Excerpt from Visit to the Glaciers of Alaska and Mount St. Elias

To those among my audience who were present two years ago when a paper on the same region was read by Mr. Seton-karr to the Society, I can, I fear, offer little that is new. They will, however, have, at least this advantage, they know exactly whe1e Mount St. Elias is situated. To those who may not, I will premise that to reach Alaska, they must cross first the Atlantic Ocean to Montreal, and then the American continent to Victoria in British Columbia, and then go up the Pacific coast by sea for a thousand miles, in order to find themselves at Sitka, the capital of Alaska. Not very far from Sitka is Glacier Bay. To the west of this is Cross Sound, and it is to the north-west of Cross Sound that the mountain range lies which it is my purpose to describe to-night.

Into Glacier Bay many large glaciers descend, only one of which, the Muir, has been explored. It is 30 miles long, and its breadth, where it runs out into the sea, is one mile. It is decreasing very rapidly, so rapidly, indeed, that the sailors assert that they can, year after year, clearly distinguish the difference in its size. The height of the ice-wall at the foot of the glacier, where it is washed by the sea, was 319 feet m 1886, whilst last year it was 266 feet, a decrease of 53 feet. The centre of the glacier moves 70 feet per day, which 1s equal to five miles a year. This will be appreciated better if it is remembered that the Mer de Glace in Switzerland moves 1% foot per day, and the Aar Glacier 55 feet per year. We went up on to the ice to visit a cairn which the captain of our ship had previously erected for the purpose of ascertaining the rate of motion of the glacier. We found it almost overthrown into a crevasse, so we re-erected it and took sextant bearings from it to various peaks, for use this summer.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.