Pushing on toward the western border of the glacier, across the barren field of stones, I came at length to the brink of a precipice of dirty ice more than a hundred feet high, at the foot of which flowed a swift stream of turbid water. A few hundred yards below, this stream suddenly disappeared beneath an archway formed by the end of a glacial tunnel, and its further course was lost to view. It was a strange sight to see a swift, foaming river burst from beneath overhanging ice-cliffs, roar along over a bowlder-covered bed, and then plunge into the mouth of a cavern, leaving no trace of its lower course except a dull, heavy rumbling far down below the icy surface. A still grander example of these glacial streams, observed a few days later, is described on another page.
The bank of the gulf opposite the point at which I first reached it is formed by a steep mountain-side supporting a dense growth of vegetation. Here and there, however, streams of water plunge down the slope, making a chain of foaming cascades, and opening the way through the vegetation. It seemed practicable to traverse one of these stream beds without great difficulty, and thus to reach the plateau which I knew, from a more distant view, to exist above.
Crossing the glacial river above the upper archway, I reached the mountain side and began to ascend. The task was far more difficult than anticipated. The bushes, principally of alder and currant, grew dense and extended their branches down the steep slope in such a manner that at times it was utterly impossible to force a way through them. Much of the way I crawled on hands and knees up the steep watercourse beneath the dense tangle of vegetation overhanging from either bank and interlacing in the center. On nearing the top I was so fortunate as to strike a bear trail, along which the animal had forced his way through the bushes, making an opening like a tunnel. Through this I ascended to the top of the slope, coming out in a wild amphitheatre in the side of the mountain. The bottom of the amphitheatre was exceedingly rough, owing to confused moraine-heaps, and held a number of small lakes. On account of its elevation, it was not densely covered with bushes, and no trees were in sight except along its southern margin. About its northern border ran a broad terrace, marking the height of the great glacier which formerly occupied the site of Yakutat bay. The terrace formed a convenient pathway leading westward to a sharp ridge running out from the mountains and connecting with an outstanding butte, which promised to afford an unobstructed view to the westward.
Pressing on, I found that the terrace on which I was traveling at length became a free ridge, some three hundred feet high, with steep slopes on either side, like a huge railroad embankment. This ridge swept across the valley in a graceful curve, and shut off a portion of the western part of the amphitheatre from the general drainage. In the portion thus isolated there was a lake without an outlet, still frozen. The snow banks bordering the frozen lake were traced in every direction by the trails of bears. Continuing my tramp, I crossed broad snow-fields, climbed the ridge to the westward, and obtained a far-reaching, unobstructed view of the surrounding country. The elevation reached was only about 1,500 feet above sea-level, but was above the timber line. The mountain slopes toward the north were bare of vegetation and generally covered with snow.
The first object to claim attention was the huge pyramid forming the summit of Mount St. Elias, which stood out clear and sharp against the northwestern sky. Although thirty-six miles distant, it dominated all other peaks in view and rose far above the rugged crests of nearer ranges, many of which would have been counted magnificent mountains in a less rugged land. This was the first view of the great peak obtained by any of our party. Not a cloud obscured the defination of the mountain; and the wonderful transparency of the atmosphere, after so many days of mist and rain, was something seldom if ever equalled in less humid lands.
Much nearer than St. Elias, and a little west of north of my station, rose Mount Cook, one of the most beautiful peaks in the region. Its summit, unlike the isolated pyramid in which St. Elias terminates, is formed of three white domes, with here and there subordinate pinnacles of pure white, shooting up from the snow-fields like great crystals. On the southern side of Mount Cook there are several rugged and angular ridges, which sweep away for many miles and project like headlands into the sea of ice, known as the Malaspina glacier, bordering the ocean toward the southwest. Between the main ridges there are huge trunk glaciers, each contributing its flood of ice to the great glacier below; and each secondary valley and each amphitheatre among the peaks, no matter how small, has its individual glacier, and the majority of these are tributary to the larger ice-streams. All the mountains in sight exceeding 2,000 feet in elevation were white with snow, except the sharpest ridges and boldest precipices. The attention of the geologist is attracted by the fact that all the foot-hills of Mount Cook are composed of gray sandstone and black shale; and he also observes that the angular mountain crest so sharply drawn against the sky furnishes abundant evidence that the mountains were never subjected to the abrasion of a continuous ice-sheet.
As I stood on the steep-sloped ridge, the Atrevida and Lucia glaciers, their surfaces covered from side to side with angular masses of sandstone and shale, lay at my feet; while farther up the valley the débris on the surface of the ice disappeared, and all above was a winter landscape. The brown, desolate débris-fields on the glacier at my feet extended far southward, and covered the expanded ice-foot in which the glacier terminates. Most curious of all was the fact that the moraines on the lower border of the glacier were concealed from view by a dense covering of vegetation, and in places were clothed with forests of spruce trees.
To the southward, beyond the end of the Lucia glacier, and separated from it by a torrent-swept bowlder-bed, lay a vast plateau of ice which stretched toward the south and west farther than the eye could reach. This is the Malaspina glacier, shown on plate 8. Its borders, like the expanded extremity of the Lucia glacier, are covered with débris, on the outer margins of which dense vegetation has taken root. All the central portion of the ice-sheet is clear of moraines, and shone in the sunlight like a vast snow-field. The heights formerly reached by the nearer glaciers were plainly marked along the mountain sides by well-defined terraces, sloping with the present drainage. When the Lucia glacier was at its flood the ridge on which I stood was only 200 or 300 feet above its surface; now it approaches 1,000 feet.
Turning toward the southeast, I could look down upon the waters of Yakutat bay, with its thousands of floating icebergs, and could distinguish the white breakers as they rolled in on Ocean cape. Beyond Yakutat stretches a forest-covered plateau between the mountains and the sea, and the eye could range far over the mountains bordering this plateau on the northeast. In the distance, fully a hundred miles away, stood Mount Fairweather, its position rendered conspicuous by a bank of shining clouds floating serenely above its cold summit.