f ^ THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS 'OP oi-' S Kt.ias seen frotvi tkk Eas': THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST ELIAS \ [ALASKA] BY H.R.H. PRINCE LUIGI AMEDEO Dl SAVOIA DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI NARRATED BY FILIPPO DE FILIPPI •il ILLUSTRATED BY VITTORIO SELLA \ AND TRANSLATED BY SIGNORA I ! LINDA VILLARI WITH THE AUTHOR'S SUPERVISION * ' ) J ) , NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS <^ THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS VOLUME ARE ENTIRELY SUPPLIED BY H.R.H. THE DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI VITTORIO SELLA AND F. GONELLA THE THANKS OF THE AUTHOR ARE DIE TO PROFESSOR LANKESTER AND PROFESSOR JUDD FOR REVISING, FOR THIS EDITION, THE APPENDICES DEALING WITH ZOOLOGY AND GEOLOGY Printed in Eiii;lar.d Preface IN the acute and subtle criticism of modern Alpinism with which Mr. Mummery concludes the narrative of his own expedi- tions, he says that " the true Alpinist is the man who attempts new ascents." ' This opinion is undoubtedly shared by those climbers who turn eagerly to the few Alpine peaks forgotten or neglected by earlier explorers, and are conquering them in such rapid succession that soon no virgin summit will be left in that range. But, in fact, the conquest of the Alps was virtually accomplished many years ago. The giant peaks were already won, and ambitious climbers, including several of those who had taken part in the great battle, then left home to seek new perils and fresh victories farther afield. Thus began a series of Alpine expeditions to remote and inhospitable regions, little known or totally unexplored — regions where technical experience of mountain work had to be supple- mented by a wide and varied knowledge and power of resource in order to successfully cope with the obstacles and dangers of exploration. Accordingly, the great mountain explorations of recent times 1 Vide A.. F. Mummery: My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus. London: 1895. Page 327. V PREFACE have been evolved from traditional mountaineering, and, more directly, from the conquest of the Alps. To this day the Alps remain the best teachers of the art. Theirs is the only school where it may be learnt and practised. The experience gained there has made it possible to establish in every detail a technique of climbing, and the comprehensive knowledge thus acquired of diffi- culties and dangers, and of the best means of overcoming them, has emboldened the Alpinist to attempt the conquest of the mightiest ranges of the world. H.R. H. the Duke of the Abruzzi has joined the ranks of this small band of explorers, by making the expedition described in the present work. The region dominated by Mount St. Elias offers such marked characteristics and unusual conditions of life and activity, that a thorough knowledge of these is required in order to grasp the real nature of the expedition. If the winning of St. Elias only meant the ascent of the terminal cone, made in one day from the Russell Col, it might be compared with many of the easier climbs in our own Alps. The reply given by one of our guides on his return exactly defines it : — " Just like the Breithorn, only much higher." Nor, strictly considered, would the altitude of the mountain (18,000 feet) render its ascent an exceptional undertaking, seeing that summits ranging to over 23,000 feet above the sea have already been conquered. But, when we take into account the entire route traversed by the expedition from the landing-place on the west coast of Yakutat Bay to the top of the peak, the true nature of the enterprise becomes apparent. The exceptional difficulty consists precisely in having to cross a zone of ice and snow of far greater extent than any to be found in other mountain groups. The Alaskan coast ranges are in the identical condition that prevailed in the Alps during the ice age ; their glaciers descend to the sea, while their snow-line is as low as 2,500 feet above the sea level. Hence, the ascent of St. Elias differs fundamentally from any of the great climbs on record. vi PREFACE Mr. J. C. Russell, who was the chief explorer of the region traversed by H.R. H.'s caravan, has published some interesting remarks on the nature of the work/ He maintains that an ap- proximate idea may be formed of the obstacles to be overcome in various ascents by comparing the height and distance of the summit beyond the farthest point where fuel can be found. Now, since the limit of vegetation descends as we approach the poles, the proportionate difficulty of a given ascent might be calcu- lated according to the latitude of the mountain, with due regard, of course, to its height. Con- sidering some of the highest peaks of the American Continent from this point of view, Mr. Russell ob- serves that on Chimborazo, in the Equatorial Andes, the last fire is lighted about 14,000 feet above the sea, and only 5,900 feet have to be climbed to reach the summit (19,500 feet). The great volcanoes of Mexico rise to an altitude of about 1 7,000 feet above the sea ; while the limit of forest vegetation is over 13,000 feet. On Mount Whitney (14,000 feet), the highest peak of the Sierra Nevada, trees are found up to the level of nearly 1 1,000 feet. The snow zone in all these instances is about 5,000 feet in height, and can be climbed either in one day, or two or three at the most. Therefore, there is no need to carry up fuel, cooking-stoves, or specially prepared provisions ; the requisite supply of blankets and warm clothes is greatly reduced, and the expedition can easily replenish its stores. In Alaska the conditions are entirely different. The snow-line, 1 J. S. C. Russell: Mountaineering in Alaska. Bulletins of the American Geographical Society. Vol. XXVIII., No. 3, page 17 ; 1896. vii LIEIT. UMBERTO CAGNI, R.I.N. PREFACE instead of rising, as in tlie tropics, to i8,ooo feet, drops, near Mount Logan and St. Elias, to less than 3,000 feet above the sea-level. Nearly 14,000 feet must be climbed above the snow-line to reach the summit ; and it must be also remembered that those peaks are at a distance of 50 to 60 miles from the forest. Thus the narrative of an expedition to Mount St. Elias has to chronicle whole weeks spent on vast glaciers, traversing more than 100 miles of ice and snow, conveying either on sledges or men's backs such heavy and complicated baggage as tents, blankets, fuel, provisions, oil and spirit stoves, clothing, and instruments. All this, too, in a region where bad weather is almost perpetual. On the lower glaciers the chilly rain seldom ceases, while, higher up, the heavy snowfall is so frequently renewed that it has no time to harden, and makes walk- ing difficult and extremely laborious. Owing to these exceptional conditions, I have considered it necessary to give full details of our preparations and equipment and have devoted a special appendix to it. I have also dealt minutely, and perhaps tediously, with the particulars of our daily life on the ice. This part of our journey was a monotonous march, without stirrino- or interesting episodes, through dense fogs and intermin- able snow-storms. We had hours, too, of intense enjoyment on the rare days of fine weather, when this strange region was re- vealed to our sight in all its vast grandeur. The whole was so utterly unlike the familiar scenery of our Alps, that I fear I shall have failed to give the reader even an approximate conception of what we beheld. Fortunately, Signor Sella's illustrations will indicate far better than my inadequate words the rich and diver- viii FRANCESCO GONELI.A. PREFACE sified outlines of the scene, though even they cannot attempt to render the marvellous effects of light and colour. His Royal Highness's expedition was exclusively Alpinistic. Its sole object was to reach the summit of Mount St. Elias, and all else was naturally subordinated to that aim. We were com- pelled to give up everything that might have hindered our march, while, to avoid increasing the already considerable weight of in- dispensable stores, all superfluities were left behind. The mountain- eering season in Alaska lasts little more than two months. In September snow-storms continue al- most without cease, and climbing becomes impossible. Our expedition took fifty-seven days from the coast to the summit and back again, with- out wasting one day or even one hour. Hence no topographical sur- vey nor other scientific investigation could be made. Only an uninter- rupted series of meteorological ob- servations was taken. These are given in one of the appendices ; while others contain details of the few zoological specimens collected on the snow surface of the Malaspina Glacier and of the minerals of the region. H.R.H.'s expedition has proved the truth ot a prediction made in 1887 by an Englishman, Lieut. H. W. Seton-Karr, R.N. This officer was one of the earliest explorers of the Mount St. Elias region, and in giving a report of his travels to the Royal Geographical Society, he stated that " if the mountain was to be ascended at all, it would only be accomplished by experienced Alpinists."^ In the course of the ensuing discussion Mr. Freshfield 1 Lieut. H. W. .Seton-Karr : The Alpine Regions of Alaska. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, May, 1887. VITTORIO SELLA. IX PREFACE insisted that the art of climbing above the level of perpetual snow was as well established as that of navigation, and that no one inexperienced in it could any more successfully attack snow moun- tains than a landsman could navigate the sea/ In fact, there is a technique of mountaineering that has to be specially acquired. No one who has seen sfuides at work on hig^h mountains can doubt the truth of this dictum ; but it is often denied by those who are ignorant of the subject. In many quarters it was a matter of great surprise that H.R. H. should take the trouble to export Italian guides to so distant a country, and it was asked of what possible use they could be among mountains unknown to them. Mr. Russell himself, who is not an Alpinist, although he has spent several months among the glaciers of Mount St. Elias, once stated that Alpine guides would be totally useless there;- and his fellow- explorer, Mr. M. B. Kerr, has repeated the assertion.'' In reality the same technique needed upon the glaciers of the Alps is equally adequate for other mountains, all being subject to the same physical laws, and sharing the same essential characteristics. Even upon Alpine glaciers there are no permanent tracks ; in many instances a fresh route has to be found every year — and may be changed, perhaps, several times in a single season, owing to varied conditions. The best evidence in favour of guides is the remarkable exploring work that has been already accomplished with their help. Scarcely a single important mountain expedition in any part of the world has been performed without their skilled assistance. They were with Messrs. D. Freshfield, Craufurd Grove, M. de Decky, Clinton Dent, W. F. Donkin, A. F. Mummery, J. C. Cockin, V. and E. Sella, and many other Alpinists in the Caucasus ; they were in the Equatorial Andes with E. Whymper, in the > J- y^f also D. W. Freshfield : The Exploration of tlte Caucasus. London, 1896. Vol. I. p. 4- ■' J. C. Russell : An Expedition to Mount St. Elias, Alaska. In the lYational Geographic Magazine, Vol. V., 3rd May, 1891, p. 166. 3 M. B. Kerr: Mount St. Elias and its Giaciers. Scribner's Out-of-Door Library, "Mountain Climbing," p. 297 (New York, 1897). X PREFACE Himalayas with W. W. Graham, W. M. Conway and others; with E. A. Fitzgerald in New Zealand and the Chilian Andes, and with W. M. Conway in Spitzbergen and Bolivia. The idea occurred to H.R. H. of marking his appreciation of the guides' services on this Alaskan expedition by founding a permanent institution for their benefit. The Avhole profit on the sale of the Italian edition of this work, together with all royalties and rights on foreign editions, will be dedicated to an Insurance Fund for Italian Guides. Their lives are exposed to con- tinual hardship and risk, requiring great self-denial and the clearest sense of personal responsibility ; while their families are in constant danger of losing their bread-winners by unforeseen accidents. They may now count in all such contingen- cies upon receiving prompt and effective help. Thus, thanks to H.R. H.'s Fund, the terrible con- sequences of Alpine disaster will be, in some measure, alleviated. I am charged with the grateful task of offering the thanks of His Royal Highness and his expedition to all who promoted the suc- cess of the enterprise by their kind help and advice ; and I trust I may be forgiven should I have inadvertently omitted any of their names from the following pages. A special debt of gratitude is due to Professor J. C. Russell for the permission to reproduce in this book his own sketch-map of the Mount St. Elias region. I would also record our warm thanks to Professor C. Emery and his colleagues. Dr. G. Kiechbaumer and Professor P. Pavesi, and to Signor V. Novarese, who kindly examined our specimens and drew up the reports appended to the present volume. xi ULirro iiE Fiiirri. PREFACE When H.R.H. the Duke of the Abruzzi did me the honour of asking me to record the expedition, I was encouraged to undertake the task by the certainty of being able to depend upon the assistance of His Royal Highness and of my fellow-travellers. The narrative may be said to comprise the experiences of the whole party. My task has consisted in arranging and collating the diaries kept by H.R.H. and my colleagues, together with" my own journal. These consist of notes and impressions scrib- bled at odd moments during the expedition, and it has been my aim to preserve as far as possible all the freshness and stamp of actuality infused into them by the circumstances under which they were written. During the course of the work, H.R.H. and my companions have continually given me valuable advice and help, without which — my own mountaineering experience being less advanced — I should have lacked many of the elements required for the right understanding and interpretation of much that we had seen and done. FILIPPO DE FILIPPI. March, 1899 xn CONTENTS CHAl'lKK PAGE I. FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE I II. FROM SEATTLE TO JUNEAU — THE ALEXANDER ARCHI- PELAGO AND ALASKA 15 III. FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT-THE MUIR C.LACIER, SITK.A, AND THE COAST RANGE 30 IV. THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS 45 V. THE MALASPINA GLACIER 64 VI. SEWARD GL.ACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER . 94 VII. NEWTON GLACIER 124 VIII. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS 146 IX. RETURN FROM MOUNT ST. ELIAS TO YAKUTAT . . .162 X. BACK TO EUROPE— FROM YAKUTAT TO LONDON . . .177 APPENDICES 1S5 li.R.ii. Prince Luigi Amedeo di Savoia LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES TO FACE PAGE ; Tlie Top of St. Elias, seen from the East Frontispiece S.A.R. il Principe Luigi Ametleo cli Snvoia xiv An Evening in Alaskan Waters .... 20 •■ La Perouse, Crillon and Fairweatlier, from Glacier Bay 28.^ The Muir Glacier 36 , Sitka 44 / Yakutat 52 r The Osar Stream approaching the Sea . . 60 "^ On the Moraine of the Malaspina Glacier . 84 '' St. Elias from Malaspina Glacier ... 92 ' St. Elias from the Foot of Pinnacle Gl.acier 96' Sunset on Seward Glacier 100 St. Elias from Seward Glacier at Sunset . loS ' An Evening View of St. Elias from Se\yard Glacier 112 ' Mount Augusta seen from Seward Glacier . 1H> Mount Cook from Seward Glacier . . . 116 ' On the Agassiz Glacier 118 • TO FACE PAGE In Newton Valley — the Fog grows Thin . 122 Among the Seracs of the Newton Glacier . 124 On the Seracs of Newton Glacier. . . . 126 ■ Eastern .Spur of St. Elias 130 Camp on the Newton Glacier — St. Elias — Russell's Col and Mount Newton . . . 132 St. Elias from Newton Valley 140 The Newton Valley from Russell Col . . 142 ' Hurrah for Italy ! 144 On the Top of St. Elias 14S The Ridge of the Logan seen from St. Elias 156 ' Crossing the Hitchcock Glacier on the Way back i5o Coming down on the Left .Side of the Seward Glacier 162 .Seward Glacier on the Way back .... 164 On the Way back — Malaspina Glacier . . 172 St. Elias from Vakutat Bay 1 74 The last Evening in Alaskan Waters . . . 180 Melanenchytraeus Solifugus 230 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Lieut. Umberto Cagni, R.I.N. . . Francesco Gonella Vittorio Sella Filippo de Filippi Captain's Bridge of the Liicauia . Entrance to the Harbour of New York New York, from the Harbour . Crossing the Sierra Nevada. Train on Ferry-Boat The Valley of Sacramento, California The Shasta Volcano A Californian Railway Station . . Ferry-Boat on Columbia River Seattle, from the Sea In Puget Sound Sunset in Puget Sound Queen Charlotte .Sound In the Channels of the Archipelago . In the Alexander Archipelago . . Mary Island Wrangel Straits Totem Poles at Fort Wrangel . Juneau Juneau Bay PAGE PAGE vii A Street in Juneau 27 viii Juneau, from the Sea 28 i.x A Church in Juneau 28 xi The Treadwell Gold-Mines 29 4 An Iceberg in Glacier Bay 31 5 Glacier Bay 32 6 An Iceberg in Glacier Bay 33 7 Glacial Torrent in the Muir Moraine ... 34 8 City of Topeka Steamboat in Glacier Bay . 35 9 A Walk on the Muir Glacier 36 10 Indians in Glacier Bay 37 1 1 The Bay of Sitka 38 12 Sitka, from the Sea 39 13 Sitka 41 18 Church at Sitka 42 19 Mount St. Elias from Libbey Glacier . . 60 20 West Coast of Yakutat B.ay 65 21 West Coast of Yakutat Bay and Malaspina 22 Moraine 66 23 Tall Grasses on the Beach 67 23 Camp on the West Coast of Yakutat Bay . 69 24 Strawberries in Flower, near the First Camp 70 25 The Osar Stream 71 26 Osar Stream and Forest 73 XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Torrent issuing from an Ice-cave in the Malaspina Moraine "6 Camp on tlie Summit of the Moraine . . 79 At the Edge of the Malaspina Glacier . . 80 Sledge 82 Loaded Sledges on the Malaspina ... 82 Whymper Tent 8j Mummery Tent 83 Preparing to cross a Glacier Stream ... 87 Crossing a Glacier Stream 88 Encampment on the Malaspina .... So A Halt on the Malaspina 90 Camp at the Base of the Hitchcock Range 92 A Partridge on the Hitchcock Hills ... 93 Couloir leading up to the Seward. ... 97 The Seward Seracs — Mount Augusta and Mount Malaspina 98 Camp on Hitchcock Glacier, close to the Seward — the Top of Mount St. .. lias seen through the Clouds 99 Ice-Cascade at the Junction of Pinnacle with the Seward Glaciers loi Pinn.icle Glacier, Mount Cook 102 North Buttress of Pinnacle Glacier . . . 103 Mount St. Elias — Seward Glacier beneath Pinnacle Glacier 104 West Face of tlic Hitchcock Chain and Left Flank of the Seward, from the Base of Pinnacle Glacier 105 Flowering Lupins, below the Pninacle Cascade 106 Flower-covered Slope of the Hitchcock Hills 107 The Hitchcock Hills, from "Russell Camp" loS Mount Owen, from Point Glorious . . . 109 Seward Glacier (Central Portion) . . . no Traversing the Seward 113 Mount Augusta, from the Seward . . . 114 Camp on Seward Glacier 114 Camp on the Seward, at the Foot of Dome Pass : looking East 115 Camp at the Foot of Dome Pass, on the Seward: looking West 116 Dome Pass 117 Camp on the Dome Pass 118 On the Agassiz, after the Rain 119 Crossing the Agassiz Glacier 120 Ice-vault over a Lakelet on the Agassiz Glacier 121 Camp at the Foot of Newton Glacier . . 122 Terminal Cascade of Newton Glacier (show- ing the Route taken by our Party) . . . 125 Eastern View, from the Second Plateau of Newton Glacier 126 North Side of the Valley, from the Second Plateau of Newton Glacier 128 Ea.st Buttress of Mount St. Elias .... 130 Small Lake, among the Newton Seracs . 132 Mount St. Elias, from the Second Cascade of Newton Glacier 133 The Camp after a Snow-storm 134 Camp on Newton Glacier, in the Fog . . 135 Moimt Newton and the Third Cascade of the Glacier 136 Mount St. Elias, and .Seracs of the Newton 137 Mount St. Elias and the Third Cascade of Newton Glacier (after Sunset) .... 138 South Wall of Newton Glacier, and the Savoia Glacier at its Confluence with the Newton 142 Camp at the Foot of a Serac, on the Third Cascade of Newton Glacier 143 Mount Newton, from the Third Cascade . 144 Mount St. Elias, from the Third Newton Cascade 145 Mount St. Elias and Russell Col, from the Second Platform of the Newton Glacier . 147 Climbing Russell Col 148 Mount Newton, from Russell Col .... 149 N.N.E. Ridge of Mount St. Elias, from Russell Col 150 The Region to the East of Mount St. Elias, traversed by the Expedition, viewed from Russell Col 151 Mount Logan, from the .Summit of Mount St. Elias 157 Crossing Agassiz Glacier, on the Way back 165 Flowery Slope on the Hitchcock Hills . . 166 Crossing Pinnacle Glacier on the Way down 167 Descending a Snow-Slope at the Edge of the Seward 168 Mounts Logan, Cook and Vancouver, froju Yakutat Bay 175 Checking the Sledge down a Snow-Slope . 176 Sitka and its Harbour 178 Sitka Bay 179 Among the Canadian Rockies iSi Cooking Stove ready for Transport . . . 186 Details of Portable Cooking-Stove . . . 186 The " Sella" Shoulder- Pack 191 PANORAMIC VIEWS AND MAPS The Mountain Chain of Mounts St. Cook. The Mountain Chain of Mounts St. Augusta. Elias and ' The Region to the South and South-east of Mount St. Elias, seen from Russell Col. ' Elias and ■ The Region to the North of Mount St. Elias. Sketch Map of Mount St. Elias Region. Map of the North-west Shores of North America. CHAPTER I From Turin to Seattle TT w£ i^as the i/th May, and past 2 o'clock p.m. About a hundred persons were gathered on the plat- lorm of the Porta Nuova station alongside the French express — relatives, friends, and colleagues — all waiting to see us off and wish success to our long and difficult enterprise. Then His Royal Highness, the Duke of the Abruzzi arrived, escorted by H.R.H. the Count of Turin. A few more affectionate farewells, and we were off The Duke's party consisted of Lieut. Cavaliere Umberto Cagni, of the Royal Navy, officer-in-waiting to H.R.H.; Cavaliere Francesco Gonella, president of the Turin section of the Italian Alpine Club ; Cavaliere Vittorio Sella, and myself It was a sultry afternoon of almost midsummer heat. We talked little, gazed dreamily at the panorama of green fields and the chain of the Alps shrouded by dark storm-clouds, and silently reviewed the last days of feverish bustle, and the active labour of preparation that had filled so many months. How the time had flown ! The delight and surprise with which we had received the Prince's first announcement of his plans, and the honour of being privileged to join the expedition, still tingled through us. Only I B THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS six months before, H.R.H. was cruising round the world on the Cristoforo Colombo. But the long sea voyage had not made him forget the vast horizons he had seen, the war of the elements waged in the mountain world — the only other portion of Nature's realm that can rival the ocean in grandeur and force, in wild fury and peaceful calm. It was at Darjeeling, in Bengal, the 30th January, 1S95, while gazing at the majestic peak of Kinchin- junga (28,000 feet above the sea), that an early ambition of the Prince took a definite shape. His voyage once accomplished, he determined to revisit India and attempt the ascent of some giant of the Himalaya range. Seven months later, Mr. A. F. Mummery, one of the most intrepid of contemporary Alpinists (who had ascended the Matterhorn with H.R.H. by the Zmutt ridge in 1894), lost his life while attempting to scale the peak of Nanga Parbat, 26,000 feet above the sea, on the borders of Kashmir and Chitral. Affectionate regret for his unfortunate friend, and a hope of subduing the fatal peak, moved H.R.H. to choose the same mountain for attack. The Cristoforo Colombo anchored off Venice at the end of December, 1896, after a cruise of two years and two months, and H.R.H. immediately began to organize the expedition he had planned for the following summer. Meanwhile, however, the plague had broken out on the west coast of India, followed by severe famine in the Punjab, the very region H.R. H.'s caravan must cross on the way to Kashmir. It was no longer a mere question of bad roads and mountaineering difficulties ; we were faced by an obstacle no peaceful expedition could hope to surmount, i.e., that of wild border tribes maddened by hunger. We anxiously followed the course of events, and it was soon clear that the Prince's Indian campaign must be deferred. But H.R.H. was determined to undertake some serious expe- dition in the course of the summer, and, owing to the uncertainty of conditions in India, decided to make a complete change in his plans, and attempt Mount St. Elias in South Alaska, near the 2 FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE confines of the Arctic regions and bordering on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Situated at the northern end of an imposing range, the peak of St. EHas, 18,000 feet high, and visible from the sea at two hundred miles' distance, had attracted the notice of the first dis- coverers of the Alaskan coast a century and a half ago. But the mountain itself and its precincts remained unexplored until very- recent times. The first attempt to reach its summit was only made in 1886, and was followed by three other expeditions during the next five years. All were equally abortive, but all reaped a rich harvest of information regarding the peculiar characteristics of a region where glacial phenomena are developed on a grander scale than in any other part of the world excepting the polar zone. The last attempt to conquer the peak had been made in 1891. H.R. H.'s new plan was settled early in February, 1897, and the long and complicated preparations were immediately begun. It was necessary to make an accurate study of the equipment required for a campaign during which we should be completely isolated for two months, at least, and being far from any possible base of supplies, unable to repair any blunder or omission, which, even if apparently slight, might be enough to doom us to failure. We knew that we should have to camp out on the ice for several weeks in an extremely damp climate, where rain and snow often fall without ceasing for many days in succession and where nothing combustible could possibly be found. The whole of our camp material, our stores of clothing and food, had to be selected with a view to the conditions in which we should have to live. Mr. Israel C. Russell, of Michigan (who had twice carefully explored the St. Elias region) ; Professor Fay, of Boston ; Dr. Paolo De Vecchi, and Professor Davidson, of San Francisco, all gave us valuable assistance by supplying much practical information and many bibliographical details. 3 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS By the end of April everything was arranged. H.R. H. had chosen four ItaHan guides from the Yal d'Aosta : Giuseppe Petigax and Lorenzo Croux, of Courmayeur ; Antonio Maquignaz and Andrea Pelhssier, of Valtournanche ; and in addition to these, Erminio Botta, of Biella, who had been Sella's porter and photo- graphic assistant in the Caucasus. A few days before our start, we heard from America that Mr. Henry S. Bryant, of Philadelphia, was preparing an expedition for the same purpose as our own. We left Turin with about sixty cases containing all the stores and equipment procured in Italy, our personal luggage, photographic appliances, and part of the camp and sanitary material. Four days in London sufficed to get together all the other things ordered in advance, such as tents, ropes, waterproofs, etc. Our stock of food was to be laid in at San Fran- cisco.' We started for Liver- pool at midday on the 22nd May. By 4 o'clock p.m. we were all on board the big Canard liner Liicania, and half an hour later steamed away from the crowded pier and speedily lost sight of the line of white handkerchiefs waving us farewell. Behind the pier stretched the great gray mass of the city, bristling with chimneys and smoke stacks, under a thin veil of mist. The voyage lasted six days, and with the usual monotony of a rapid crossing. There were few passengers, for spring is the moment for the American exodus to Europe, and the steamers ' Vide Appendix A for full details of our equipment. 4 CAI'TAIN b LRlUCt 01 lUL "LUCAMA. From a Photo iv H.R.H.) FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE perform their westward course half empty, until the autumn brings crowds homeward bound. Our guides showed an indifference to their surroundings only to be compared with that of Arabs. Hurried away from their quiet valleys into the tumult of London, and thence on board, none of the strange new sights they saw roused them from their apathy. Of course they were sick during the first hours at sea, but speedily recovering, spent whole days in the second-class smoking-room playing endless games of cards. On the 28th May, at 10.30 p.m., the Liicania anchored at the quarantine station outside the port of New York. Early ne.xt ENTRANCE lO THE HARBOUR 01- NEW YORK. morning we steamed into harbour, and were instantly attacked by the first American reporters, who swarmed on board with the Health and Customs officers. Meanwhile the Liicania glided slowly up the great channel, through a crowd of steamers, tugs, barges, and sailing vessels ; past the pleasant homes of Jersey, all bowered in greenery ; past the gigantic elevators of New York harbour, and, after skirting the base of the colossal statue of Liberty, touched the Cunard pier at 8 o'clock. It was no light task to find, disentangle, and remove our sixty-six cases, struggling the while with a horde of porters, freight-agents, and fellow-travellers all busied as frantically as ourselves in recovering their luggage. The same day, at 3 p.m., our guides started for San Francisco 5 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS with part of the baggage. Professor Fay, of Boston, who had come to meet H.R. H., and kindly offered every assistance to our expedi- tion, gave us the most efficient help. We learnt from him that Mr. Bryant had a fortnight's start of us in Alaska. We only spent one night in New York, and the next morning (30th May) were off to Chicago and San Francisco by the Pennsylvania Company's fast mail train. The express whizzes through towns and villages at full speed, merely clanging a bell as a signal to clear the line. Day and night one hears this characteristic warning in traversing inhabited places or entering stations. At first the country is flat, scantily wooded. NEW YORK, FROM THE HARBOUR. and chiefly arable land, but it soon becomes hilly, with many pleasant homesteads surrounded by trees, and before long we are in a mountainous district, with wide valleys and forest-clad slopes. Passing unawares from one State to another, we reached Chicago early in the morning of the 31st. Here a few hours' halt gave us time to visit the famous " Stock Yards," and to view the great military parade celebrating the anniversary of the War of Secession. Leaving in the evening, we awoke next day in the smiling Omaha region on the banks of the Missouri, which flows majestically be- tween rich meadows and groves enlivened by numerous herds and flocks. Soon the train begins to climb the first foothills of the " Rockies," the grass becomes thinner, then disappears, and is re- 6 FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE placed by an undulating waste of yellowish sand, dotted with patches of low, prickly scrub. The train mounts, at an easy gradient, to a series of terraces, whose precipitous cliffs overhanging the plain are furrowed with rain-channels. Here and there on the vast yellow plain below one sees patches of grass near wells, with a few browsing cattle and herdsmen's huts. The scanty villages scattered over the waste consist of miserable wooden shanties, hastily run up for the use of nomad cow-boys, condemned to be perpetually on the move to fresh pastures. Towards evening, we see the first buttresses of the Rockies, and one or two snow-peaks cutting the line of the horizon. Just for a few hours then and the next morning we felt chilly, and a little sleet was fall- ing on the summit of the pass, at 8,240 feet above the sea. But the other side of the range we are again in the heat. We skirt the northern shore of the Salt Lake, across an arid, grassless waste, so uniform in tint that one cannot distinguish the limit between sand and water. The lake is a desert expanse ; the Wahsatch hills shrink to nothingness at the feet of the precipitous Rockies. The day is dull and dreary ; but towards evening, when the waste is flooded with a rosy glow, and shadowy blue peaks are piled against the horizon, the landscape is full of poetic charm. After thirty-six hours in this desert, there comes a sudden change of scene. The line begins to re-ascend, and soon climbs the picturesque chain of the Sierra Nevada. Here and there the snow stretches down to the railway, which now climbs to 7,200 feet above the sea. Broad valleys and ridges are clothed with dense forests of pine. Unfortunately, the snow-sheds protecting the road from avalanches too often cut us off from the view. A few dazzling streaks of sun- CROSSI.NT, lllli MLKKA NEVADA. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS shine pierce through cracks in the timbers, and then the volume of smoke in the surrounding gloom is studded with sparkles of light. On the Pacific side the descent is very steep, and the line sometimes makes abrupt turns at the edge of precipices above unknown depths. Gold-mining camps have cleared great strips of forest and left hollows of yellow, sedimentary soil. Still hastening downwards, we traverse the fertile Sacramento valley, a paradise of IRAIN OX FERRY-BOAT. (.From It rlwto by H.R.H.) fruit trees, olives and vines, with a sea of ripening oats waving in the wind. At Port Costa the whole train is ferried across the arm of the sea that runs up to California by the Golden Gate. Another hour's travel brings us to Oakland, where a steamer takes us across the bay to San Francisco. It was now 9 p.m., 3rd June, and the great amphitheatre of the city glittered with innumerable lamps, accentuating the geometrical lines of the streets. Here in San Francisco more preparations filled our time. It was necessary to order in supplies of food. During the railway FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE journey, H.R. H. had made his plans, and arranged every detail with us. Soon our rooms were filled with samples of biscuits, tinned meats, preserved soups and vegetables, condensed milk, chocolate, etc., etc. With the restricted commissariat before us, everything had to be tasted, in order to choose what would be least likely to pall. Then, our purchases completed, H.R.H. worked with us a whole day and late into the night, making up fifty rations, each ration containing one day's supply of everything required to provision ten persons, i.e., ourselves and the guides. ^^^^Bt .'^ •T^Mm- * 1' ^^^^Hb >. ■^ Hb^l WL^ - '^ ^^^H ^^^ -i* ^^^kj^ m i ■f. ,' •■.:-^ ^^^ i : wfv'S m THE VALLEY OF SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA. Next, these fifty rations were packed in as many tin cases, hermetically closed ; and fifty small bags were filled with tinned provisions requiring no extra protection from danij). By midnight, June 8th, we brought our work to an end. Everything was in order, and the whole equipment now weighed about 2,700 pounds. San Francisco is a charming city, with clean, spacious streets full of light and air. It has fewer oppressively enormous buildings than Chicago or New York. Being an agricultural centre, it is very 9 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS quiet and exempt from the feverish turmoil of the industrial Eastern States. The higher parts of the city, commanding views of the ocean and the beautiful bay, contain hundreds of villas and cottages, nearly all built of wood. And, as this material readily lends itself to decorative freaks, fancy has run riot in the queerest carvings and adornments of every shape and size. Here too, as in Chicago, the foreigner is surprised by the total absence of carriages. Nowadays in America the horse has become almost exclusively THE SHASTA VOLCANO. an article of luxury, since for practical purposes, electric or other mechanical traction covers the ground quicker and at far less cost. In San Francisco Mr. M. B. Kerr, who had acted as topo- grapher to the first Russell expedition to St. Elias, presented H.R. H. with an outline map of the region, together with much interesting information regarding its glaciers. Dr. P. De Vecchi, Professor Davidson, Mr. MacAllister, secre- tary to the Geographical Society, and the secretary of the Alaskan Commercial Company, all did their utmost to assist our expedition. 10 FROM TURIN TO SEATTLE By arrangement with the Alaskan Commercial Company, one of their steamers altered its course in order to afford us a quick passage across the Pacific from Sitka to Yakutat, where there is no regular line of navigation. The further we went, the more impatient we felt to reach the field of action, and gladly resumed our journey on the even- ing of the 9th June. Our route followed the long Sacramento valley be- tween the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada, some- times in the depths of narrow gullies, sometimes on the crest of some mountain spur. Dense masses of pine, fir, and cedar cover all the ridges about us : chain beyond chain, a perfect tanele of mountains ! We pass mineral springs with spouting geysers twenty to thirty feet high, and at the head of the valley come in sight of the volcanic Mount Shasta, a smooth, snow-clad cone rising to an altitude of 14,350 feet, the boundary between the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range. Shasta Vale is a spacious, treeless pasture-land at about 2,500 to 2,600 feet above the sea; but as soon as we enter the State of Oregon the woods close round us again in all the wild luxuriance of a virgin forest. There are II A CALIFORNIAN RAILWAY STATION. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS coniferse of every size and variety, oaks, masses of thick-leaved plants, innumerable varieties of foliage in every shade of green. The railway rapidly climbs the mountain in the boldest curves, and as we rush along giddy crests we look straight down into deep ravines furrowed by the line we have travelled. In the moonlight the forest becomes fantastic. Our track is hedged in between dense walls of greenery ; the night breeze is charged with resinous odours and whiffs of strange fragrance from unfamiliar shrubs. At every turn, our train seems to be cleaving its own road through the wilderness. As the engines are fed with wood, the funnels send out spears of flame and showers of sparks, flash- in '^m fel' •*^^Bi JUNEAU, FROM THE SEA. district was 50,000 dollars; in 1891, 70,000; and in 1896 the population had risen to 1,700 souls, and the yield to 1,400,000 dollars. The district which promises the largest yield covers an area of 700 square miles. The miners, chiefly Americans, have founded a settlement known as Dawson City, which is situated in British territory, being to the south of 141'^ meridian, as is indeed the greater por- tion of the gold-bearing district. This town is nearly 676 miles from Juneau. The two routes most frequented are by the passes of Chilkoot and Chilkaat, co/s of the Coast Range, at the extremity of Lynn Canal, north of Juneau. By these passes the route descends either to the White River or to the Lewis, both tributaries of the Yukon, and the journey is continued on boats and rafts. Dawson City can be also reached by going up the Yukon from its mouth in Behring Sea, but this is a much longer route. The severe climate of the interior, the dis- tance of Dawson City from the coast, and the enormous difficulties of transport, render the victualling of the numerous immigrants a very difficult problem. 28 A CHURCH IX JU.VEAU. X M u < O % o X a X < u D O < FROM SEATTLE TO JUNEAU Besides, gold-washing can only be carried on for about three months of the year, as the intense cold of the long, dark Arctic winter makes all work impossible. I HE TREAHWtLL GOLD-MINES. 29 CHAPTER III From Juneau to Yakutat — The Muir Glacier, Sitka, and the Coast Range T' *HE nio[ht after leav- ing Juneau was the most fantastic of the voyage. As the sun went down, the whole horizon, bounded by vast snowy ranges, became marvel- lously clear, and was gradually tinged with most delicate sunset hues. At lo p.m. it was still broad day ; then, until midnight, the light waned little by little. The rosy glow on snov/fields and summits became paler; the orange, blue, and carmine streaks on the sea gradually melted into fainter and more ex- quisite tints. But, in the west, a band of tawny crimson still hung, throwing strange reflections on the mountains beneath. The rest of the sky was a pale blue, growing fainter and colder towards the horizon. Against this, all the mountains stood out in their minutest details, with the crude white of their snowfields and the curious, delicate indentation of their crests. No light proceeded from the dull, yellow moon ; the stars were few and faint. At 1.30 a.m. the new day began to dawn, while the colours gradually faded away from the west. Our vessel glided on silently — furtively, as it were — in the solemn stillness of this enchanted world. 30 FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT After rounding the headland dividing the Lynn Canal from Glacier Bay, we began to meet icebergs, few and scattered at first, but soon many in number — fragments of the glaciers that fall into the bay a little way ahead. But we were in the realm of marvels, of sudden chanfjes of scene. The air being saturated with moisture speedily condenses at the least lowering of temper- ature, whenever the wind veers or the sun goes behind a cloud. A sheet of gray fog lies low on the horizon, gradually spreading AN ICEBERG IN GLACIER BAY. until the whole sea is shrouded by a thin white veil, that is luminous, but not transparent. Then our engines have to be stopped, to avoid collisions with icebergs. The latter are not alarm- ing in appearance ; but as the mass of ice seen above the water is but a small fraction of the total bulk, the shock of collision might be serious. They emerge suddenly out of the fog, and, drifting with the current, vanish as suddenly as they come. All at once the sun reappeared : a pale disc in a huge halo of vapour, and in a few seconds, as by magic, the fog cleared, 31 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELI AS and light and colour returned. The gray sea changed to amethystine blue; thousands ot wild duck, startled by the proximity of the steamer, rose in long, clamorous flights from icebergs and water. But in ten minutes we were once more wrapped in fog. And for hours these changes of scene went on, only varied by the amusement of seeing fragments of the bergs fished up to re- plenish our stock of ice. GLACIER BAY. At last the sun, risen high above the horizon, finally disperses the fog, so that our vessel is able to make the bay at the foot of the majestic Muir Glacier. Now the whole atmosphere is brilliantly bright and clear. The blue surface of the sea, scarcely a shade deeper than the sky, is slightly ruffled and intersected with streaks of shining water traced by the currents, and dotted with innumerable small icebergs, while here and there some gigantic block preserves still the irregularly geometrical form peculiar to scracs.^ Some ' iSIr. \\'right, the geologist, measured some icebergs in Glacier Bay, of 500 feet in length and with a bulk of 40,000,000 cubic feet. 32 FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT stand high out of water, others form huge floating slabs ; now and again, a combination of many smaller bergs welded together assumes a quaint and unusual shape. Among the white blocks with their delicate, flower-like frost- work, we note a few polished masses of sea-green hue. These are bergs which have turned upside down, thus exposing the portion originally submerged. This bay is bounded by two large glacier beds. To the AN ICEIiERG IN GLACIER BAY. left rises the range dominated by mounts La Perouse, Crillon, and Fairweather, which rival the grandest of known peaks in the boldness of their outline ; the nearer peaks, lower and less isolated, remain almost unnoticed before these majestic summits. The whole chain covers a promontory of from thirty to forty miles in width, between Glacier Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Four glaciers flow down into the bay, divided from the Muir Glacier by a small rocky spur that shoots out into the sea and splits the gulf in two. To the right of the Fairweather chain, and at the head of 33 » THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS the inlet, the Muir Glacier forms an enormous plateau, ending abruptly at the water's edge in a sheer wall of ice, one mile in length and 250 feet high, crowned by countless pinnacles and spires. Its base is undermined by the force of the waves, and worn into numerous gullies and caverns. Every few minutes there is a cannonade of ice-blocks falling from this cliff, which, as they strike the water, throw up clouds of spray into the air. From this vast front of ice, broken and seamed as it is by innumerable crevasses, the glacier stretches inland almost level, to a huge amphitheatre fifty or sixty miles in diameter, where it is fed by nine greater and seventeen lesser ice- streams flowing down from summits which have no special beauty of outline. The Muir Glacier was first explored in 1879 by the geologist whose name it bears; in 1S86, Mr. H. F. Wright, with two companions, spent a month in the bay to study its rate of motion. Ills observations have established some sur- prising facts regarding the motion of the glacier. During the month of August, an average of 40 feet flows into the bay, i.e., 70 feet in the centre and 10 feet at the sides.^ As the front of the Muir Glacier has a section-surface • The rate of descent in glaciers is determined by the same laws as that of rivers. In either case the current is swifter in the centre than at the sides, swifter also nearer the surface than deeper beneath. 34 GLACIAL TORRENT IN THE MUIR MORAINE. FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT of 5,000,000 square feet, it discharges daily into the sea more than 200,000,000 cubic feet of ice. Only in Greenland has anything approaching this velocity been noted. The glaciers of the Alps move at a much slower rate ; the maximum speed, as shown by the repeated observations of Hugi, Agassiz, Forbes, and Tyndall, being, in the case of the Aletsch Glacier, 19 inches, of the Grindelwald, 22 inches, and of the Chamonix Mer de Glace, 30 inches daily. This notable difference seems all the more remarkable, as the Muir Glacier comes down at a gradient of barely 100 feet to the mile, whereas the easiest gradients of Alpine glaciers are of about 250 feet to the mile. Accordingly, another ex- planation is required to account for the difference ; and considering the Muir Glacier's enormous superi- ority in bulk over those of the Alps, we are forced to conclude that a glacier's rate of movement depends far less on the inclination of the bed than on the volume of the ice-current itself (see Wright). There are many infallible signs that the Muir Glacier is shrink- ing, and at so rapid a rate, that its cliff-lip has receded more than a thousand yards between the years 1886 and 1890.^ Going back to 1 Readers unacquainted with glacial phenomena may find a discrepancy between our statement that the front of the Muir Glacier has shrunk back, and the rapid move- ment in advance verified by Wright. Yet this discrepancy is only apparent. The bulk of a glacier is owed to two causes, which act in a contrary way : the quantity of fallen snow, and the melting of the ice by solar heat. The first cause always over-rules the second in the upper portion of the glacier, inasmuch as the yearly snowfall there is greater than the amount melted by the sun, and it is precisely the overplus that drops 35 'CITY OF TOPEKA" STE.4MB0AT IN GLACIER BAY. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS earlier times, we have a valuable document dating from 1794, in the description of Glacier Bay bequeathed to us by Vancouver in the history of his voyage round the world. According to his account, the Muir Glacier then occupied nearly the whole of the bay now taken up by the sea. Later on, when Wright thoroughly explored the bay, he obtained undeniable proofs of the enormous extent of the glacier at an earlier period. Certain rocky islets near the opening of the bay, at fifteen miles' distance from the glacier's present front, show undoubted signs of having been formerly covered by glacier ice ; while on the cliffs round the bay, at 3,700 feet above the sea, striated rocks attest the action of the glacier that once filled the valley up to that height. The City of Topeka dropped anchor among the icebergs a short dis- tance from the glacier's frontal wall, and the pas- sengers were landed where a path traced in the narrow and easy moraine afforded easy access to the frozen plateau. Here we were struck by the vastness of the glacier bed ; but the view is far more imposing from the sea than from the dirty ice, close to the bare, gravelly ridges of the moraine. Among A \VALK ON HIE MUIK GLACIER. to the bottom of the ravine in the shape of ice. Now, three conditions may ensue : when the quantity of, ice formed above exceeds the yearly amount hquefied below the limit of perpetual snow, the glacier increases in bulk, and its terminal front is pushed forward ; when, on the other hand, the quantity of fresh ice balances the quantity melted, the bulk of the glacier is unchanged, although its downward motion persists ; but when less ice comes down from the upper snow-fields than the amount melted below, the glacier's bulk is necessarily diminished. This diminution is more marked in the terminal front than elsewhere, and consequently, the snout seems to have receded. But this, apparently, retrograde movement does not interfere with the glacier's descent, for this continues without ceasing. Only, the advancing mass is no longer sufficient to entirely replace the quantity of ice converted into water. 36 D •X, X. FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT the crevasses we noticed a signal-pole fixed on a pedestal, and the foremost members of the party hastened to seize it and move it a good distance higher up, convinced that they had mounted farther than any previous explorer. But they forgot that during the fortnight's interval since the last steamer put in, the glacier movement must have carried the pole down about 1,000 feet. On returning to the shore we found a dozen Indians — men, INDIANS IN GLACIER HAY. women, and children — collected there, with some lynx skins and baskets of coloured seaweed for sale. They formed a typical group, squatting on the earth, wrapped in brick-red blankets, bare- foot and bare-headed, with their long, smooth black hair, yellow faces, high cheek-bones, prominent jaws, slanting eyes, flat noses, and straight, thin-lipped mouths. The men had a few bristles on lip and chin ; the women's faces were smeared with a dark, shining paste, composed of grease, turpentine, and lamp-black, to protect their complexions from sunburn. 37 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS Hard by on the sandy beach were the three canoes in which these Indians had crossed the bay, and the carcase of a young seal they had killed on the way. Their light, graceful canoes are made of hollowed trunks, and they manage to give them the proper curves by filling them with water, raised to boiling-point by red-hot stones. On leaving the Muir Glacier our course lay due south, to- wards Sitka. After the day of clear weather came a very prolonged THE BAY OF SITKA. twilight, fading in endless gradation of tones over the bay dotted with the blue and white points of the icebergs and on the lofty summits girdling the coast. The sinking sun crowned the Fair- weather range with a halo of splendour before finally sinking into the sea of molten gold on the horizon, and leaving behind it only the colourless diffused light of the northern night, so fantastic and strange. The air was perfectly still, the sea without a ripple, while here and there we marked the columns of water thrown up by whales. 3S FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT At 2.30 p.m., on June 20th, our seven diiys voyage ended in the port of Sitka, which at that moment had a very Hvely aspect. There were five Government ships on coast survey and revenue service ; the yacht Aggie, chartered by the Prince, had been at anchor for four days, and rocked gracefully beside the stumpy Bertha, the steamer of the "Alaskan Commercial Company," which was to transport us as far as Yakutat, taking the Aggie in tow. Sitka stands on the island of Baranoff, at the far end of a bay open to the ocean, and sprinkled with rocks and small islets. ^.I1KA, KKuM iilt sbA. The city is built on a delta of pasture-land, with a picturesque background of steep rocky heights. It has 1,200 inhabitants, is the present seat of government, and the centre of the Alaskan coast-district.^ Salmon fisheries and tanneries constitute its trading resources. The cool climate, and the charming situation also, attract a good many visitors to Sitka during the summer. Facing the town, on the litde island that guards the bay on the north, the extinct volcano of Mount Edgecumbe rises to about 8,000 feet above the sea. The Indians have made this mountain the theme 1 The United States have only had a regular government in Alaska since the year 1884. Sitka and Fort Wrangel are alternately its seat. 39 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS of a very interesting legend, given as follows by Mr. C. E. S. Wood in his article on the Thlinkets ^ : — "A long time ago the earth sank beneath the water, and the water rose and covered the highest places, so that no man could live. It rained so hard that it was as if the sea fell from the sky. All was black, and it became so dark that no man knew another. Then a few people ran here and there and made a raft of cedar logs, but nothing could stand against the white waves, and the raft was broken in two. " On one part floated the ancestors of the Thlinkets, on the other the parents of all other nations. The waters tore them apart, and they never saw each other again. Now their children are all different, and do not understand one another. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his sister, Ah-gish-ahn-akhon (the woman who supports the earth), and Chethl (symbolized in the osprey) called aloud to her : ' You will never see me again, but you will hear my voice for ever!' Then he became an enormous bird, and flew to south-west till no eye could follow him. " Ah-gish-ahn-akhon climbed above the waters and reached the summit of Edgecumbe. The mountain opened and received her into the bosom of the earth. That hole (the crater) is where she went down. Ever since that time she has held the earth above the water. The earth is shaped like the back of a turtle, and rests on a pillar. Evil spirits that wish to destroy mankind seek to overthrow her and drive her away. The terrible battles are long and fierce in the lower darkness. Often the pillar rocks and sways in the struggle, and the earth trembles and seems like to fall ; but Ah-gish-ahn-akhon is good and strong, so the earth is safe. Chethl lives in the bird Kunna-kaht-eth. His nest is on the top of the mountain, in the hole through which his sister disappeared. " He carries whales in his claws to this eyrie, and there de- vours them. He swoops from his hiding-place and rides on the edge of the coming storm. The roaring of the tempest is his ' The Century Magazine, July, 1882. 40 FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT voice calling to his sister. He claps his wings in peals of thunder, and its rumbling is the rustling of his pinions. The lightning is the flashing of his eyes." With the Aggie had arrived our ten American porters, powerful young fellows, picked out for the expedition by E. S. Ingraham, familiarly known as "The Major." They worked hard, jointly with our guides, all the afternoon of the 20th June, trans- ferring our stores from the steamer to the yacht, which already held the Americans' equipment. By 7 p.m. the task was done, and at 2 a.m. (21st June) we made our start, — -H.R. H. and our party on the Bertha, the guides and porters on the yacht in tow. The Bertha was an old boat of about 1,500 tons, short, broad- beamed, and so very high out of water that the slightest gale of wind would set her pitching and rolling outrageously. The only passengers in addition to our own party were two ladies making this Northern voyage in search of health. We were 41 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS obliged not to steam more than five miles an hour, on account of the Hght yacht we had in tow, as every jerk of the cable dragged her bows under water. Dull, hazy weather prevented us from enjoying the spectacle of the grand range of summits rising from the coast to heights of some 15,000 feet and more. The Alexander Archipelago ends at Cape Spencer, and from this point the coast-line trends north-west, bare and straight. For about 300 miles the only important inlet is the Bay of Yakutat. Small vessels can also find shelter in Lituya Bay, at the foot of the Fairweather chain ; but the rest of the shore lies open, exposed to the full fury of the ocean, and so violent a surf that landing is always very dangerous and often im- possible. This coast is com- manded by the loftiest rampart that ever Nature set along a shore, no less maantic a sea-wall than the rano-e which com- o prises La Perouse (1 1,300 feet), Crillon (15,900), and Fairweather (15,500). North of the latter summit the chain becomes lower, running still parallel with the coast, and has no peaks higher than from 5,000 to 8,000 feet as far as Yakutat Bay. Here it again rises rapidly to Mount Vancouver (12,100 feet), Mount Cook (13,750), Mount Augusta (13,900), and reaches its culminating point in Mount St. Elias, 18,000 feet above the sea. The whole of this range is merely a part of the vast mountain- system extending along the western coasts of the two Americas, and of which the partly submerged northern end forms the volcanic 42 CHURCH AT SITKA. FROM JUNEAU TO YAKUTAT range (1,000 geographical miles in length) of the Aleutian Islands. The crowning peaks of this northern group, from La Perouse to St. Elias, rise at a little distance from the sea. From an altitude of 2,500 feet and upwards they are covered with eternal snow, and thousands of glaciers flow down their slopes to the north and south, many of which reach the sea ' or very near it. These glaciers are of greater dimensions than any others in the northern hemisphere excepting those of Greenland. The presence of so vast an ice world in a region with the comparatively mild climate of southern Alaska is owing to the fact that no very low temperature is required for the formation of extensive glaciers, but only a very damp climate, together with the general meteoro- logical conditions fitted to precipitate watery vapour into snow (Lyell). Throughout this region of ice all glaciers are shrinking ; their diminution probably began one hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, and proceeds very gradually, at the rate of two feet a year in every glacier. Very slight variations in the annual amount of fallen snow, when repeated many years in succession, suffice to produce a notable increase or decrease in the bulk of a glacier. Accordingly it has been impossible, so far, to ascertain the climatic changes that produce this retrograde motion of the Alaskan glaciers, and all the more impossible because regular and well-combined observations have only been recently undertaken. On the 22nd June we had a calmer sea, but the horizon was quite as clouded as on the previous day. We were now in the " Fairweather " waters, renowned for the great number of whales formerly captured there (between 1846 and 1851). Mount Fairweather owes its name to the whalers, for they had observed that when this peak was free from cloud they could confidently reckon upon several days of fine weather. 1 In Europe, glaciers come down to the sea at the 67th degree of latitude (von Buch); in Alaska at the 57th parallel (Russell); and in S. America still nearer to the Equator — at 46° 50' lat. S. (Darwin). 43 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS We reached the entrance of Yakutat Bay about 9 o'clock p.m., and having rounded Ocean Cape, the Bertha and the Aggie came into Port Mulgrave and dropped anchor about 10 o'clock off the litde Indian village of Yakutat. On sighting our vessels the natives, waving pine torches, swarmed to the beach, with savage yells, to which the barking of innumerable dogs made an ear-splitting accompaniment. The Rev. Carl J. Hendriksen, a Swedish missionary established near the Indian village, soon paid us a visit on board, and willingly agreed to take regular observations with a mercurial barometer we left in his care, during the whole time employed in our ascent of Mount St. Elias. Rev. Hendriksen had spent eight years in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, leading a life of self- sacrifice and abnegation, and wholly devoted to the moral and physical improvement of this primitive tribe. A schoolmistress shares his labours. The entire wealth of the Mission consists in two cows, a few fowls, and a small garden-plot yielding a scanty crop of vegetables about every third year. Meat is a rare luxury, only to be had when the Indians are lucky in the chase. The teacher told me that the Indians are not hostile, though indifferent to the school, and that several of the children show quick- ness in learning. The village population is somewhat over three hundred. Like all Thlinkets, they spend most of their life on the water, either engaged in salmon-fishing or hunting seal and otter. Thanks to the missionary's active benevolence, the settlement numbers about fifty well-built houses, mostly of two storeys. At 2 o'clock the next morning we again put to sea, bound for the western coast of the bay, covered by the Malaspina Glacier, where we were to land. The real starting-point of our undertaking was now at length before us. 44 < CHAPTER IV The History of Mount St. Elias ' "Those who went first and opened the way are not less entitled to credit than those who came afterwards, and reaped the fruit of their predecessors' labours." — D. Freshfield.2 M' OST geographers apply the name of " St. Elias Alps " to the whole niountain system bounded by St. Elias to the north and La Perouse to the south. For a long stretch of about I So geographical miles these alps run parallel with the - Pacific coast, and separated from the sea by a narrow strip almost - ._ entirely covered by the mighty glaciers flowing down from the range. Yakutat Bay, thrusting inland by the narrow and tortuous fiord known as Disenchantment Bay, divides the mountains into two groups, consisting of the Fairweather chain to the south, and of the Cook and St. Elias chains to the north. Yakutat Bay is twenty miles wide at the entrance, and retains the same width for some distance inland, until narrowed by an 1 For the authorities and sources of information used in compiling this chapter, vide Appendix E. The history of the first exploration of the St. Elias region is mostly summarized from Mr. Russell's accurate account in the report of his first expedition, published in the National Geographic Magazine of May, 1891 (Washington). Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, May, 1887, p. 16. 45 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS abrupt curve of its eastern coast as far as the opening of Dis- enchantment Bay, which is barely three miles wide. The greater part of the eastern coast, guarded by a string of low, wooded islands and with many natural creeks, forms a highland plateau rising from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea and covered with forests. This plateau is dominated by a low mountain range, with numerous snow- fields and s^laciers joininaf Fairweather to the south, and runninof round the head of the bay until it is finally merged in the Cook range beyond. The west coast of the gulf forms the eastern Hank of a trreat tableland, bounded on the south by the Pacific, with an almost unbroken shore-line, exposed to the full fury of the ocean surf. The Malaspina Glacier spreads over this plateau, at an average height of 1,500 feet above the sea, rising gradually to the feet of the mighty chains behind, and extending for a distance, as yet un- known, to the west of Mount St. Elias. The mighty glaciers which flow down the southern flank of the range to feed the Malaspina will be mentioned farther on. The entire region to the north of the St. Elias and Cook chains is still unexplored ; C. Willard Hayes, who has crossed overland from the Yukon basin to that of the Copper River, is the only traveller who has given any information about the great glaciers which flow to the north. On the 20th July, 1741, Vitus Behring, a Russian navigator, discovered the south coast of Alaska, and anchored his vessel, the 5/. Peter, off the island of Kayak, 180 miles north of Yakutat. South-east of his moorings, he saw a great mountain rising from the sea, and covered with snow from summit to base. In honour of the patron saint of the day, this peak was named St. Elias. It is possible that the name was not chosen entirely on that account. Mr. Freshfield has observed that the prophet Elias seems to be the special patron of mountains wherever the Eastern forms of Chris- tianity have prevailed. Many mountains in Greece bear the same name, and are crowned with chapels dedicated to the saint ; while the altars of Zeus on Olympus have been replaced by monasteries 46 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS likewise dedicated to St. Elias. In the Caucasus there is still a tradition that when the primitive tribes were driven up into the mountains by the Circassians, the vision of the outraged saint was frequently seen on the highest peaks, and that they carried offerings to him of milk, butter, and beer. Some writers derive the saint's connection with mountains from the important part in the Trans- figuration assigned to Elias by the Greek Church ; whereas it is asserted by others that, owing to similarity of name, Elias succeeded to altars originally dedicated to Helios, the Sun. Mr. Freshheld suggests that another explanation might be found in the survival of the belief attributed to the prophet's sons, who sent an expedition composed of fifty strong men in search of Elias, thinking that " peradventure the spirit of the Lord hath cast him upon some mountain." ' Mount St. Elias brought no good fortune to its discoverers. For three months the SL Peter lay in Alaskan waters, buffeted by storms, and was then wrecked by a hurricane on the coast of the Commander Islands. Behring died there with most of his crew. The few survivors wintered on the islands, afterwards succeeded in reaching the coast of Kamschatka, and finally got back to Russia. The first measurement of St. Elias was made in 1786 by Mons. Dagelet, astronomer to the expedition round the world undertaken by La Perouse with his two ships La Boussole and n Astrolabe. By his calculations' the height was 12,672 feet. The summit rose above the clouds ; between the long chain of snow- peaks and the sea lay a great plateau which, according to La Perouse's description, looked completely bare of vegetation, and, composed of black, calcined-looking rock, contrasted strangely with the snow-covered mountains. The Gulf of Yakutat, named " Bale de Monti " by La P6rouse, was re-christened " Admiralty Bay " by G. Dixon, who, entering it in 1787, was the first explorer of its shores, and anchored his vessel at Port Mulgrave, where an Indian village already existed with some seventy inhabitants. 1 Vide Proceedings of ilie Royal Geograpliical Society, May, 1S87. 47 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS A few years later, in 1 792, Spain despatched two ships, com- manded by the Italian captain Don Alejandro Malaspina, to seek the famous North-west Passage between the two oceans. On enter- ing Yakutat Bay, Malaspina discovered that it was prolonged inland by an arm in which he hoped to find the beginning of the desired channel. But the boats sent to explore it found the way barred by a cliff of ice at a short distance from the mouth. They named the inlet " Puerto del Desengano " (Disenchantment Bay), and the island in it " Haenke." Their observations fixed the height of St. Elias at 65,076 " varas " (17,851 feet); its position at 60° 17' 35'' lat. N., and 140° 52' ij" long. W. (Greenwich). On Malaspina's return to Spain, he fell into disgrace and was imprisoned, so that his discoveries remained unrecognised for many years. Another famous navigator mentioned in the history of Alaska is G. Vancouver, who, in the year 1794, explored Yakutat Bay and the neighbouring coasts with his vessels the Discovery and the Chatham. He gave the name of " Point Manby " to the headland bounding the western entrance to the bay. The plateau he de- scribed as bare ground strewn with stone, rising in a gentle and even slope to the spurs of lofty mountains dominated by St. Elias. He also noted that east of Yakutat Bay, in a creek towards the Pacific (Icy Bay), the coast seemed to consist of a vertical wall of ice. No other account of St. Elias and its precincts is to be found until 1852, the date of Tebenkoff's report, chiefly founded on in- formation obtained from Russian traders. Here the height of St. Elias is stated to be 17,000 feet, its position 61° 2' 6" lat. N., and 140' 4' long. W., at thirty miles from the sea. Tebenkoff states that in 1839 smoke was seen issuing from a crater on the south-east flank of the mountain, and that an eruption of fire and ashes took place in 1847, contemporaneously with an earthquake experienced at Sitka. The lowlands at the base of St. Elias are described as " tundras " covered with forests and pastures, and it is added that through fissures in the sandy soil you could see a substratum of ice. 48 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS Subsequently, these fables of fictitious eruptions being collected and repeated, though with every reserve as to their authenticity, by W. H. Dall, created the belief so long prevalent that Mount St. Elias was a volcano. This theory was apparently corroborated by the curious shape of the southern crest of the mountain, which is so curved as to form a great amphitheatre resembling a real crater. Successive explorations have proved that the St. Elias group shows no trace of volcanic action. But a curious phenomenon observed by Top- ham may perhaps explain why certain navigators thought they saw Mount St. Elias in eruption from the sea. Down one of the very steep gullies, about 300 feet deep, scor- ing the inner side of the so-called crater, there were perpetual falls of stones and detritus ; and these avalanches sent up lofty columns of dust which, caught by the wind, simulated whirls of smoke. Even Topham, on seeing this effect at a distance, believed at first that it proceeded from a volcano. Mr. Russell likewise noted that great clouds of dust were sent up by the falls of shale detritus on the south face of Mount Augusta. On other occasions similar causes have led to the same mistake. In 1741 a commissioner was sent from Turin to inspect a new volcano said to have broken out in the Savoy Alps, and which proved to be simply a landslip from the Rochers de Fyz, near Servoz (De Saussure). A similar landslip in the present century led to a rumour that the extinct volcano of Mount Ararat had burst into life again. When Mr. Freshfield was on Mont Blanc in 1867, he saw a cloud of dust caused by a landslip near the Little St. Bernard Pass, fifteen miles from the spot where he stood. This phenomenon lasted for several weeks, and no spectator at a distance could possibly recognise its real nature and cause. The next expedition to Alaska was that despatched in 1874 by the " United States Survey," directed by W. H. Dall and M. Baker, which gleaned a rich harvest of geographical and geological data, and much new information on the glacial phenomena of the region. It was this e.xpedition which first ascertained the real nature of the 49 E THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS plateau interposed between the mountain chains and the sea, i.e., that it consisted of a huge glacier, — and named it the " IVIalaspina." Then, too, the Cook, Vancouver, and Malaspina peaks were identified and christened. The height of St. EHas was calculated at 19,600 feet, with a probable miscalculation of 400 feet, more or less ; and the position was fixed as 60° 20' 45" lat. N., and 141" 00' 12" long. W. By this time Mount St. Elias had won a definite place on maps of Alaska, and it is astonishing that the exceptional characteristics of the country, with such lofty mountains and glaciers of such unusual extent, should not have immediately tempted more explorers to attack those virgin peaks and penetrate to the heart of the new region. Difficulty of access must have been the chief cause of this delay. There is no commercial motive to attract vessels to this zone of forests and ice-fields, where a small native population finds the barest subsistence and where communications with other parts of the continent are few and irregular. In the spring of 1S77, Mr. C. E. S. Wood being determined to attempt an excursion to St. Elias, found no means of proceeding beyond Sitka, save by an Indian canoe. This conveyed him to Cape Spencer, at the northern extremity of the archipelago ; but as the Indians were afraid to risk their little craft on the open sea, along an absolutely harbourless coast, his journey was suspended. The first real expedition for the purpose of making the ascent of St. Elias only dates from 1886, and was organized by Tke New York Times. It consisted of Messrs. F. Schwatka, W. Libbey, and an Englishman, Lieut. H. W. Seton-Karr. They made the passage to Yakutat in the Pinfa of the U.S. Navy. On July 17th, they sailed from the bay in Indian canoes, followed the Pacific coast to the mouth of the Yahtse River, south of St. Elias, and, at no little risk, effected a landing through the surf. They brought two white porters and four Indians. Keeping to the eastern side of the extensive delta of mud, stones, and sand, intersected by numberless branches of the Yahtse, they reached the point where the river issues by a great tunnel out of the glacier, 50 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS and climbed to the edge of the frozen plateau, which is covered with a thick stratum of moraine detritus. The ice tunnel through which the river runs is about eight miles long, and ends at the foot of certain heights which the ex- plorers named " The Chaix Hills." The course of the tunnel is indicated by a depression in the surface overhead, caused by the junction of the lateral moraines of the two glaciers, which flow down to the coast on either side of the Yahtse. The glaciers themselves actually join overhead, forming the ice roof of the tunnel. The expedition gave the name of " Guyot " to the glacier on the west side of the Yahtse, and " Agassiz " to that on the east. The latter, however, is really the western extremity of the Malaspina Glacier. At the feet of the Chaix Hills, in the deep hollow dividing them from the Guyot and Agassiz glaciers, two swift torrents rush down, and, uniting their waters at the south end of the range, form a lake to which the explorers gave the name of " Caetani " in honour of Don Onorato Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta, at that time Presi- dent of the Italian Geographical Society.^ The river Yahtse issues from this lake only to plunge into the tunnel just described. When- ever this sub-glacial passage becomes choked with ice blocks and moraine material, Lake Caetani overflows, and then a good portion of the river makes its way towards the sea over the surface of the glacier. Once the passage cleared, the whole river again disappears beneath the ice ; while the lake shrinks and sometimes disappears altogether. The caravan first marched to the western end of the Chaix range ; then (having dwindled to three men, i.e., Schwatka, Seton- Karr, and one of the white porters) it crossed the Tyndall Glacier, which flows straight down the south-west flank of St. Elias, and gaining the chain of hills bounding the mountain to the west, began to ascend their slope. Schwatka came to a halt at about 5,800 ' In the account given by H. W. Seton-Karr, and in the map of this region pre- pared subsequently by H. W. Topham, by some mistake the word Casfani has been erroneously substituted for Caetani, a well-known name in Italy. 51 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS feet. Seton-Karr proceeded alone, and reached the top of the ridge, at about 7,200 feet, but cloudy weather and the lateness of the hour compelled him to retreat. The enterprise was plainly impossible with the means at their disposal, and it was decided to return to the coast, sixteen miles awaj'. On the 30th July, after some abortive attempts, the little band succeeded in putting out to sea, but were obliged to leave their baggage behind. This expedition had taken fourteen days, and been favoured by exceptionally dry weather. The results obtained by it consisted of a sketch-map of the region and the first stock of reliable observa- tions on the nature of the country and the difficulties to be over- come in exploring it. Two years later the attempt was repeated by the English Alpinists, Messrs. W. H. and E. Topham, and G. Broke, together with Mr. \V. Williams, of New York. Sailing from Sitka on the 3rd of July, 18SS, in a small schooner, they reached Yakutat in seven days. Proceeding thence in Indian canoes, they landed on the 13th near the mouth of the Yahtse, about 55 miles east of Port Mulgrave, the very point where Schwatka had disembarked. The surf was not very high at the time, and the landing was made without trouble ; but fifteen hours later it would have been impossible. The explorers with their party, consisting of four white porters and six Indians, followed the same course taken by Schwatka as far as the Chaix Hills. Then bearing eastward, they climbed a glacier that girdles the base of the south-east wall of St. Elias at a level of 1,500 to 2,000 feet, and pours into the Malaspina with an ice cascade a thousand feet high. This glacier they named after Libbey. A strino^ of low hills, connectinsf the Chaix rans^e with the southern face of St. Elias, separates it to the west from the Tyndall Glacier discovered by Schwatka. But the explorers soon perceived that it was impossible to make the ascent of the precipitous south-east flank, which rose to over 16,000 feet, and was rendered unapproachable by masses of snow I 4 ■.ITW' J»-^' THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS and ice, which fell constantly in formidable avalanches, sweeping the rock wall from top to bottom. Accordingly, they went back to Lake Caetani, and followed the course taken by Schwatka as far as the western side of the Tyndall Glacier (Karr's Hills), which Seton-Karr had reached. Here Broke was obliged to halt, having broken his snow-spectacles. The others re-crossed the glacier, and camped at the foot of the south bastion of St. Elias, exactly beneath the point where the ridge curves round and forms the amphitheatre which was mistaken for a crater. After one failure, they managed to win the crest of the ridge. It was covered with thick snow, over which they proceeded, cutting steps in the steeper places. About 2 o'clock p.m. they reached the northern side of the amphitheatre, where the ridge ceases to bend and runs almost straight up to the summit. Their aneroid and "boiling-point" thermometer registered a height of 11,460 feet. Here the ridge rose in a very steep cliff 1,500 feet high, and almost entirely coated with blue ice, which would have required several hours of step-cutting. Beyond, at about 7,000 feet above this cliff, soared the summit, capped with snow, and bordered by a huge cornice. It was hopeless to think of winning the peak that day, and, very reluctantly, the explorers returned to their camp. The point of the ridge which they had reached, and which, when seen from below, appeared to be a separate peak dominating the amphitheatre to the north, was named by them " Hadon's Peak." The walls of this amphitheatre are almost vertical, composed of stratified rock, striated and furrowed by the continual falls of stones and detritus produced by the process of disintegration. The bottom of the hollow is filled by a glacier which flows out through an opening to the east. The whole extent of the south-west face of St. Elias was visible from the ridge, and seemed no less inaccessible than the south-east face. No rocks showed any trace of volcanic action. The expedition employed five days in regaining the coast, THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS and reached Yakutat, the loth of August, after nearly a month's absence. The time had come for scientific societies to reinforce private enterprise in the work of exploration. With the larger funds at their disposal they could afford to either assist or even to actually fit out expeditions on their own account for the purpose of surveying the country, and studying its interesting natural phe- nomena. In 1890, the United States' "National Geographical Society" and the " Geological Survey " united to send an expedition to the St. Elias region, under the direction of Professor J. C. Russell, a well-known writer on glacial geology, and one of the explorers of the Yukon basin. Mr. M. B. Kerr was to accompany him as topographer to the expedition. Professor Russell made the best use of the lessons learnt from the experiences of former explorers. His expedition was organized at Seattle. Supplies for three months were packed in hermetically sealed tins to prevent them from being spoiled by the excessive dampness of the climate, during the long journey over snow and ice. The light equipment, including tents, waterproofs, blankets, special petroleum stoves, and a good stock of fuel, would have enabled the expedition to spend many days at a high level, above the line of vegetation. It had been found that the Indians accompanying former expeditions, while very useful in the lowlands, were totally unfitted for mountain work. Accordingly, Professor Russell enlisted six American porters at Seattle, led by J. H. Christie. Finally, the expedition was supplied with the necessary instruments for topographical survey. The party started from Seattle on the i6th of June, and reached Port Mulgrave on the 27th, making the passage from Sitka to Yakutat on the U.S.A. Pinta. Early on the 2Sth they put to sea in canoes, skirting the east side of the bay between the islands and the shore, crossed the mouth of Disenchantment Bay 54 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS on the I St of July, and landed at the north-west corner of Yakutat Bay, at the base of the eastern spurs of the Cook chain. Ahhough so far from the mouth of the bay, they found the beach Hned by white breakers, luckily not formidable enough to prevent landing in ordinary weather. Numerous icebergs, fragments of the glaciers which thrust their snouts into the waters of Disenchantment Bay, are caught by the wind and the currents, and driven in upon the beach at the head of Yakutat Bay. In great storms, the waves, rushing into the bay, lift the floating masses, and toss them far up on the shore. The clashing of the blocks of ice, as they collide, joined with the howlino- of the wind and the roar of the sea, creates an appalling tumult. After leaving this first camp, Russell took a westerly course, scaled the successive southern spurs of the Cook chain, and crossed the snouts of many confluents of the Malaspina Glacier, which flow down between these spurs. Here the ice was almost concealed under a stratum of moraine, consisting of detritus pebbles, together with boulders of every size. Many small lakes occur in these frontal moraines, and streams of water, which issue from ice caves and run in the open for some distance, before disappearing into other tunnels. Russell named these glaciers, going from east to west, the " Black," " Galiano," " Atrevida," " Lucia," " Hayden," and " Mar- vine." In the centre of the frontal moraine of the latter, a jutting spur forms an island covered with firs, which shelter a luxuriant vegetation gay with myriads of flowers. Russell christened this " Blossom Island," and fixed a base-camp there with a store of food, to be carried up later as required by detachments of porters. From the shore to " Blossom Island " was a thirty-one days' march. The porters had to make many journeys from one camping place to another to carry forward all the equipment. Meanwhile, Russell and Kerr had been occupied in geological investigations and topographical surveys, which often led them far out of their definite track. Everywhere Russell discovered evidence of the shrinkage of 55 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS the glaciers ; ledges in the rock-walls of the various valleys indi- cating the height formerly reached by the ice-beds, some 700 to 800 feet above their actual level. Marvine Glacier, at the foot of which stands Blossom Island, flows direct from the south face of Mount Cook, and is bounded to the west by a long spur that projects far into the Malaspina, bearing from north-east to south-west. This spur is cleft midway by a deep ravine. The southern half, thus quite separated, forms as it were a distinct chain, about eight miles long. Russell named this the " Hitchcock Range," and the cleft " Pinnacle Pass," on account of some sharp peaks which dominate it to the north. The pass is barely 200 to 300 feet wide, and is 4,000 feet above the sea. Two glaciers flow down from it : one, an affluent of the Marvine, steep and much crevassed, running east ; the other flowing westward at a gentler angle, and falling into a huge ice-stream of far larger dimensions than the rest of the Malaspina affluents, to which Russell gave the name of " Seward Glacier." The vanguard of the expedition crossed Pinnacle Pass on the 5th August, after a night's halt on the Marvine Glacier, where they had been in serious danger from a fall of stones caused by a violent rain-storm. Bad weather, and the necessity of awaiting the arrival of stores from the lower camps, confined Russell and Kerr several days to the neighbourhood of the pass. They gave the name of " Mount Logan " to a mighty peak north of the Augusta chain ; and two peaks, rising on the northern branch of the Cook range, were called " Mount Owen " and " Mount Irving." Between August the 13th and i6th, Russell effected a passage from the "Seward" to the " Agassiz " Glacier by following a depression in the spur (Samovar Hills) dividing one from the other. The two snow-domes which crown this col won for it the name of Dome Pass (4,300 feet). Here the explorers saw before them an open valley filled by a glacier that flows into the Agassiz in a great cascade of sdracs. After crossing this, they looked straight up to Mount St. Elias, with no intervening obstacles to impede the view, and the route to the 56 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS summit seemed clearly traced. The valley they had entered was formed by two ridges of the mountain, and was shut in at the end by a wall which led to a spacious col between the cone of St. Elias on the south and a lower summit to the north. To the latter, and to the glacier filling the valley, Russell gave the name of Newton. The divide was connected with the peak of Mount St. Elias by a long ridge which seemed to offer a comparatively easy passage. But the Newton Glacier, furrowed with numerous wide crevasses and formid- able cascade-like sdracs, was prepared to oppose a fierce resistance to the desired conquest. On reaching the second cascade after several hours' struggle through that labyrinth of ice-blocks, and among enormous crevasses barring the way in every direction, they were compelled to take a very perilous route skirting the south wall of the valley, where avalanches of snow and ice fall down from the slopes above with great frequency. Half-way up the glacier, a spur projecting some distance across the valley presented an apparently insurmountable obstacle. After repeated attempts, they contrived to hitch a rope over the crag of a vertical cliff, and were thus enabled to climb to the second Newton plateau and haul up their packs. One more ice-fall alone separated them from the terminal wall mounting to the col, when bad weather joined with the difficulties of the glacier in checking the progress of the little band. During the whole of August 22nd and 23rd, it snowed incessantly, so that Russell and Kerr, who had started from the highest camp to attack the peak, were obliged to descend to the foot of the clift (Rope Cliff) to which they had fixed their cord. When the weather cleared, on the 25th, they resumed the attack, while the two men who had come up with them went down to fetch supplies from a lower camp. After several hours' march, Russell and Kerr dis- covered that they had very little petroleum left. This was a serious blow at a level where, without fuel, water was not to be obtained. Fire was needed also to enable them to warm themselves with hot tea or coffee and bake their raw flour. In this emergency, Russell decided to push on alone as far as the point whence the snow-storm 57 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS had driven them, and to wait there while Kerr dashed down to catch up the porters and get the petroleum from them. As evening fell, Russell halted, tired out, rigged up his tent and went to sleep. During the night, it began to snow again, and continued for two days. The flakes fell thickly and continuously until the tent was half buried, the sides bending in beneath the heavy weight. Russell had no longer room to lie within, and was forced to hollow out a chamber in the snow. Having no petroleum, he contrived to make a feeble fire by means of a rag dipped in melted bacon. For six days he remained alone in the waste of snow ; then, as the weather had cleared and none of his comrades appeared, he went down the mountain to seek them, leaving his tent behind. After a few hours, he met the porters coming up, guided by Kerr. The blind- ing snowfall had detained the latter at Rope Cliff during three whole days, with neither shelter nor fuel, and, for the last thirty hours, no food save raw flour. The men only joined him on the 29th of August. There was nothing for it but to bow to fate. In spite of Russell's tenacious and often rash courage, there was no longer any hope of conquering the peak. The weather being almost con- tinuously bad, the newly fallen snow remained so soft that getting through it was very slow and exhausting work. Waterproofs were an insufficient protection from the damp, and both clothes and blankets had been soaked through for days. The transport of supplies was also becoming very difficult. Besides, the glare of the snow had affected the eyes of most of the party, and in spite of their smoked spectacles, they could hardly endure the light. The return journey began on the ist of September. Kerr, who was broken down by the days and nights he had spent without shelter in the snow, went straight back to the coast. Russell, how- ever, made one more excursion up the Seward Glacier to the north- west spur of Mount Owen, and another from Blossom Island, some miles' distance on the Malaspina, for the purpose of studying its glacial phenomena. The rain was almost incessant during his whole 58 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS descent. He reached the shore on the 15th of September. On the 23rd he embarked in the Coriuin, sent expressly to convey the expedition back to the United States. The interest roused by Russell's scientific report on the region he had inspected was so great that the " Geographical Society " and the " Geological Survey " decided to despatch him thither again in the following year, in order that he might collect addi- tional scientific data, extend his field of exploration, and renew the attack on Mount St. Elias. Accordingly, on the 4th of June, 1S91, Russell and six white porters put in to Yakutat on the U.S.A. Bear. This time he resolved to follow the example of Messrs. Schwatka and Topham, by landing at a point of the coast nearer Mount St. Elias by the mouth of the Yahtse River. But while disembarking, a heavy disaster occurred. Either the surf was stronger than usual, or the Bear's boats were less fitted for landing than light Indian canoes. Be it as it may, the first two boats were capsized by the breakers, and. six of the party drowned. One of Mr. Russell's porters was among the victims. On the following day the attempt was renewed, and this time with success. Russell went on shore on the 8th of June. By the 10th all the baggage had been carried to the edge of the Malaspina moraine. This was covered by so dense a forest that they were forced to work with hatchets for a whole day to cut a passage. By the 20th of June everything had been conveyed across the moraine to the brink of the bare ice. During the work of transport, Russell spent several days on the Chaix Hills, studying their geological formation and building a sledge to facilitate the porterage of stores over the snow. Then pushing on to the e.xtreme south-west corner of the Samovar Hills (July 12th), he re-ascended the Agassiz Glacier to the foot of the ice-cascade which terminates the Newton Glacier. This he had reached the preceding year in coming down from the Dome Pass. 59 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS He was familiar with the route beyond this point up the Newton Valley, and aware of the difficulties to be encountered. Climbing all the ice-cascades in succession, and crossing the in- tervening plateaux, he came to the foot of the last cascade, where he had on the previous occasion passed those six days of solitary confinement, in danger of being buried under the snow. This last difficulty also overcome, he reached the upper amphi- theatre of the glacier by the 20th of July, and planted his MOUNT ST. ELIAS FROM I.IBBEY GLACIER. (From a Photo ly J. C. Russell^) upper camp there at the height of a little over 8, 000 feet. It had taken him eight days to attain to this level from the foot of Agassiz Glacier, and almost six weeks from the coast. He and his two porters stayed twelve days at this camp, with almost continual bad weather, so that he had only one opportunity, on the 34th of August, of attempting the ascent. Starting with his men at 2 o'clock a.m. (24th August), he made for the head of the valley, where it is barred by an ice-wall rising to the divide between Mount St. Elias and Mount Newton. 00 < w GQ K X u < a. < CO H THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS This ascent was so steep that steps had to be cut nearly the whole way up, while great transversal crevasses added much to the difficulty of the climb. At some parts of the ascent, they had to pass under overhanging masses of ice threatening them with avalanches. Finally, at midday, the party landed safely on the col. After a short rest, they attacked the broad ridge that runs thence straight up to the summit of Mount St. Elias. But soon they grew tired. It was rather late in the afternoon, and the peak still soared high above them, although they had already climbed a great distance from the camp. To be overtaken by nightfall without any shelter at such an altitude would have in- volved too serious a risk, the more so as slight vapours begin- ning to cloud the hitherto perfectly clear sky, threatened a change in the weather. So, with the deepest reluctance, Rus- sell was obliged to give up all hope of completing the ascent that day. It was 4 o'clock p.m., and the expedition had reached the height of 14,500 feet. Night had already fallen when they got down to their tent in a very wearied condition. The presage of evil weather was fulfilled on the following day. Russell had planned to carry the tent and the supplies to the divide, being convinced of the impossibility of covering in one day with the force at his disposal, and without intervals of rest, the distance from the base-plateau to the top. The weather having slightly improved on the 28th, the party started off again, laden with supplies, in order to establish their station on the col. But newly fallen snow had formed a heavy layer on the steep sides of the amphitheatre, and this was now breaking into innumerable avalanches, which swept down to the valley with irresistible force. There was danger on all sides, from the pre- cipices of Mount St. Elias and Mount Newton, and even from the col to which the party was ascending. Russell felt that it would be too great a risk to proceed, and so returned to the camp, where dense snow-falls during the ensuing days finally destroyed every hope of success. 61 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS On the I St of August retreat was decided upon. The only digression from the downward route was a short excursion made to the Libbey Glacier and the cliffs connecting the Chaix Hills with the south front of Mount St. Elias. By the loth the ex- pedition had reached the shore of Icy Bay, where it had landed two months earlier. Russell stayed there a week for the purpose of measuring by triangulation the heights of the chief summits of the group. The altitude of Mount St. Elias was calculated at 18,100 feet, with a possible error of 100 feet more or less. The ex- pedition resumed its march on the 19th of August along the Pacific coast, in the direction of Yakutat Bay, sometimes over the pebbly beach, at other times through dense undergrowth in the woods, often fording torrents where the icy water was more than waist-high, and occasionally marching in the open over the moraine that covers the whole front of the Malaspina Glacier. Reaching Cape Manby on the 27th, the explorers turned off from the Pacific coast to follow the west shore of Yakutat Bay, and at last, on the ist September, reached the head of the gulf, which had been the starting-point of their expedition in the preceding year. Here Russell found an Indian canoe with a deposit of food supplied by the missionary of Yakutat, Rev. Hendriksen. He was thus enabled to make a thorough exploration of Disenchant- ment Bay, into which no previous traveller had penetrated to any great distance. He discovered that it winds a long way inland among the mountains, forming two sharp angles in turning from west to east, and from north to south. Three great glaciers flow down into it — the Dalton, Hubbard, and Nunatak glaciers. In Malaspina's time (1792), these glaciers entirely choked the east arm of the bay, and extended to the island of Haenke. To the south the bay lengthens into a fiord, penetrating into a large valley also formerly filled with ice from a glacier that flowed southwards, and which probably formed a great ice-sheet, similar 62 THE HISTORY OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS to Malaspina Glacier on the plateau overhanging the east coast of Yakutat Bay. On the 15th of September Russell re-entered the village of Yakutat, and on the ist of October he steamed out of the bay on the U.S.A. Pinta, and reached Seattle on the 2ist, after nearly five months' absence. In this brief summary of the two expeditions which have so largely contributed to the world's knowledge regarding the Mount St. Elias region, I have scarcely touched upon Mr. Russell's geological discoveries, or his observations on glacial phenomena. They are to be found in full in the published reports of the "Geographical Society" and the "Geological Survey." In de- scribing the course taken by H.R.H.'s expedition, I shall have frequent occasion to refer to those works. Meanwhile, the foregoing historical sketch will suffice, I think, to furnish a general idea of the character of the region to which we were bound, and the nature of the task we were about to accomplish, under the guidance of our chief, H.R.H. the Duke of the Abruzzi. 63 CHAPTER V The Malaspina Glacier A T 2 o'clock a.m. on the 23rd June, the Bertha steamed from Port Mulgrave with the schooner Aggie in tow. Warned hy the experiences of our predecessors as to the difficulty of landing on the Pacific coast, and •^^^ . ^^ - _^^ more especially by the catastrophe ^ I ^^ fc***' Jr that had saddened Russell's second ■^*'* expedition at the start, together with the uncertainty as to the state of sea and surf on the southern shore, H.R.H. decided to disembark on the west coast of Yakutat Bay, in spite of its being several miles farther from St. Elias than the landing-place on the Pacific' We were to land a few miles north of Cape Manby, by the mouth of the glacial torrent Osar, near the mouth of the bay. From that point H.R.H. hoped to find a tolerably easy track up to the Malaspina plateau, and thence to cross the great glacier rapidly, conveying all the camp material and a sufiicient supply of food on the four sledges comprised in our equipment. Previous 1 H.R.H. had hoped, at first, to be able to land on the southern shore of the plateau at a point where the force of the breakers was broken by a sheltering sand- bank, marked on the chart of the U.S. Coast Survey (North-West Coast of America, Sheet No. 2) as lying off the coast opposite the mouth of a small creek due east of Icy Cape. But we ascertained at Yakutat that no such sand-bank existed, and that the coast is unsheltered throughout its length. 64 THE MALASPINA GLACIER explorers had always tried to land as near as possible to the spurs of the mountain, in order to avoid camping on the open glacier, and continue to make use of the fuel ready to hand on the thickly wooded lower slopes as long as possible. But what with prolonged marches over the loose, sharp-edged stones of the moraine, and considerable waste of time and strength involved in going to and fro to carry up heavy loads of supplies, they had paid a heavy price for these advantages. Mr. H. S. Bryant, of Philadelphia, with a party of seven men, WEST COAST OF YAKUTAT BAY. had landed ten days before us at the same point for which we were bound, also with the purpose of attempting the ascent of Mount St. Elias. At Yakutat we had taken on board one of the Indians who had crossed the bay with Mr. Bryant, thinking he might be of use in identifying the landing-place. We were barely one hour from port when the Bertha was stopped in the middle of the bay by a thick fog. So we passed the whole morning fuming at the delay. Finally, about 2 o'clock p.m., the air cleared a little and allowed us a glimpse of the Malaspina coast line a few miles off. Straight before us lay a low 65 F THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS beach, white with breakers, and backed by the dark rampart of the Malaspina moraine, some 300 feet in height and flecked with snow. Farther inland, under a thick bank of fog, we could distinguish the lower portion of the Cook chain, with great glaciers, tributaries of the Malaspina, filling all its ravines. Very gradually we ap- proached the shore, searching for a landing-place. The Indian, who was to have acted as pilot, remained stupidly inert, and gave no sign of recognising the coast. At 3.30 Lieutenant Cagni went off in a boat to examine the beach, and presently returned with bad news. At 600 feet from the WEST COAST OF YAKUTAT BAY AND MALASPINA MORAINE. shore he touched bottom with his oars, while a line of dangerous surf cut him off from land. Meanwhile we had ascertained that the current caused by the high tide had driven us into the bay during the early morning, and that we must now steer south to make Point Manby. So we steamed on, sounding continually. Scattered trees now appeared on the low coast stretching between the base of the moraine and the sea, and soon increased to dense forests near Point Manby. At 5 o'clock we finally discern the mouth of the Osar, framed by thick pine forests. Cagni again puts off in the boat, and presently signals that he has found a landing. Here we obtain our first glimpse of Mount St. Elias, distant, shadowy, and 66 THE MALASPINA GLACIER magnified to proportions so gigantic by the mist that we look up at it with astonishment mingled with awe. The boats imme- diately put out from the schooner, and with these and a large boat, kindly lent us with her crew by the captain of the Bertha, our cases of stores are rapidly landed. The first crew ashore stand waist-deep in water, ready to haul up each boat as it rides in on the crest of the surf, and so the landing is accomplished lALL GRASSES O.N THE BEACH. without accident, and all the baggage arrives safe and dry. H.R. H. leaves the schooner about 8 p.m., and comes on shore by the last boat. The Bertha now left us for Disenchantment Bay, whence Mr. Hendriksen, who came on board at Yakutat, had promised to send us some Indian hunters to help in carrying our stores to the frozen plateau. The Aggie meantime sailed for Port Mulgrave, where she was to remain in harbour during our absence, with orders to return to our landing-place by the loth of August. In case of further 67 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS instructions being needed, H.R.H. had requested Mr. Hendriksen to send a few Indians every five days to the mouth of the Osar, from the end of July onward. In two hours" time the whole of our equipment is piled in the lee of a grass-grown sandhill some fifty feet in height, out of reach of the tide, and sheltered from sudden gusts of wind. We pitch our first camp on a little spit of sand, by a tributary of the Osar. All the stores and munitions are heaped about us in the utmost dis- order : cases of provisions, photographic machines, medicine chests, knapsack frames, snow-shoes, sledge-runners, cooking-stoves, bags of clothing, ropes, hatchets, and a hundred miscellaneous articles. While our soup is being prepared over a gipsy fire, we strive to reduce the general chaos to some kind of order, stow away under mackintosh everything that needs protection from rain, and so on, and then about midnight seek rest in our tents. Early the next morning (June 24th) H.R.H. left camp attended by Gonella and the guide Petigax, to prospect a route to the moraine. Meanwhile we set to work re-arranging the whole of our equipment. Pitching a tent in a sheltered part of the forest, we pack it with the reserve stores which are to be left behind — part of the photographic, scientific, and medical apparatus, some weapons, and a store of provisions in case bad weather should retard our embarcation on returning from the mountains. Accordingly, all the cases had to be opened, their contents sorted, divided, and registered. Next, the first loads had to be packed ready for the porters to carry to the foot of the moraine by whatever track H.R.H. should decide to take. We were assisted in this work by the American porters, whom we had hardly seen before, as they had travelled with our guides on board the Aggie. Their Major Ingraham — a tall, lean man, about forty years of age, of robust constitution, and great force of character, who was in charge of them — proved of the utmost service to the ex- pedition. Indeed, his active and intelligent efforts, together with the hearty co-operation of his chosen band, had no small share in its THE MALASPINA GLACIER success. These ten sturdy fellows formed a queer group, such as could scarcely have been got together in any other country. Four of them were University students ; four were sailors, one of whom was a Swede, another an Italian, one gold-digger, and one poet, German by birth, who had earned his bread by teaching clas- sics and then become a sailor. Their names were : C. L. Andrews, CAMl' O.N THE WliS r COAST OF YAKT'lAr IIAV. Alexander Beno, F. Fiorini, Carl E. Morford, Ralph E. Nichols, Elin Ostberg, V. Schmid, W. Steele, and C. W. Thornton. H.R. H. returned to camp about i o'clock p.m., and the guides and porters immediately set off with the first loads, while we finished our arrangements amid violent explosions of wrath against the swarms of voracious mosquitoes which had tormented us inces- sandy from the moment we landed. All sorts of ointments were tried in vain ; neither nets nor veils could save us from their stingfs ; the pertinacious insects penetrated our clothes, up our sleeves, 69 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS down our necks, and completely exhausted our patience. No wonder that writers on Alaska describe them as the scourges of the land ! Instances are given of travellers being killed by them, poisoned by thousands of stings, worn out by frantic struggles with the invincible foe; of deer leaping into rivers to escape the mosquito torture (Petrofif) ; whilst it is asserted that bears have been known to scratch themselves to death, maddened with pain. Even the Indians suffer from the stings, although they get some protection by smearing themselves all over with rancid oil. SlKAWBliKKlKb IN HJJULK, M-.AK IIIL HKSI LA.Ml'. A surveying signal is set up on the sand-hill behind the camp ; just opposite, across the little torrent running near our tents, stands a wooden hut, used as a refuge by Indian hunters. The edge of the forest is only a few yards from our encampment, beyond a slip of pasture where strawberries and dwarf raspberries are in bloom, half concealed by tall grasses and weeds. A heavy blanket of foo- hangs over us all day, but, fortunately, there is no rain. Cagni has arranged his meteorological instruments between two tents, and has begun a series of observations, while Sella has pitched his dark tent in order to change his photographic plates. Evening closes 70 THE MALASPINA GLACIER in very slowly. The porters, back from their first trip, are singing songs round the fire, in the soft tvvih'ght that lasts far into the night. The deep stillness about us is only broken by the sharp cry of a stray gull or seafowl. The temperature is mild, almost always about 47-50° Fahrenheit. Early next morning, four Indian porters arrived, sent by Hen- driksen, and with their help a good part of the camp material was carried up to the base of the moraine during the day. Crossing the tributary of the Osar on a trunk bridge made by our men, we followed the right bank of the river, sometimes tramping through the sand and small shingrle of its wide bed, sometimes skirt- ing the edge of the forest, among huge fallen trees, thick brush, rich beds of fern under the firs, and over an elastic carpet of pine - needles and moss starred with bright- coloured flowers. The Osar is one of the many streams issuing from the Mala- spina channel, seaming the belt of land between the glacier and the sea, depositing great masses of glacial detritus by the way, and sometimes burying in their delta whole tracts of forest. Most of the larger streams come down from the south flank of the plateau, and pour into the Pacific so great a volume of muddy water that the sea is discoloured for several miles' distance from the shore, 71 THE OSAR STREAM. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS and at more than a mile out the surface of the ocean consists of fresh water. The biggest of these rivers is the Yahtse, whose delta has now completely filled up a bay that existed in Ivlalaspina's and Vancouver's time (Icy Bay), and of which the record is preserved in a legend of the Yakutat Indians. These rivers issue from the glacier either in a single body of water, or in several branches, some gushing out at the base of the bastion formed by the moraine, others from the ice-wall itself, at different heights, dashing down from ice caves in grand cascades. Occasionally, after running through a long series of underground passages from the upper valleys to the coast, these torrents are forced to the surface at such high pressure that they shoot upwards like colossal fountains with huge columns of spray. Whatever their origin, they generally divide into numerous branches between the moraine and the sea, and after intersecting the forest in every direction, unite in one or more great streams before reaching the sea. Fortunately for us, the Osar comes down from the moraine almost undivided, and so we are spared the trouble of fording icy floods often of very difficult passage from the strength and depth of the current. Foreseeing obstacles of this nature, we were provided with india-rubber trousers coming up above the waist, and joined to high waterproof wading boots. But these were only brought into use on the preliminary march by H.R. H. and his party in crossing the river to explore the left bank, where they found traces of Bryant's first camp. It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the luxuriant vegeta- tion covering the narrow strip of land between the beach and the moraine. The forest begins at a few yards from the sea, edged by groves of undersized trees — such as alder, ash, small firs, dwarf poplars, and a few willows. The rank grass all about is a perfect carpet of (lowers, interspersed with flourishing plots of strawberries and raspberries {Rubiis articus). But just beyond the fringe of scattered greenery, we come to the real forest. Here the branches of mighty firs, draped with moss and lichen, meet overhead in so THE MALASPINA GLACIER thickly tangled a canopy that hardly one ray of sunlight pierces through it. Underneath, the air is that of a damp hot-house, and all the intervening space is filled with innumerable varieties of shrubs; ferns, six to eight feet high {Aspleniniu), fungi, and myriads of flowers jewelling the soft, spongy layer of mosses and lichens that carpets the whole forest-floor. It is too early in the season for fruits and berries ; everything OSAR STREAM AND FOREST. is in full blossom : currant and gooseberry bushes, and a tall plant like celery {^Archangelica), with towering white flowers, of which the Indians eat the leaves ; and here and there the humble whortleberry ( Vaccimuii macrocarpum), as yet without berries. The devil's-club [Panax Jioj-riditni) is a formidable, prickly plant, whose wide, flat leaves are thickly set with thorns, and whose stems crawl on the ground for a bit and then shoot up to a height of ten to fifteen feet. It is easy to stumble over these creepers, and get painfully scratched by the fall. Low branches and prostrate trunks make the forest 73 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS impenetrable except by slow hard labour with the axe. Hawks, ravens, magpies, flights of wild geese, ducks, gulls, and small birds add a note of cheerfulness, and complete the picture of luxuriant life. Our march followed the curves of the Osar in a north-westerly direction. The ascent from the beach to the moraine — about three miles' distance — is very slight, hardly rising 150 feet. On the river sand and at the foot of the moraine we found many large bear-tracks ; but we were too numerous and noisy to have a chance of surprising this big game. There are, at least, two varieties here — the brown and the silver bear, also known as the St. Elias bear. The latter is of enormous size. Mr. Russell saw two as big as polar bears, with footmarks 9 to 17 inches in width and a length of stride of no less than 64 inches. At the point where we emerged from the forest, it ends abruptly some thirty feet from the moraine ; but in many places — particularly on the south flank of the plateau — it has gradually pushed up into it, invading wide areas with firs and alders, which find nourishment in the layer of soil, detritus and moraine dc'bns covering the ice, which is sometimes more than a thousand feet in depth. Our second camp is pitched on the bank of a small torrent^ — one of the sources of the Osar — running through the boundary of forest and moraine. Here the landscape offers contrasts scarcely to be seen elsewhere. The forest stretched before us in masses of sombre verdure, while behind us the moraine — a vision of barren- ness and desolation — sloped upwards with its undulating waste of stones, mud, and sand, seamed by innumerable water-courses which have worn their way down the bed of ice. Over this, all our stores and material must be carried, up to the edge of the open glacier, which showed its white fringe of snow at a distance of about four miles, and some 300 feet above the camp. This stage proved longer and more fatiguing than the first march ; and as it was impossible to cover the whole distance twice in the day, we 1 We found many trout in the waters of this torrent. 74 THE MALASPINA GLACIER arranged to go daily once to the glacier, once back to camp, and once to a half-way point where we left our loads to be carried up the rest of the way on the following morning. H.R. H. and the whole caravan started from camp every morning, leaving only one or two persons behind to attend to the camp and prepare our food. The loads were proportioned to our strength, ranging from 20 to 50 lbs. in weight for ourselves, from 45 to 55 lbs. for the guides and porters. The loads were strapped on light wooden frames, which distribute the weight evenly on shoulders and back, leaving the chest and breathing free, and on which pack- ages of any shape can be easily fitted and balanced. The Indians, although undersized, carried heavier weights than our men could manage — i.e., from 60 to 68 lbs. — without a word of complaint. They did not use the frames, but preferred to fasten the loads on their backs by means of two straps coming over the shoulders and crossed over the chest, a system that compelled them to walk In a stooping posture. They were shod with moccasins of undressed sealskin, with the fur inside, unfitted for tramping over this waste of sharp- edged stones, which bruised our own feet in spite of our heavy boots. The moraine began just behind the camp and sloped gently up to the frozen plateau, forming wide hollows and high ridges, at a right angle to the line of the glacier. The layers of stones and detritus are very unequally distributed. At some points they are so thin that the ice beneath shows through ; at others they cover it thickly with boulders and splinters of rock In jumbled heaps. Big stones, three feet and more In diameter are generally found lying at the base of steep ridges, others being poised on the top, ready to fall with the melting of the ice they rest upon. In the wide hollows between the ridges, the surface of the moraine Is very uneven. There are numerous small lakes, almost circular, either without any outlet or else traversed by torrents, and varying In size from mere 'pools to stretches of water exceeding 300 feet in diameter. Some lie on the surface of the moraine, others at different depths beneath, 75 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS and these latter occupy funnel-shaped cavities with banks 60 to 70 feet high. The water is dark and turbid, owing to the sand, mud, and stones continually frilling from the slopes above. Torrents loaded with sediment pour from ice tunnels, churning the pebbles beneath in their downward rush, sometimes disappearing again in the depths of some fissure before finally bursting forth from the moraine. The slopes being perpetually, if slowly, modified by the melting of the ice and the glacier's rate of motion, the torrents often change their course, forming new channels, while their old beds may be traced by the rounded pebbles, which contrast with the sharp-cornered stones peculiar to the moraine. New lakes are formed and old ones emptied, by the creation of fresh out- lets, or the opening of new C7rvasses in the ice beneath, leaving the fine sand of the bed exposed to view. Thus, the entire surface of the moraine is continually shifting and changing, moving and turning over the masses of stone, breaking them into ever smaller fragments, and finally crush- ing them into fine sand and mud. During the hot hours of the day, when the ice melts most rapidly, you hear the continual crash of falling stones, and the whizzing sound of detritus sliding on icy slopes, mingled with the murmur of torrents, the dash of cascades, and the muffled reports caused by the crackino- of the ice. In our first marches over the moraine we often went through the surface to our knees or higher in the dense mud, which in places covers whole tracts of ice, or again forms actual mud-torrents which are not to be detected at once, as they are of the same colour as the 76 TORRENT ISSUING I-'RO.M AN ICE-CAVE IN THE MALASPINA MORAINE. THE MALASPINA GLACIER moraine, and are studded with big boulders which float on the viscid surface. Every part of this stony desert presents the same characteristics. Its general aspect, indeed, is so uniform that it is not easy to follow the same track twice. Only after repeated journeys over the moraine were we able to recognise this or that big rock, and use it as a landmark. We were following the general line of the grreater ridges in a north-westerly direction. Between their extremities and the glacier itself lay a depression, beyond which a final slope of moraine led up to the frozen plateau. To this we climbed by a gully filled with snow, and deposited our loads on a small platform of ice covered by a thin layer of stones, close to the edge of the snow overlapping the glacier. The whole front of the Malaspina, along the Pacific coast and Yakutat Bay — about So miles in extent — is girdled by a belt of moraine 4 to 6 miles wide, and everywhere of the same general character as that wliich we have described. Nevertheless, the southern edge of the glacier does not finish in an easy slope, as on the edge facing the bay, but ends suddenly in a steep cliff some 150 to 300 feet high. During these first days of hard labour, we were favoured by the weather ; for although the early mornings were usually so foggy as to shut off the view in every direction, the afternoon hours were warm and sunny. Our evenings in camp were enchanting after the long day's toil up and down the moraine. Including the Indian porters, we form a party of twenty-five, and our camp is very lively. Our ten tents are pitched near together in groups of three or four, and all our different tasks are carried on outside them. There is a cross-fire of shouts and orders to the men ; regular strokes of the axe resound from the neighbouring forest, where a guide is cutting wood, now and then accompanied by the melancholy cry of a small bird (the Zonotrichia coronata, Pallas), which has three distinct notes with a curious rhythm. Some of the men are attending to the fires, others cooking, hanging out the wash, mending clothes, or putting 77 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS things in order, while a few lie stretched on the ground enjoying a quiet chat. Our four Indians, small, thick-set men, are so exactly alike that they seem turned out of the same mould. The development of arms and chests is exaggerated in comparison with the rest of the body, owing to the constant work at the oars entailed by their life on the water. They either sit together in a separate group, patching their moccasins, or loaf round the camp with contented, smiling faces, peep- ing inquisitively into the tents and speaking incomprehensible words to us in their guttural tongue, full of /'s and /C-'s. One of them, how- ever, knows a little English, and acts as interpreter to the rest. Their language has lost nearly all its special characteristics. Owing to frequent contact with French and Russian travellers, sailors, trappers, and whalers, these Indians speak a jargon known as "Chinook," now common to all the aborigines of the region and long used as the languasfe of commerce on the coast of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington State.^ The constant substitution of / for r and of / for e gives the dialect a certain infantile stamp. One honourable trait of the Indians' character is honesty. They steal nothing — not even food ; and this verdict is confirmed by every one who has employed them. All expeditions, such as our own, have had to leave stores of provisions, tents, etc., in spots easily to be discovered by the Indians; yet these caches are always found undisturbed and with no single article missing. By the evening of the 29th June, the whole of our baggage had been carried up to the edge of the plateau, about 500 feet above sea- level. Six days' work had been required for this portage from the shore. The weather was cloud)-, and the misty atmosphere seemed to ' F. N. Hibben & Co., of Victoria, have published a vocabulary of this jargon, entitled Dictionary of t/ie Chinooii Jargon or Indian Trade Language of the Avrtk Pacific Coast. THE MALASPINA GLACIER increase the vastness of the dead-white level stretching away to the horizon in front ot us. The temperature was almost down to 32". We cleared a patch of ground of its biggest boulders, pitched our tents on the layer of detritus covering the ice, and, as it was im- possible to plant the poles in the hard ice, we made the ropes fast round the biggest rocks at hand. This was our first camp without a fire. Our soup was cooked by the petroleum stoves. The Indians now left us. H.R.H. had commissioned them to fetch another ten days' supply of food from CAMP ON THE SUMMIT OF THE MORAINE. the depot left on the shore, in order that the caravans told off to supply our successive camps might be spared the necessity of going down to the sea. We were at the east side of the plateau, on the part of the main glacier discovered in 1874 by the hydrographic expedition under Messrs. Dall and Baker, and to which they had given the name of Malaspina. Later on, Russell embraced both the Agassiz and Guyot Glaciers, discovered by the Schwatka expedition, under this name. The latter names he previously applied exclusively to tributaries from the St. Elias and Cook chains. According to Mr. Russell's view, the Malaspina belongs to a 79 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS class of glaciers designated by liim " Piedmont " glaciers, to be dis- tinguished from the "Alpine" type, consisting of affluents flowing down into valleys. Delineated in this fashion, the Malaspina is divided into three wide lobes, which are merely the widened snouts of the great glaciers which flow down to the plateau from the mountains. The eastern division, chiefly fed by the Seward Glacier, has a general movement from west to east, and, at one point, pushes down to the Pacific Ocean, the edge of its frontal moraine dipping into the sea for an extent of four miles along the coast. The central portion is chiefly fed by the Agassiz Glacier. It flows south-west, and is AT THE F.DGE OF THE MALASITNA GLACIER. bounded throughout its course by forest and moraine. Lastly, the western lobe, formed by the spreading of the Tyndall and Guyot Glaciers, runs southwards, thrusting out into the ocean a sheer cliff of ice 300 feet in height, known as Icy Cape. Huge fragments of ice are almost perpetually breaking off and falling into the sea with thunderous reports which are heard twenty miles away. Two great moraines start from the extremity of the Samovar Hills, and run into the frontal moraine between the lobes of the Malaspina. This frozen plateau is of such enormous extent that figures almost fail to give an exact idea of its dimensions. It stretches from Yakutat Bay for more than 70 miles to the east, measures from 20 to 25 miles in width, and its surface extends over 80 THE MALASPINA GLACIER more than 1,500 square miles. Mr. Russell has proved that the plateau on which the glacier rests owes its formation to two causes : first, to the enormous quantity of sediment deposited by the water beneath the glacier and at its front ; secondly, to the gradual rise in the elevation of the whole of this region, shared by the coast. In this way the size of the plateau is continually on the increase, so that the bay which still existed to the east of Icy Cape a hundred years ago is now reduced to an insignificant cove. Various indications led Mr. Russell to conclude that the Malaspina Glacier is gradually shrinking. He infers this from the immobility of the margins, which are overgrown with vegetation, and from the presence of large tracks of long-abandoned moraine deposits in the thick forest. The uniform distribution of these deposits over the soil proves that the process of shrinkage has been very slow and gradual. Besides, the east rim of the glacier, towards Yakutat Bay, gets thinner and thinner as it nears the edge in a gentle slope covered with a uniform layer of moraine, characteristics quite opposed to those observed in the fronts of growing glaciers. Mr. Russell records the disappearance of two capes formerly existing on the Pacific coast (Cape Riou and Cape Sitkagi), formed by the advance of the glacier into the ocean. This change, however, may have been partly brought about by the growth of the plateau and the disappearance of certain inlets of the coast, which has consequently become rectilinear. There has been a recent advance of the glacier at two points : near the Chaix Hills and in the vicinity of Point Manby, where the ice has travelled about 1,500 feet into the forest, and uprooted a great many trees. These forward movements may have been produced by variations of declivity, caused by upheaval of the soil, which have altered the conditions of the glacier's downward flow. Possibly, at other points, the same reason may have caused the edge of the glacier to remain stationary, or even to shrink. The glacier before us was, apparently, quite level, covered by a thick stratum of snow, and with no visible crevasses. Russell, 81 G THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS on the contrary, in 1891, had found the edge of the glacier already bare of snow, and the moraines uncovered, to a great extent, as early as the 20th of June. ^^y/^^l Putting together the ■ sledges, and testing their capabilities, proved very tedious work. We pos- sessed four sledges, mea- SLKDUE. . - . sunng 5 and 7 feet in length. They had two vertical wooden, iron-shod runners united by cross-bars, the ends of which were fitted into the upper edge of the runners and secured in place by several turns of rope passing through holes in runner and cross-bar. Two small wooden rods fixed obliquely at both ends of the sledge, between the centre of the outer bars and the runners, kept the whole framework tight. These strong and very heavy sledges were more adapted for travel- ling upon bare ice than upon snow, where the narrow runners, only about one inch wide, sank deep, and caused great increase of friction. This defect was partly remedied by widening the runners by means of slips of wood fixed to their sides. Another fault dis- covered on the very first trial of these sledges, heavily loaded, was that the runners bent outwards from the slackening of the ropes binding them to the cross- bars. Accordingly, all the fastenings had to be altered, and tightened by wedges firmly driven in at the crossing points of the ropes. This device enabled us to load each sledge with an average weight of about 750 lbs. ; therefore the whole material carried forward from the moraine amounted to 3,000 lbs. weight. S2 LOADED SLEDGES ON THE MALASPINA. THE MALASPINA GLACIER WHYMPER TENT. The loads comprised : — Five tents of green, waterproofed linen cloth, all furnished with floor-pieces stitched to the flaps. The three larger tents were 7 by 7 feet, and of the pattern sug- gested by Whymper, the two smaller ones — 6^ by 4 feet — on that of Mummery. We spread a piece of oilcloth under each tent. H,R. H. occupied one of the Mummery tents ; the rest of us two of the Whympers, while the third was allotted to the guides. With eider-down sleeping-bags, covered with stout canvas, and placed on light folding iron bedsteads, standing a span high from the ground, we were able to defy the cold at night. The guides had from the beginning preferred to reject the lu.xury of bedsteads, and were quite satisfied with their sleeping-bags. The scanty space between the beds in each tent was carpeted with a thick rug to prevent our nailed boots from piercing the oilcloth. The whole camp equipment, in- cluding our bags of clothing, waterproofs, woollens, and extra shoes for the whole party, weighed 996 lbs. Our kitchen ap- paratus consisted of two Norwegian petroleum stoves (Primus lamps), with a double lining of aluminium to protect the flame S3 MUMMERY TENT. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS from the wind and support the pots and pans, which were of the same metal. All the utensils fitted one into the other, so as to take little room and be easy to pack. We had also two small spirit-stoves, which could be kept alight on the march in order to melt snow for our broth or tea. All the kitchen apparatus, and utensils included, weighed 64 lbs. The photographic baggage, comprising two camera obscitras, sensitive plates, black tent, etc. ; meteorological instruments, medi- cines and other accessories, such as ropes, aluminium flasks, knapsack- frames and snow-shoes, formed together a weight of 235 lbs. We started ^rom the moraine provided with sixteen rations of food, each of which, packed in a hermetically sealed tin and a canvas bag, was 52 lbs. in weight, and contained one day's supply of everything required for the maintenance of ten persons, viz., of ourselves and the guides.' The supplies for our American porters had been laid in by Major Ingraham at Seattle. They were provided with three white linen tents of the same size as ours, but without flooring. The men had mackintosh sheets to spread over the snow, and thick woollen blankets to keep out the cold. Their food was also packed in rations somewhat similar to ours. Their whole equip- ment, camp-material and provisions included, weighed 1,000 lbs. At I o'clock a.m., on July ist, the signal was given for our final start from the moraine ; but it was almost 3 o'clock before we had broken up the camp, finished loading the sledges, and seen them fairly started on the immense waste of ice. It was a beautifully clear night, and half an hour later, although the sun had not yet risen, there was enough light to distinguish every detail of the view.^ To the rieht, grreat bulwarks of the Cook chain run down bounding wide valleys filled with glaciers. Above these soars the majestic summit of Mount Cook, covered with snow from 1 For full details of our equipment, vide Appendix A. '^' Vide the panorama at the end of the volume. 84 S o < 3 V) •I o c * I o • .' ■ •* THE MALASPINA GLACIER head to foot. Only here and there, on some ahnost sheer cliff, a patch of black rock serves to accentuate the form of the huge pile, whose irregularities are not discernible in the scattered, shadow- less light. The summit of the mountain forms a long crest capped by three lofty white domes, of which the central one rises to an altitude of 13,750 feet, and by a few lesser peaks. At the feet of these lies the mouth of the Marvine Glacier, flanked to the right by the isolated promontory of Blossom Island. Beyond this, towards the south-west, the east side of the Hitchcock chain stretches before us, a mass of sharp ridges and peaks, from which three great glaciers and several of lesser bulk flow down to the Malaspina. Farther on, the line of bastions seems to be interrupted for a considerable distance, and a faint white line indicates the ice fall by which the Seward Glacier pours into the Malaspina from its great basin between the Hitchcock and Samovar chains. Above the cascade rise two other imposing peaks, the Augusta (13,900 feet), and the Malaspina, of slightly inferior elevation. The projecting spur of the Samovar Hills partly hides the mouth of the Agassiz Glacier ; and far above towers the isolated pyramid of Mount St. Elias. To the left of it is the sharp lower peak of Mount Huxley (11,921 feet), with a low range of hills at its base dropping westwards in the direction of the Chaix and Robinson Hills. To the right of Mount St. Elias stands the clumsy dome of Mount Newton (13,811 feet), united to Mount Augusta by a long and deeply notched ridge. The east face of Mount St. Elias, directly before us, is divided into two walls, turning north-east and south-east by a short buttress falling steeply towards the Samovar Hills. Our march was directed towards a point, about 21 miles off, where the sharp ridge at the end of the Hitchcock chain comes down to the Malaspina. H.R. H. intended to take to the Seward Glacier from that point, as far as the foot of Pinnacle Pass, and thence the track followed by 85 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS Mr. Russell in 1890 over Dome Pass, Agassiz, and up Newton Glacier, in order to attempt Mount St. Elias from the north-east ridofe connecting^ it with Mount Newton and the Auo-usta rano;e. Judging by the accounts of previous explorers, this route seemed to offer the best chance of success, and by following it, Russell had approached much nearer to success than any other assailant of the peak. All explorers agree in describing the southern flanks of St. Elias as extremely steep, and swept by so many avalanches as to appear inaccessible. The ice plateaux at their feet are barely more than 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea, and it is doubtful whether the state of the mountain would allow of camps being pitched at a higher level. Yet without such camps it would be impossible to overcome the 15,000 feet up to the summit. But on the north- eastern flank there is the upper plateau of the Newton Glacier at 8,000 feet, and the remaining height of 10,000 may be divided by making a camp on the col. Then, too, Mr. Russell had reported that this flank was neither excessively steep, nor apparently blocked by any impassable ob- stacle ; that, in short, its only serious drawback would be the uncertain weather common to the whole region. After three hours' march, once out of sight of the moraine, nothing but snow was visible. In front, behind, and to the left, stretched the vast white level, only bounded by mountains on the right. The prospect is very grand, but not at all picturesque ; it lacks foreground, shows no contrast of colour, and the outlines are blunted by the thick snow-mantle covering every ridge and peak ; while the sun, already high above the horizon, casts no shadows to break the uniformity of the view and throw it into relief We are dazzled by the reflection of the snow, and have all put on our spectacles. Dragging sledges is tiring work; for although the snow is in fairly good condition, they sink too deep into it. Accordingly, the men are often obliged to lift the prows in order to get them over the heaps of caked snow in front. Four men are harnessed two by two 86 THE MALASPINA GLACIER to each sledge ; the pair nearest the sledge have to keep it in the right track, and as far as possible in the tracks of the sledge ahead, where the beaten snow presents a harder surface. In dividing the labour, the men naturally fall into groups according to their occupa- tions and tastes. Thus we have one team of guides, one of students, a sailor team, and a mixed team composed of Major Ingraham, Botta, and two Americans. The guides go capitally ; being accus- tomed to snow, they pull together in step. The Americans will, PREPARING TO CROSS A GLACIER STREAM. little by little, grow used to the novel task. We follow behind, helping to push the sledges and set them straight when required. At first, we march twenty minutes, and then rest for five, but our halts grow longer and more frequent as our fatigue in- creases. The surface of the glacier is undulating, and lies in long, wide furrows of monotonous, stainless white ; the general inclination is very gentle, but by no means unfelt by the teams, and whenever we come to a steeper bit, the sledges are sent on one by one with eight men attached. Little ponds or puddles of slush lie at the bottom of 87 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS almost every hollow ; and at some points our path is cut by torrents of crystal-clear water dashing over ice-beds between sheer walls of snow. Fortunately we encounter few of these torrents, and as they are not wide, we get the sledges safely over them on improvised bridges of alpenstocks and axes. The layer of snow on the glacier is of different depths, from a span to a yard and a half; but the ice is nowhere uncovered, and no stones are seen. As the day advances, the snow gets rapidly worse, and the CROSSING A GLACIER STREAM. work of dragging the sledges becomes so heavy that prudence compels us to stop in order to avoid over-fatiguing the men on the first day. It was 8 o'clock a.m., and we had taken about five hours to cover six miles. So we pitched our camp on the ice, and after a hasty meal, sought refuge from the glaring light, which was burning our faces, inside the tents, where the soft, greenish reflection filtered through the flaps rested our eyes after the pitiless reverberation without. Foreseeing that mists might come on the next day, 88 THE MALASPINA GLACIER H.R.H., with one of our party, set off in the afternoon, to map out a track over the snow in the direction of the Hitchcock range. As the sun decHned, and its rays became more slanting, the landscape was transformed. Spreading shadows on all sides re- vealed the noble lines of cliff and valley, while ample rounded flutings of whitened crests and wide, soft undulations of snow-filled ravines contrasted with precipitous rock-walls, and the steep, hard, sharply notched ridges, where, here and there, the mountain rock pierced through. The monotonous milk-white shroud covering the land at mid-day blends with the sky towards evening in a delicate harmony of tints that pleases the eye, and gives almost E.N'CAMPMENT ON THE MALASPINA. an impression of reviving life to this world of perpetual ice. On the extreme edge of the horizon, where glacier and sky seem to meet, you discern a tremulous movement, as of a distant sea with a bluish vapour floating over it. This is really an optical effect proceeding from the radiation of the earth. Then, the whole glacier is flooded with a rosy glow, rather darker than that on the mountains. In the west, the great yellow disk of the sun sheds streams of yellow rays over the level, and all the snow-waste seems on fire. The mild weather we were enjoying was too unusual to last in this region, and by midnight — the hour fixed for our awakening — it was raining in torrents. When the rain ceased about 3 a.m., we 89 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS struck camp, wrapped about by so dense a mist that in half an hour we were dripping wet. By 5 a.m. we were on the march, and surprised to find the snow pretty firm. For the first hour and a half we followed the track marked out by H.R. H. on the preceding day, but it soon became necessary to steer by the compass. We presently arranged our train so as to proceed in a perfectly straight hne. A caravan of three persons, roped together, took the lead ; for in that thick fog, and with so much snow on the glacier, hiding possible crevasses, it might have been unsafe for the vanguard to move over unknown ground without the rope. The Prince took the hindmost place on the rope and steered by the compass, keeping the line of march north by north- west. About 150 feet in the rear of the first party, and therefore hardly able to see it through the mist, came a second group of us, charged with the duty of avoiding any slight deviation from the straight line produced in correcting the course. The sledges followed last. This long procession, and the indistinct forms of the men drawing the sledges, made a fantastic picture as of a polar expedition. Earth, air, and mist are all confused in the infinite desolation surrounding us on all sides. The pale, diffused light prevents our seeing clearly through our spectacles, yet we cannot take them off without being painfully dazzled by the reflection of the snow. The sledges go better than yesterday ; their loads are more equally distributed, and the men are learning how to walk on snow. The glacier has no undulations here, and its surface is almost even, with so slight an upward inclination that we scarcely notice the ascent. 90 A HALT OX THE MALASPINA. THE MALASPINA GLACIER After marching four hours we halt near a torrent, in the rain, to snatch a hasty breakfast ; and then go on till nearly I o'clock p.m. In a little over six hours we had done seven miles. All round the camp the snow is darkened by myriads of small black worms, which swarm to the surface on misty days, but disappear when the sun comes out.^ Mixed with these are innumerable tiny insects, which are hopping about in the liveliest manner, but bury themselves under the icicles whenever a hand is extended towards them. They are Isotoma Besselsi Packard or a near variety. Here and there a fly, lost in the mist or driven by the wind, lies frozen on the snow, and becomes the prey of the spiders, lurking in wait in every little hollow of the surface. Humble as they are, these manifestations of life show a marvellous adaptability to conditions apparently in- compatible with their existence. The next morning a sliorht lifting of the weather enabled us to ascertain that we were much nearer to our goal, and had taken the right direction. Starting at 5.30 a.m., we were soon enveloped in mist again. During the first hour or so, we marched in a straight line, but were then compelled to frequently diverge from it, in order to turn broad, conical depressions, that at first sight through the mist we took for wide crevasses. It was only on our return, in clear weather, that we ascertained their nature and size. Before long the rain came down again, and the soaked snow clung heavily to our shoes and caked on the sledge-runners, gready increasing every one's fatigue. Nevertheless, we made good pro- gress with a ten minutes' rest after twenty minutes' march, and rejoicing in the hope of reaching the Hitchcock range that day. The drizzle continued in the afternoon, but the mists lifted enough to allow us a confused glimpse of the eastern extremity of the ice-fall terminating the Seward Glacier, and the spur of Hitchcock to which we were bound. At 3 o'clock we could discern a dark line of 1 Vide Prof. Carlo Emery, Appendix D, for an account of these worms and of the few zoological specimens collected by the expedition. 91 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS detritus at the base of the hills, formed by strips of naked moraine, and half an hour later we were in the snow-filled hollow between the glacier and the chain. The passage of the Malaspina was accomplished. All about us, isolated moraine heaps protruded from the snow, and under foot was such a deep bed of slush, mixed with sharp stones, that we sank in knee-deep, and there was no possibility of pitching our tents on it. The Hitchcock Hills are very steep on this side, covered with grass and low scrub, excepting where the slopes are ^^Sl * ^^^^ ^^m^^ ^lii^H '^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^Be^SS^^^^^^^ ^m^^ -—— '^w ^ ^» ^"^Ti^iii"^ ^ ^Bbt^j^ f^^^BHM ll ■ '^^^^m^^^^'^'^iJ^^K^- _4_J^^Bi^^- ur. CAMP AT THE BAbE OF THE HlKHCt'CK RANGE. seamed by slides of crumbled earth and grit. A covey of white partridge rose from the thicket at our approach, but perched on neighbouring bushes as though moved to more curiosity than alarm. This last stage had covered about eight miles. The men were exhausted, and the rain had soaked us all. The guides and porters being unprovided with bedsteads, planted their tents on a narrow grassy ledge of the hills a short distance above the glacier, but ours were pitched on the snow. Our camp stood under the south-east 92 I o <; o <: g o CQ w CQ THE MALASPINA GLACIER wall of the Hitchcock range, a few hundred yards from the Seward cascade, and 1,703 feet above the sea. This is the highest elevation of the east lobe of the Malaspina Glacier, which descends from this point to the Pacific Ocean and Yakutat Bay. The following day, 4th July, was the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. H.R. H. allowed the Americans a holiday for its celebration ; and we saw their national flag flying over their camp up the mountain side. In the nomadic life we were leading, it seemed quite natural to baptize every halting-place and every stage of our journey with names commemorating some incident of travel or local characteristic. Accordingly, our quarters by the spur of the Hitchcock chain bore the designation of "Independence" Camp. A PARTRIDGE OF THE HITCHCOCK HILLS. 93 CHAPTER VI Seward Glacier, Dome Pass, and Agassiz Glacier O U R journey across the Malaspina plateau had brought us to the very foot of the mountains, and we were now to push our way through them by the Seward Glacier, which pierces the chains like a wide high-road, dividing the groups of Mount Cook and Mount St. Elias. The Seward is the greatest known glacier of the Alpine type, and of much vaster proportions than i the giant ice-streams of the Hima- layas, which, until lately, were sujDposed to be unrivalled. It is more than 40 miles in length, from 3 to 6 miles in breadth, and flows majestically down at a very slight inclination, except here and there where the level of its bed makes a sudden dip, and the ice is split into a chaos of huge, irregular blocks. The Seward takes its origin from a wide basin, about 5,000 feet above the sea, lying be- tween the Logan and Augusta chains, and bounded to the east by the Irving range, and the vast semicircle of mountains dividing the latter from Mount Owen. It flows from this basin in a southerly direction, first walled in by the Corwin Cliffs and the northern branch of the Cook chain ; lower down by Mounts Augusta and Cook, then between the Samovar and Hitchcock Hills, and finally expands into 94 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER the eastern lobe of the Malaspina Glacier, of which it is the principal tributary. The valley through which the Seward flows presents three narrow gorges dividing from one another three vast amphitheatres of mountains, each enclosing a nearly level plain of ice. Thus the glacier forms three plateaux rising in succession like steps, and con- nected by ice-falls in the gorges. The first ice-fall is at the brink of the upper basin, at the northern extremity of the Corwin Cliffs ; the second occurs where the two boundary bulwarks of the Pinnacle Pass — i.e., the northern bastion of the Cook group and the southern wall of the Hitchcock chain — project into the valley. Below this point the glacier, which now becomes divided into countless blocks by a labyrinth of broad crevasses, presently spreads out between the Samovar and Hitchcock Hills, until the southern ends of these ranges converge, thus forming the third gorge through which the ice pushes down to the Malaspina in the final cascade. Hence, the first difficulty before us was to conquer this terminal ice-fall of the Seward. On the 4th of July, the day after we en- camped under the Hitchcock Cliffs, while the Americans higher up were celebrating the anniversary of Independence in this remote district of their fatherland, Gonella and Sella set off with two guides to explore the route. Fortunately the rain had ceased, although the sky was still clouded. We who remained in camp found plenty of work in spreading out clothes to dry, after the last two days' soaking, and arranging various things which had been neglected during our forced marches. The Hitchcock Hills end in an abrupt spur some 450 feet high, and this being separated by a depression from the principal chain, has almost the air of an independent height. Gonella and Sella made straight for a deep ravine which ran up to this gorge, hoping to find a short cut through it to the Seward valley. But they encountered an unexpected obstacle in the shape of a small lake some 300 feet wide, and covered with floating ice, just at the bottom of the couloir between the edge of the Malaspina and the hills, £3^ 95 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS analogous in formation to the lakes already described at the sides and southern end of the Chaix range. All these tarns are created in the same way. Wherever the edge of a glacier, without the pro- tection of a thick layer of moraine, touches the rock, a depression is produced on the surface by the radiation of heat from the rocks and soil that accelerates the melting of the ice. The glacier naturally drains into the cavity thus formed, giving rise to a little torrent, which hastens the melting of the ice over which it runs. Where a steep spur projects into the ice-field (as the Hitchcock and Chaix Hills project into the Malaspina), the drainage-channels of the two faces converge and often unite at the extremity, forming a lake, which again generally discharges into an ice-tunnel. The exploring party tried to reach the mountain side by skirt- ing this lake, and finally reached it after no little trouble and risk of accidents from the numerous water-holes in the marginal ice. They then reached the couloir, and mounting by it to the depression in the ridge, soon found themselves at the edge of the Seward, on the plateau above the terminal ice-fall. They then followed the glacier downwards, in the direction of the ice-fall, and climbed the isolated point at the extremity of the Hitchcock Hills, hoping to discover some easier and safer route than the one they had just traversed, so that the whole caravan with the loads might reach the plateau without risk. This hope was realized, for in the angle between the ice-fall and the extremity of the mountain they descried a steep gully filled with snow, running up for about 300 feet, and which, notwithstanding a steep gradient, could be converted into a safe track, even for portage, by cutting a zig-zag course with the axe. On the morning of the 5th July the guides went on ahead to do this work, while we broke up the camp. And now for the first time our caravan was divided. Five Americans were sent back with a sledge to fetch eight days' rations from the stores left on the moraine. In the three other sledges we carried all our things to the foot of the gully, making our way round the Hitchcock spur 96 u ■< o u < Z i— ■ o o o CO V] CO SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER among the sharp-edged boulders and stones of the left Seward moraine. This Seward moraine is composed of a strip of detritus, about 1,500 feet in breadth, running down several miles into the Malaspina Glacier. But now, early in July, it was still almost entirely covered with snow, save for a small space near the hills. The porters slowly climbed the narrow wedge of snow beside the ice-fall, on the track cut by the guides. They soon got used to the steepness, but refrained from imitating the guides in their glissades down the slope to bring up fresh loads. Caution was advisable, for the scattered stones and open crevasses at the foot of the gully would have rendered a fall dangerous. By half- past 1 1 o'clock all the baggage was stacked on the Seward plateau, above the terminal ice-fall.^ On the plateau we were in the midst of novel scenery, entirely different from that of the Mala- spina. Instead of the vast monotonous plain stretching to the horizon, unbroken by a single detail of line or colour, we now had before us a mass of ice some five miles wide, thrown up, as ^ This track was never used again, either by the porters with fresh relays or by ourselves on the descent. Some days after we had climbed it, the lake at the foot of the Hitchcock became empty, and thus the caravans were able to cross its bed and mount straight to the hollow above without skirting the mountain spur. Lake Caetani and the Chaix Hills' lakes are subject to similar changes. They naturally overflow when the tunnels into which they discharge are blocked by masses of ice or detritus, and drain off when the tunnels are free. COULOIR LEADING UP TO THE SEWARD. 97 H THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS by some violent convulsion of nature, into myriads of great blocks piled in the wildest confusion, like an ocean suddenly congealed during a storm, though lacking the symmetry of waves. We were on a snow-drift heaped in a bend of the Hitchcock range, flanking the glacier. A mile or so beyond this point a cliff of the Hitchcock approached the glacier so closely as almost to come in contact with the scracs. We had no choice as to the route ; our only course lay over the snow, round the base of the cliff. THE S-EWARI) SEKACS — MOl'NT AUGUSTA AND MOUNT MALASl'lNA. It was clearly impossible to take to the glacier, since it was seamed with crevasses in every direction. Equally impossible would it have been to cross to the other side. We must skirt the left margin, hugging the base of the Hitchcock's western flank, until we reach some jDoint where a crossing can be effected. Fortu- nately the numerous neve's and glaciers from that mountain had massed together at its base, forming an almost uninterrupted dyke along the brink of the Seward. Following this route, w^e were able to convey the loads by sledge for considerable distances. But 98 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER at many points it was necessary to carry everything on our backs, in order to climb steep drifts or cross rocky spurs which barred the road. From this face of the Hitchcock range project two main spurs, each ending in a bifurcation enclosing a small neve in its curve. The recess between the two great promontories forms a circular basin filled with level ice, which we named the Hitchcock Glacier. CAMP ON HITCHCOCK GLACIER, CLOSE TO THE SEWARD— THE TOP OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS SEEN THROUGH THE CLOUDS. It is dominated to the north by two sharp twin-peaks, one of bare rock, the other snow-clad, whose northern flanks fall sheer to Pinnacle Glacier. These are the two highest peaks of the Hitchcock group. It was easy enough to get round the first spur through the snow at its base without unloading the sledges more than twice. We next crossed the Hitchcock Glacier, still skirting the jagged sdracs of the Seward, as far as the foot of the second great spur. This is 99 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS much loftier than the first, and juts out to the very edge of the Seward. It forms the southern wall of the Pinnacle Glacier, which, uniting with the Seward lower down, shoots over the ridge of this wall in an ice-fall. At one time traversing obliquely the steep bank of sliding soil, at another moment passing through snow-filled gullies, or climbing the ridges at their sides, we finally surmounted the second buttress ; and at midday, on the 8th of July, camp was pitched at 2,979 feet above the sea, in the extreme south-west corner of the Qflacier that comes down from Pinnacle Pass. It had taken four days to reach this point from the Malaspina. We had established a camp at the foot of the first buttress, and another, close to the second, on the Hitchcock Glacier. Excepting for a few hours, the weather had been almost constantly fine. The sun, even when partially veiled by mist, was excessively hot upon the glacier, and the light so dazzling that our eyes suffered in spite of smoked spectacles. H.R. H. always left camp with a small party several hours in advance of the rest of the caravan, in order to prospect the way ahead, and daily pushed on to the farthest possible point. The loaded sledges followed slowly in the rear, and by evening we were all together in camp. The day we reached Pinnacle Glacier, H.R. H. pushed on to explore the route over the Seward, and following it almost to the mouth of the valley running down from Dome Pass, only returned to camp very late in the afternoon. He had ascer- tained that we must continue to skirt the edge of the Seward for two or three miles, before finding a practicable way across. Only the guides were with us now. Ingraham and his five remaining porters had gone down with a sledge to meet the first party coming back from the Malaspina moraine. The latter were to join us farther up with fresh supplies, while Ingraham's party took its turn in going down to the depot on the moraine. From this time on we only saw the porters occasionally and for brief periods. They were so prompt in following out H.R. H.'s plans, and executed his orders with so much punctuality, in spite of 100 < o R K r' H 3 h W CQ 2 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER unforeseen obstacles from bad weather and changed condition of the mountain, that we were never once delayed by having to wait for them. Our camp was pitched on a tongue of the Pinnacle Glacier' that runs southward and crosses the end of a spur of the Hitchcock Hills, to unite with the Seward in an ice-fall. All the rest of the glacier is one great unbroken level, which joins the Seward with a wide frontage, and rises gently eastwards to Pinnacle Pass. ICE-CASCADE AT THE JUNCTION OF PINNACLE WITH THE SEWARD GLACIERS. Behind the pass we again caught sight of the snowy summit of Mount Cook. Beyond the level before us rose the vertical wall belonging to the Cook system, that forms the northern rampart of Pinnacle Pass. This wall is composed of distinct horizontal strata of black and grey rock and surmounted by the sharp, slender pinnacles to which the col owes its name. This bastion hid from our view the upper portion of the Seward. It stretches so far to the west that the valley is barely three miles wide at 1 Vide the panoramic view of the Seward basin, at the end of the volume. loi THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS this point. Nevertheless, the glacier does not form an ice-fall here, there being no sudden drop in the level of its bed, but flows in a steep incline until it has passed the mouth of the Pinnacle valley, to the upper spur of the Hitchcock range. There is a deep calm in these luminous afternoons. The glacier is alive with the murmur of running water in the crevasses, and the sharp repercussion of stones falling from the si'i-acs. You can hear the stir of hidden vitality, the process of slow, continuous PINNACLE GLACIER, MOUNT COOK. change, although nothing is visible to the eye but the great frozen mass, betraying no sign of the giant force with which these millions of tons of ice press slowly forward. The whole glacier is covered with snow ; only at the edges, s^racs, soiled with detritus, form a darker line indicative of marginal moraine. These lines were much more distinct a month later, on our way back from Mount St. Elias. The whole Hitchcock chain stretches in a wide crescent flankinof the Seward, and we can trace the route followed during the X02 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER previous days along the base of the cliffs. The farther side the glacier is bounded by the Samovar Hills, a low chain of rounded, stumpy heights covered with snow-fields, and broken by low ridges dividing vales filled by small glaciers. A crag of black rock, ap- parently separated from the main chain by a level tract of ice, juts into the Seward exactly facing the north bastion of Pinnacle Pass, and helps to narrow the valley at this point. It also masks a considerable glacier running up to the Dome Pass. NORTH BUTTRESS OF PINNACLE GLACIER. Behind the southern extremity of the Samovar chain, walling in the terminal cascade of the Seward, we perceive the outlines of other crests of the same group, litde parallel ridges projecting towards the Malaspina. A large moraine produced by the fusion of the marginal moraines of Seward and Ao^assiz starts from these bastions and trails down into the Malaspina, like a colossal ribbon, trending westwards as far as the eye can reach, and dividing the eastern from the middle lobe of the glacier. This moraine also is now coated with snow. Behind the extremity of the THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS Samovar we discern the mouth of the Agassiz Glacier with its terminal cascade, and, still farther back, the Chaix Hills slightly veiled in mist. The Malaspina, usually obscured by low banks of fog, is distinctly visible this evening in all its vast extent to the far horizon, where it ends in a pale blue line that re- sembles, but is not, the sea. Behind the Samovar chain, there, to the west, towers the symmetrical pyramid of Mount St. Elias. How much closer have we approached it since the day we first beheld it, half shrouded in mist, from the deck of the Bertha ! Here, the proportions of the landscape are on so vast a scale that our peak seems to have dwindled, for all its importance, and we hesitate to believe it can be as much as 18,000 feet in height. At the feet of the northern and southern extremities of the mountain, which we now see in profile, rise the peaks of Mount Huxley and Mount Newton ; while exactly facing us is the short, steep south-east ridge that joins the south bastion of the Newton valley. The northern wall of this same valley consists of a lengthy chain extending east- wards from Mount Newton, first surmounted by a string of unnamed summits, and then by the three great peaks of Mounts Bering,^ ^ H.R.H. gave the name of Bering to a broad snow-summit due west of Mount Malaspina and of somewhat inferior Ireight. Viewed from the Seward, the top has the appearance of a long ridge running up at the eastern end to a peak that is connected with Mount Malaspina by a wide col of ice. Russell mentions a peak called Jeannette between Mounts Newton and Malaspina, but I was unable to obtain exact indications as to its locality. 104 MOUNT ST. ELIAS— SEWARD GLACIER BENEATH PINNACLE GLACIER. SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER Malaspina, and Augusta. The last of these unites with the head of the Samovar range. ^ Mount Augusta (almost 14,000 feet) is undoubtedly the most important peak of this group, and the only one of sufficient majesty to compete with Mount St. Elias. It is a bald, precipitous peak, seamed with deep ice couloirs, crested with terrific ridges and with overhanging glaciers which apparently cling to sheer walls of rock. This face of the mountain appears to be quite inac- WEST FACE OF THE HITCHCOCK CHAIN AND LEFT FLANK OF THE SEWARD, FROM THE BASE OF PINNACLE GLACIER. cessible ; our guides look at it reflectively, and confess that it would be hard to find a path up it unswept by avalanches of stones and ice. Beyond Mount Augusta the chain suddenly takes another direction, bends to the north-east, and, dipping down considerably, forms the Corwin Clifts, which flank the Seward Glacier to the west. ' Vide note at page 1 1 8. 105 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS Ever-changing mists drift lazily along the glaciers, gather upon the summits, vanish behind the peaks, and again return to shroud them the next moment. The sky is mottled with broken, shapeless clouds, tinged with rose colour here and there, while in the west the great blurred, yellow sun sinking into the mists is perhaps the best part of the picture. Throughout the vast expanse before us, bare rocks and ice are all that meet the eye ; not a trace of life, not a patch of verdure to enliven FI.OWERIXG LUriNS, BELOW THE PINNACLE CASCADE. the desolate majesty of the scene. The southern spur of the Chaix Hills and Blossom Island are the only spots in this mountain waste where trees are to be found. On the southern slopes of the Hitchcock Hills, thickets of dwarf shrubs are the only growth. Nevertheless, at a short distance from the camp, against the south bastion of the Pinnacle, close to the spires and turrets of the ice-fall, we discovered a little stretch of soil where the snow had just melted, already clad with a thick mantle of dark blue lupins, mingled with violets, anemones, saxifrages, and moss. We noticed 106 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER a few black flies among the flowers, and some pretty little grey birds, of the size of sparrows, were flying about overhead. A very oasis of colour and fragrance in the midst of the lifeless waste of ice. On the 9th of July we crossed the snout of Pinnacle Glacier. It is from 2^ to 3 miles in width, almost flat, and covered by a thick bed of snow, seamed in little parallel grooves, with long. FLOWER-COVERED SLOPE OF THF. HITCHCOCK HILLS. reddish stripes formed by masses of the microscopic weed {Sphcerella nivalis) ^ that is common to glaciers in all parts of the world. The Seward sc'racs cling so closely to the north buttress of 1 There is a complete flora of snow and ice, consisting of many species of weeds and lichens, all of the most diminutive size. Wittrock (quoted by A. Heim in Gktsckerkunde, Stuttgart, 1885, p. 411) describes forty species of the Snow Flora, ten of the Ice Flora, and five species common to both. 107 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS the pinnacle that we cannot skirt round its base. Fortunately, a small snow-saddle was found close to its final spur, to which we were able to climb by a convenient bank of snow. On the rock ridge near the camp we discovered a scrap of cloth, evidently torn from a tent, and a small pile of stones. These were the only traces of mankind encountered during the whole of our ascent, and were left by Russell in 1S90, when he camped here for several days after crossing Pinnacle Pass.^ THE HITCHCOCK HILLS, FROM " RUSSELL CAMP." Accordingly, we named this neck of snow Russell's Camp. The ridge just above it juts out in a sharp point, which Mr. Russell christened Point Glorious, to mark his admiration of the view it afforded over the Seward basin and the encircling mountains. On the slope behind Point Glorious there is a great level amphitheatre bounded to the south by the Pinnacle Cliffs, to 1 The narrow ridge of the Pinnacle Cliffs, on which we were encamped, is inter- esting geologically. In Appendix E, Sig. Vittorio Novarese, of the Royal Geo- logical Office (Rome), has given an account of the mineralogical specimens collected by the expedition, together with a short, critical summary of Mr. Russell's works on the geology of the Mount St. Elias region. 108 ► i^ "'^'^^f-'r. ■^ff^Si^tj !:y.v,«.^?Ba-^v-;--.-.;>^^tSia--; ..^.^M ^W S. ElIAS from SEV/AED glacier - O'N SUNSET, SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER north and east by long slopes of snow rising to the flanks of the Mount Owen chain. In the distance, behind Mount Owen, we discern another gigantic snow-peak. Mount Irving, resembling Mount Cook, whose northern flanks drop down towards the upper basin of the Seward. This upper basin seems bounded to the north by a girdle of mountains mostly covered with snow and, probably, joining Mount Logan to the west. Looking down on the Seward Glacier beneath us, we note MOUNT OWEN, FROM POINT GI.OKIOUS. that its crevasses are as regularly disposed as if planned on some colossal design. Immediately below the upper cascade, at the outlet of the original basin, the glacier forms a wide, gently- sloped expanse cut by numerous crevasses. About a mile above Point Glorious the slope becomes steeper, while the glacier deviates from its former south-easterly course, and, making a slight bend, flows straight towards the south. The upper portion has only marginal crevasses, which run, as usual, obliquely from the lateral banks towards the centre of the glacier against the direction of the current, and branch off 109 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS from the sides at an angle of about 40°.^ The cracks proceeding from either margin of the glacier meet in the centre lower down, thus forming crevasses in the shape of an inverted letter V, across the entire width of the ice, with the apex in the centre and pointing upwards, the extremities at the sides and turning downwards. These crevasses occur at regular intervals about 50 feet apart. But their shape changes before long. Owing to the greater velocity of the current in the middle of the glacier, the vertex SEWARD GL.\CIER (CENTRAL PORTION). of the V flows down faster than the ends ; and the original angle of 50° to 60° becomes more and more obtuse, until every crevasse runs in a straight line all the way across. As the descent continues, the angle is gradually reversed : first the crevasses become crescent-shaped, with the cavity turned upwards ; then again take the form of a V, enclosing an angle of about 30°, with the apex downwards. Meanwhile, the cracks grow wider ' For complete explanation of this particular arrangement of crcvassa the reader is referred to books treating of glacial phenomena. no SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER and wider at the centre of the glacier, and the layers of ice dividing one from another are broken up by the constant pressure into short crevasses running in a perpendicular direction to the main ones, and parallel with the glacier's axis. Thus, at last, the whole mass is split up into gigantic cubes, most of which are completely isolated by fissures on every side. Below the point where Pinnacle Glacier runs into the Seward, the crevasses are so numerous and so intricately interlaced that no fixed order of arrangement can be traced : nothing but irre- gular blocks of every size heaped up at random. And in this state the glacier continues down to its terminal cascade. The aspect of the Seward was somewhat different in 1890, when Mr. Russell first saw and described it. At that time the transversal arrangement of the crevasses was maintained down to the lower portion of the glacier, and the surface became smoother for some distance before reaching the final cascade. Possibly, all the ice was more thickly covered with snow that year. Even the glacier's rate of descent must have decreased since 1890. Although Russell's attempts to measure it at the time failed to give con- formable results, he maintains that the rate of speed in the centre of the glacier must be 20 feet daily, at the least. Mr. Russell and his fellow-e.xplorer, Mr. Kerr, both relate how sdracs frequently crashed down with such force as to shake the ice under their feet, and they add that almost incessant reports and rumblings were produced by the rolling and shattering of the fallen blocks. Nothing of the kind was observed by ourselves during the days we spent on and about the Seward. The glacier was always per- fectly quiet ; only now and then a solitary stone would come down, or a fragment of siirac would drop into a crevasse with a dull thud. Seated on the rocky spur near the camp by Russell's stone cairn, we gaze with emotion upon the splendid spectacle before us. As usual, the evening light softens all the details. The faint haze clinging to the mountains lends a peculiar softness to III THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS their harsh ridges and to the dark shadows in the hollows. The glaciers of Hitchcock, of Seward, and of the distant Malaspina, are a warm creamy white ; the faintest trace of shadow just barely marks their broad undulations. Our caravan track runs like a furrow across the Pinnacle Glacier : the only break in its great level surface. Delicate mists wreath the highest peaks. The sun has set slowly behind Mount St. Elias, and its two crests, north and south, glow faintly, as if they were phosphorescent. One last ray gilds the summit of Mount Augusta, whose darkly shadowed slopes look black and sullen, in vivid contrast to the splendour around. Frost has arrested all movement ; no stone falls, there is no sound of water in the crevasses of the Seward. A dead calm prevails, an utter silence, a penetrating and serene sense of peace. The following day (loth of July) we crossed the Seward. To find a route down to the glacier we had to coast again, for a while, round the edge of the spur on which we had camped, dragging the sledge over the snow- slope at its base. The weather was cloudy and oppressive ; the snow in a very bad state. The guides found it as much as they could do to manage a single sledge, while we assisted in pushing it over the steeper parts of the way, and sup- porting it with our shoulders to keep it from rolling downhill. After conquering a second spur, covered with broken ice, by dint of carrying all the baggage on our backs, we again reloaded the sledge, and finally struck out across the Seward in a westerly direction. The glacier is about three miles wide at this point, but we were obliged to take so tortuous a route in order to avoid the crevasses that the distance was nearly doubled, in spite of the preliminary exploration by H.R. H., which had reduced these inevitable deviations to the minimum. We kept a course parallel with the huge ci-cvasses along strips of ice scarcely wider than the sledge, and sometimes across square blocks connected by snow bridges, which were, fortunately, solid enough. A part)- of two, roped together, were in the van, carefully 112 X H o <; 3 w CO o < CO o 4>- < SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER testing and "sounding" with the ice-axe every bridge over which the heavily-laden sledge and its team of five men had to pass. The transversal crevasses measured from 30 to 50 feet in width, and had a pecuHarity that was quite new " to us all. Their walls were not of ice but of granulated snow, arranged in strata 10 to 15 feet thick, separated one from the other by darker layers of dust and fine detritus. In the deeper fissures we counted from eighteen to twenty of these snow-strata ; but in none, as far down as we could see, was there any of the green ice peculiar TRAVERSING THE SEWARD. to glaciers. Every one of these strata must be the result of a fall of snow, while the intermediate dark layers represent periods of fine weather. As we drew nearer to the middle of the valley, the whole expanse of the amphitheatre north of the Pinnacle Cliffs, with Mount Cook in the background, unfolded itself to our eyes. So many tributary glaciers pour down into the Seward from all sides, that one scarcely understands how so enormous a volume of ice can possibly squeeze through the gorge between the Pinnacle Cliffs and Samovar Hills. The wall of Mount Augusta towered above II?. I THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS MOUNT AUGUSTA, FROM THE SEWARD. US, but its base was hidden by a low sandstone buttress separating the Augusta Glacier from the Cascade Glacier.^ The peak appears to be a retrular cone of snow, the summit of which is lost in the clouds. On reaching the mouth of the valley coming down from the Dome Pass, we see beyond the latter, and above the Samovar ridge, the whole course of an- other great vale, closed on its western side by a wall of ice terminating in a col at the foot of the north ridge of Mount St. Elias. This is the Newton valley, and the remainder of our route lies mapped out before us. Then gradually, as we draw closer to the Samovar Hills, Mount St. Elias and Newton valley begin to sink behind them and finally vanish altogether. On reaching the point where the glacier tlowing down from the Dome Pass unites with the Seward, we call a brief halt for lunch. After this, the truides qo back to fetch the second sledge, while H.R. H. and the rest of us, dragging the one we have with us, push on a mile or so farther up the Dome Pass valley, and pitch camp at about 3,350 feet above the sea. ^^ .rlSf ,. iit^W^Bp ib.^ ^^J S7K .m^ - ■ V.T. CAMT OX MiWAKll r.LACIEK. 1 I'u/f note on page 1 1 8. 114 u o S > b CO <; SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER Towards evening rain begins to fall, and continues the whole of the next day. The guides employ the time in bringing up the remainder of the baggage from Russell Camp, discarding at the base of Pinnacle Cliffs one of the two sledges we had re- tained. Thus there is now one sledge on the Malaspina, another on the snow- slopes of the Hitchcocks, and a third on the Seward. In this way the porters are spared the labour of carrying them on their backs across ice-falls and rocks. CAMT OX THE SEWARD, AT 1 HE FOOT OF DOME PASS : LOOKIN'C EAST. The glacier by which wc have to mount from the Seward to the Dome Pass is not steep, and the few wide crevasses are spanned by solid snow-bridges. At the beginning of the ascent we have on the right the Cascade Glacier, which falls precipitously down from the south-east face of Mount Augusta through a deep gully ; farther on, our course lies between sheer walls of the Samovar Hills, composed of rocks so homogeneous in structure that, in spite of continual avalanches of stones, no coidoirs are formed. The little side gullies opening here and there are filled with snow. 115 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT SI'. ELIAS Higher up, near the pass, the incline becomes somewhat steeper, and we have to skirt round a few yawning crevasses. The Dome Pass (3,800 feet) is more than 300 feet above our last camp. Two glaciers flow down from it, one eastward into the Seward, the other westward into the Agassiz. The pass is flanked on either side by two symmetrical, smoothly-curved domes, that to the south-west crowned by a perfectly hemispherical ice-cap, the other to the north-cast with a rocky top bordered by a snow cor- nice, soon to be melted by the sun. The cloudy weather, soon CAlir AT THE FOOT OF DOME PASS, ON THE SEWARD : LOOKING WEST. to change to fog and rain, prevents us from obtaining any view to the west of the co/ in the direction of the Agassiz Glacier. On the day when w-e encamped on the Dome Pass, we were joined by Ingraham and the five Americans who had descended to the moraine from Independence Camp, meeting on their way the other five who were journeying back from Pinnacle Camp. In the space of one week these hardy Americans had done more than forty miles on the Malaspina Glacier (going and returning), and over twenty miles in addition by the difiicult route along the base 116 u o en o o o u SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER of the Hitchcock Hills and across the Seward, carrying baggage of about 600 lbs. weight, including their own provisions and equipment, together with eight days' rations for our own party. It was remarkable to see how rapidly the men became accustomed to carry on their backs or drag upon sledges increasingly heavy weights. The 45 to 50 lbs. per head that at first was considered a heavy burden on almost level paths became the ordinary load DOME r.\ss. for every porter, even on difficult tracks and steep inclines. As for the guides, each of them was now equal to carrying as much as So lbs. weis^ht for a moderate distance. The valley branching westward from the Dome Pass is longer than that to the east, and is still walled in by the Samovar Hills. The cliffs are of the same character as before. The glacier is only slightly ci'evassed, and terminates at the bottom in a drop, luckily not steep enough to form an ice-fall. We descend it 117 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELI AS easily, letting the sledge slide down on a wide ridge of ice between two deep furrows, and halt (13th July) on the eastern ridge of the Agassiz Glacier, at the foot of the col. We have descended about 485 feet, so are now a little lower than at the corresponding camp on the Seward, about 3,566 feet above the sea. The Agassiz Glacier — its broken surface bristling- with iasfored si'racs — skirts the base of the north buttress of the Dome Pass, < AMI' (TN THE DOME TA^S. winding towards Mount Augusta and the Malaspina. Behind, there must be a great basin collecting the snows from the west flank of Mount Augusta, from the Malaspina and Behring, bounded by the Samovar chain on the east, and, on the west, by a ridge running down from the Behring and dividing the upper basin of the Agassiz from the lower part of the Newton.^ Our camp stands 1 Mr. Russell gives a somewhat different account of the topography of this region. In his opinion, the head of the .Samovar chain, instead of Joining on to Mount Augusta, is connected with Mount Malaspina, whence glaciers run down into the Seward (Cascade Glacier). From our own observations on the spot, and from 118 w l-H o -^ O I— ' CO CO W h :3 o SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER facing the great cascade of scracs with which the Newton hurls itself down into the Agassiz, and at their point of junction the two glaciers are of about equal volume. On the north buttress of the Dome Pass, rising steeply at a little distance from us, a few patches of green are still seen 600 feet higher up. The limit of vegetation on the mountain slopes ON THE AOASSIZ, AKTER THE RAIN. careful studies from the photos we brought back, the arrangement of the mountains would seem to accord with the description I have given above. That is to say, the Samovar chain would form a buttress of Mount Augusta (supposing this name to be applied to the highest and most imposing summit of the group), and all the glaciers on the southern walls of Mount Malaspina would flow into the upper basin of the Agassiz. The buttress coming down from Mount Behring, and bordering this basin to the west, is the same that, during the whole of our march up the Newton valley, hid from us the western flanks of Malaspina and Augusta, and is clearly seen in all the photographs of the region to the east of Newton Glacier which were taken in Newton valley, on the Russell col, and on the ridge of Mount St. Elias. We have retained the name of Cascade for the great glacier flowing from the southeast flank of Mount Augusta, situated between the head of the Samovar chain and a short buttress that divides it from the Augusta Glacier. It falls into the glacier that descends to the east of the Dome Pass, just before the latter is merged in the Seward. 119 THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS facing south must be therefore at about the level of 4,000 feet above the sea. From the camp we can hear the note of partridges among scanty grass-tufts, as well as the whistle of an occasional marmot. The spurs on the north of the Malaspina Glacier own a richer fauna than might be expected. On the Chaix Hills a good many- bears, wolves, foxes, mountain goats, partridges, and a shrew- mouse have been found. A track well beaten by quadrupeds runs north-east from the base of the hills and across the Malaspina 1 lit A^,A--~IZ GLACIER. Glacier for seven or eight miles towards the Samovar chain (Russell). Even a fish was once found in a glacier torrent that pours into the Caetani Lake. The history of these zoological species would repay study. How and when did they come here, and from where ? Imprisoned in a narrow zone, surrounded by glaciers on every side, in a region where the earth is frost-bound for at least seven months of the year, their existence seems almost miraculous. Easterly and south-easterly winds were now blowing per- 120 SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER sistently, accompanied by rain, mist, and heavy cloud-banlcs, which hung motionless about a thousand feet overhead. During several days the sun only appeared at distant intervals for a short time, emitting a pale, colourless light that the reflection from the snow rendered fatiguing and bewildering. Infinite precautions had to be taken to keep the interior of our tents tolerably dry. But by this time we were almost damp-proof The temperature remained quite bearable, being nearly always a little above freez- ing point, and two hours of misty sunshine sufficed to dry our belongings. The expectation of what was before us and of the probable hardships to be faced made us indifferent to petty inconveniences. Mindful of Russell's ad- vice, Sella had adopted the plan of lowering a pail down a crevasse and obtaining water in this fashion. It was a happy idea, and led to much saving of fuel. Consider- able heat is required to melt snow or ice, and as half a gallon of petroleum was the daily allowance for making early coffee, tea at other meals, and soup for all ten of us, it was best to be thrifty. Accordingly, we always tried to camp near a tarn, and some- times patiently collected water from the drippings of a con- venient sdrac during the warm part of the day. We crossed the Agassiz on July 15th, re-ascending it obliquely towards the western extremity of the Newton ice-fall. The surface of the glacier is very unequal, and on the left half of it 121 K i;-V.\UI.T OVER A I.AKEI.ET ON THE AGASSIZ C.I.ACIER. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS (to the east) every depression is filled by a small pool. Here and there we came upon torrents. As previously on the JVIalaspina, we got the sledge over these by bridging them with our ice-axes. The water of these lakes is clear as crystal, of dark cobalt blue in the centre, where it is deepest, and shading off to a fainter tint near the edge. Where snow-bridges occur across the tarns, the colour of the water is reflected on the snow in extremely delicate tones. We I wir A I rill', loi.i oi- Ni:\vi'i\ r,i.\i. encountered many wide crcz'asscs, and sometimes strange sc'rars formed arches and viaducts over the blue water, often resembling the work of man. At the end of our march the tents were pitched on the western side of the glacier, at 3,740 feet above the sea, beside a small pool canopied by a great, smoothly curved, overhanging sc'rac, resting on a pillar of ice. We were now at the foot of a buttress which comes straight down from St. Elias, and after forming the south wall of Newton 122 X W O K O o o < o SEWARD GLACIER, DOME PASS, AND AGASSIZ GLACIER valley Glacier, bends to the south-east at the latter's terminal cascade, and becomes the boundary of the Agassiz valley. From the camp we had only a view of the Newton terminal cascade, which is loftier and wider than any we had seen before, and with the flank of the Newton Augusta chain, covered with huge, precipitous glaciers, making most imposing of backgrounds. H.R. H. had already explored a track to the Newton, up a narrow wedge of snow between the western brink of the cascade and the rock- cliff walling it in. Having passed the last point where the sledge can be used, all the loads must henceforth be carried on our backs. We leave everything behind except clothes actually in wear, thus limiting our baggage to the barest necessaries of life. Mr. Russell had adopted the same course, and practically at the same point, in 1891 ; accordingly, the present camp at the foot of the Newton Glacier retained for us the name he had formerly given it of " Sledge Camp." 12?. CHAPTER VII Newton Glacier O jN July i6th we struck our tents at Sledge Camp and set out to climb the Newton Glacier, divid- ing our party into several cara- vans, each of which started as soon as the loads were packed. We had spent one night only in this camp, and had worked very hard to get everything in readiness for the start. We were impatient to make our way up this last valley, from the top of which we expected to obtain a complete view of Mount St. Elias from base to summit. The Agassiz Glacier pours down from its basin in a very broken state, and its surface becomes still more chaotic as it flows past the terminal cascade of the Newton. The two glaciers do not fuse at once in a single mass at their point of junction ; for some distance the Newton sdracs stand out from the surface of the Aeassiz in the shape of huge blocks of hard snow, scattered between the crevasses, or half buried in them, now stretching across them like a bridre, or again poised on the very brink, often at so sharp an angle that one expects them to fall at any moment. To reach the foot of the ice- fall at the western end, we have to walk for a while over this rugged tangle of the Agassiz, threading labyrinths of ice-blocks and 124 rt CO O < I? o NEWTON GLACIER cautiously crossing snow-bridges, over numerous crevasses, often half filled with water. We gained the Newton jolateau in the same way that we had mounted the terminal ice-fall of the Seward ; namely, by a tongue of snow and ice wedged between the rocks and sch'acs. This gully, however, is double the height of that on the Seward (about 600 feet), and is split half- way up by three or four wide crevasses, with edges of live ice, placed almost vertically one above the other. To cross these with our loads was an unpleasant bit of work, but neither difficult nor dangerous. The snow in the gully was studded with stones and boulders fallen from the perpen- dicular rock-wall 1,000 feet in height, which bounds it on the left, and is furrowed with innumer- able vertical grooves, sur- mounted at the top by a glacier, of which the edge is visible. On reaching the top of this couloir we turned to the riyht towards the centre of the Newton Glacier. The upper valley was filled with mist, and we could see nothing in front of us, excepting another huge fall of sdracs, extend- ing across the whole width of the glacier and apparently barricading the valley. In little more than half an hour we had traversed the 1^5 TERMINAL CASCADE OF NEWTON GLACIER (SHOWING THE KOUTE TAKEN BY THE TARTY). THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS 'f)la:teaLi--and-cast off our loads almost at the foot of the second ice- fall, i4,4