Alaska the broad, sustained mountain-chain, extending along the coast,
is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly all the main
cañons and fiords are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in
size, and descend lower until the high region between Mount Fairweather
and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a considerable number discharge
into the waters of the ocean. This is preëminently the ice-land of
Alaska and of the entire Pacific Coast.

Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and
thickness, and melt at higher levels. In Prince William Sound and Cook's
Inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding
mountains; but to the north of latitude 62° few, if any, glaciers
remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light. Between
latitude 56° and 60° there are probably more than 5000 glaciers, not
counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size descend through the
forests to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far as my own
observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the
region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All
the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first
class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable
form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few
minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep
water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those
of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape
from the intricate system of channels, with which this portion of the
coast is fringed, into the open sea. Nearly all of them are swashed and
drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fiords until finally
melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious
rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Prof.
Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open sea, at Icy Cape,