June-July 1899, Harriman Expedition to Alaska, Part II Image 42

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1899
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; glacier; glaciers; Yakutat; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2700; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/3699/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

run in closer at right angles to former course in the direction of Icy [Bay] or Point, and going 10 [miles] nearer got good view of nearly all the great [glaciers]. The [West] side draining the slopes of St. Elias direct is white nearly to the sea and terminates in bluffs like the ordinary front wall of berg- producing [glaciers], tho’ not a berg was visible. Occasionally a mass is undermined by the waves [which] at high tide beat awash on several miles of the front, but as far as I could see or learn a mud or sandy flat is exposed at low tide everywhere and the [glacier] wall is being melted back and broken like rocky coasts. The rest of the [glacier] as seen from ship is very dirty brown black [yellow] with moraine accumulations. This margin is 8 or 10 [miles] wide in some places, in others not more than 2 or 3. Trees of good size are growing on the solidest parts and of course outer parts making a nearly continuous zone from the beginning of the dirty of the dirty portion. Widest and apparently oldest near Yakutat, several [miles] wide thereabouts. Of course this moraine material on ice is being slowly reformed more rapidly where streams draining [glacier] emerge. More of [Sketch: Icy Bay and [glacier] to right under clouds] https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/3699/thumbnail.jpg