Alaska Rivers. Their Number and Characteristics-The Stickine. Sublime Alpine Scenery-An Alaska Canyon. Glacier Mud-Stupendous Glacial Phenomena. (Special Correspondence of the Bulletin.) Sitka, December 27, 1879.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Alaska Canyon; Canyon Glacier; Grassy Plains; Yukon; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/187; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1186/viewcontent/99.pdf

ALASKA RIVERS, Their Number and Characteristics- The Stickine. sjiiblime Alpine Scenery—An Alaska Canyon. Glacier Mud—Stupendous Glacial Phenomena. [SPECIAL C03J3ESPOKDENCE 03? THE BULLETIN.] Sitka, December 27,1879. Alaska is covered with a network of deep, cool, perennial streams, that flow on, ever fresh and sweet through grassy plains and mossy bogs and rock-bound glacial cafions, telling ever where, all the way down to the sea. how bountiful are the clouds that fill their ample fountains. Some thirty or forty rivers have been discovered in the Territory, the number varying as the smaller ones have been called rivers, or creeks, by the map-makers. But not one of them all, from the mighty Yukon, 2,000 miles long, to the shortest of the mountain torrents falling white from the glaciers, has thus far been explored. Dall Kennicott and others have done good work on. the Tucon, aud miners, trappers and traders have been over most of the region in a rambling way, and each have brought in detached bits of river knowledge, which, though too often misty and uncertain, have been put together in maps that are better than nothing. The coast line in particular, with the mouths and lower reaches of the rivers, has been fairly drawn, but their upper courses are in great part invisible, like mountains with tiieir heads in a cloud. Perhaps about twenty of the Alaska rivers are a hundred miles or more in length. The Yukon drains about as large an area as that drained by all the other streams of the territary combined, flowing through British territory for a distance of six or seven hundred miles in a general northwesterly direction, then approaching the Alaska boundary near Fort Yukon, it turns abruptly to the left, and pursues a southwesterly course across the territory to the Behring Sea, in latitude about 62° 30'. It is a broad, majestic flood, scarce at all interrupted by rapids, nearly twenty miles wide in some places, and navigable for light-draft steamers about fifteen hundred miles—a noble companion of the great ...