opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the glaciers that reach
the sea occupies a narrow, picturesque fiord about twenty miles to the
northwest of the mouth of the Stikeen River, in latitude 56° 50'. The
fiord is called by the natives "Hutli," or Thunder Bay, from the noise
made by the discharge of the icebergs. About one degree farther north
there are four of these complete glaciers, discharging at the heads of
the long arms of Holkam Bay. At the head of the Tahkoo Inlet, still
farther north, there is one; and at the head and around the sides of
Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from Cross Sound
in latitude 58° to 59°, there are seven of these complete glaciers
pouring bergs into the bay and its branches, and keeping up an eternal
thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of 200
tributaries, and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of
about twenty-five miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the
ocean all the ground, high and low, excepting the peaks of the
Fairweather Range, is covered with a mantle of ice from 1000 to probably
3000 feet thick, which discharges by many distinct mouths.

[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY--NISQUALLY GLACIER.]

This fragmentary ice-sheet, and the immense glaciers about Mount St.
Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that
load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a
continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and
only a comparatively short time ago extended as far southward as the
mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, probably farther. All the islands
of the Alexander Archipelago, as well as the headlands and promontories
of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are
still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest
strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of