MOUNTAINS AND GLACIERS IN ALASKA.

Southland Times, Issue 963, 5 June 1868, Page 3

MOUNTAINS AND GLACIERS IN ALASKA.

A correspondent of the " Occident" writing from Sitka, thus refers to the glaciers system in Alaska : — All along the Alaska sea coast, from the mouth of the Sitkeen, many hundred miles north and west, is the habitat of the glacier. The first one upon which I laid my hand was while on an exploring expedition with Prof. Davidson on the Lincoln, last October. It was at the mouth of the Chilcant. It had a base of six miles and run up to the snowy summit of a bluff 1,800 feet high. The ice reaches down to the base — the belt of land separating it from the water being less than 200 yards wide. The ice has a blue alpine color, and a number of streams issue from its base. It exhibits in its texture every variety of contortion. Coasting northward a hundred miles, we came in sight of Mount St. Elias, the highest known summit of Alaska. It is surrounded by an atmosphere too cold for the production of glacial phenomena. The white, loose snow, even in August, covers it with an everlasting mantle down to its very base. Its height is unknown, and its summit will never be trod by human foot. But on the coast, directly opposite Mount St. Elias, is an overhanging field of ice, having a width of 30 miles and bathing its crystal base in the tide waters of the Pacific. Tbe mariners who have coasted along its base say that in the clear sunshine of summer, its gleaming surface and rich prismatic coloring exhibit a magnificence which awes into silence every intelligent beholder. On a winter day it wears that " dreary grandeur" peculiar to the scenery of high latitudes.