Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1880 — The Great Glaciers of Alaska. [ARTICLE]

The Great Glaciers of Alaska.

The Stick ine is perhaps better known than any other river in Alaska, because of its being the way back to the Caseiar gold mines. It is about 850 or 400 miles long, and navigable for small steamers to Glenora, 150 miles, flowing first in a general westerly direction through grassy; undulating plains, darkened here and there with patches of evergreens, then curving southward, then receiving numerous tributaries from the north, it enters the Coast Range and sweeps across it to the sea through a Yosemite valley more than a hundred miles long, and one to three miles wide at the bottom, and from 5,000 to 8,000 feet deep, marvelously beautiful and inspiring from end to end. To the appreciative tourist sailing up the river through the midst of it all, the canon for a distance of about 110 miles is a gallery of sublime picturea,-an unbroken series of majestic mountains, glaciers, falls, cascades, forests, groves, flowery garden spots, grassy meadows in endless variety of form and composition,—furniture enough for a dozen Yosem—while back of the walls, and thousands of feet above them innumerable peaks end spires and domes of ice and snow tower jjmadly into the sky. fifteen miles above the month of the river you come to the first of the great glaciers, pouring lown through the forest in a shattered nearly to the level of the river. Here the canon is about two miles wide, planted with cottonwoods along the banks of the river, and spruce and fir and patches of wiki rose and raspberry extend back to the grand Yosemite walls. Twelve miles back to this point a noble view la opened along the shoot River canon-a group of glacierladen Alps from 10,000 to 18,000 feet high, the source of the largest tributary ot the Stickine. Thirty five miles above the mouth of the river the most striding object ot all comes in sight. This is the lower expanded part of the great glacier, measurein g about six miles around the snout, pushed boldly forward into the middle of the valley among the trees, while its sources are mostly hidden. It takes its rise In the heart of the range, some thirty <*, forty mfles away. Compared with this the Swiss mer de glaoe is a small thing. It is called the* Ice Mountain,” had seems to have been regarded as a

motionless bim, cntttd on thi? epfr*. like Um rock* sad trees about, without hatermg to guess as to how or when. The front of the snout is about three hundred feet high, but rises rapidly back for a few miles to a height of about one thousand feet Been through gape of foe trees growing on one of its terminal moraines, as one sails slowly along against the current, the marvellous beauty of the chasm* and clustering pinnacles shows to Am advantage in the sunshine; but tame indeed must be the observer who ia satisfied with so cheap a view.