one of whose inlets is the Muir Glacier, which forms the chief attraction for the great number of tourists that now visit the coast of southeastern Alaska during the summer season. This glacier meets tide-water in latitude 58° 50’, and longitude 136° 40’ west of Greenwich. It received its name from Mr. John Muir, who, in company with Rev. Mr. Young, made a tour of the bay and discovered the glacier in 1879. It was soon found that the bay could be safely navigated by vessels of large size, and from that time on tourists in increasing number have been attracted to the region. Commodious steamers now regularly run close up to the ice-front, and lie-to for several hours, so that the passengers may witness the “calving” of icebergs, and may climb upon the sides of the icy stream and look into its deep crevasses and out upon its corrugated and broken surface.
Fig. 12.—Map of Glacier Bay. Alaska, and its surroundings. Arrow-points indicate glaciated area.
The first persons who found it in their way to pay more than a tourist’s visit to this interesting object were Rev. J. L. Patton, Mr. Prentiss Baldwin, and myself, who spent the entire month of August, 1886, encamped at the foot of the glacier, conducting such observations upon it as weather and equipment permitted. From that time till the summer of 1890 no one else stopped off from the tourist steamers to bestow any special study upon it. But during this latter season Mr. Muir returned to the scene of his discovered wonder, and spent some weeks in exploring the interior of the great ice-field. During the same season, also, Professors H. F. Reid and H. Cushing, with a well-equipped party of young men, spent two months or more in the same field, conducting observations and experiments, of various kinds, relating to the extent, the motion, and the general behaviour of the vast mass of moving ice.
