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lays down a "glacier" coming down nearly to the water. The Admiralty chart No. 2431 of 1865 has the words water glacier" at the site of the Mendenhall.

The Mendenhall Glacier was examined in 1901 by Mr. Marsden Manson, of San Francisco, and he has allowed us the use of his memoranda. From a stake and cairn placed in front of the glacier in 1892 by a miner, Mr. Manson found the front had retreated forty or fifty feet a year to the time of his visit. Personally, Mr. Manson examined the ages of the trees between the front of the glacier and the shore. Trees from nine inches diameter to thirty-two inches had been felled, and as he progressed southward, he gives these figures, reckoning a year for each ring:

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No aged or fallen trees were found, and in advancing towards the glacier from a distance of three-quarters to one mile no trees could be found more than twenty inches in diameter. The diameter decreased towards the glacier, and within one quarter of a mile of the front mere seedlings were found; and closer to the front these gave way to alder brush, dwarf cottonwood, grasses, and mosses. Mr. Manson made observations upon the size of the trees on the sides of the mountains exposed by the recession of the glacier, to test the rate of change of size and age, as he had done in front of the glacier. At the front of the glacier and above its surface the side of the mountain on the east side is marked by moraine boulders for some height; then by alder and seedling spruce; higher by half grown spruce; and finally by full grown spruce. His cross section sketch, of August, 1901, does not give actual heights.

THE TAKU INLET OR THE ARM OF ICE.

Glaciers No. VIII.

XXIX. This inlet opens upon the Stephens Passage at its northeast sharp turn. The southwest point of the entrance is named

Bishop Point, the width is two and a quarter miles, and the depth of the channel is 110 fathoms. The inlet has several sharp turns for twenty-one miles, with an average width of two miles; at the head it spreads out, and beyond Point Taku the cañon like valley of the River Taku is filled with low lands. The general direction is a little east of north; and the mountains on each side reach over 4,000 feet elevation within a mile or two of either shore.

The Windom Glacier. On the west side, opposite Point Taku the fan shaped moraine delta of this glacier has a frontage of three miles. One and a quarter miles inland is the front of the glacier with a face of a mile and five-eighths in width. It comes down between mountains of 4,000 feet elevation. The subsurface of the delta front has narrowed the channel to two thirds of a mile, with a depth of twenty-five fathoms.

The Foster Glacier. Five miles northwest from Point Taku, and three and a half miles north of the Windom, is the face of the Foster Glacier, which comes into fifty fathoms of water with a face fourfifths of a mile broad. It comes down between high mountains. The Harriman Alaska Expedition calls this the Taku Glacier, and it is so known to steamship men.

On the Coast Survey chart No. 8050, 1902, there is a branch glacier of the Foster, quite near its front, drawn to the eastward on the north side of a mountain of 2,434 feet elevation; on the chart No. 8300 (1895) that branch is not drawn, but in its place is laid down a lake.

Nine miles north of Point Taku, among the flats of the river the Twin Glacier comes from the west with a convex front of two and one-half miles.

These three large glaciers come from the Lion's Head sea of ice; and are therefore on the right bank of the inlet and river.

About fifteen miles up the river from Point Taku the Wright Glacier comes from the eastsoutheast, and presents a convex frontage of two and one-half miles upon the marshes. It comes upon the left bank of the stream.

These glaciers are not laid down by Vancouver nor by Tebenkof. In August, 1794, when Lieutenant Whidbey entered the Taku Inlet (without naming it) his progress was retarded by "a great "quantity of floating ice," and at thirteen miles the shores spread out and form a large basin about a league broad and two leagues

across, northwest and southeast.

"From the shores of this bason "a compact body of ice extended some distance nearly all around"; and "from the rugged gullies in the [mountain] sides were projected immense bodies of ice that reached perpendicularly to the surface of the water in the bason." (Vancouver, vol. III, page 278.)

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Tebenkof has no marks of glaciers in the Taku Inlet, but he has applied the significant name Arm or Inlet of Ice; and at the extreme head, about eighteen miles from the entrance, he has the "River Taku.”

It was at Point Taku that Whidbey laid down the basin, because of the widening of the inlet directly before him.

In the season of 1892 Mr. Thos. D. Davidson visited the Muir, Davidson, and Taku glaciers six times, and reported the Taku to have an intense blue color far beyond that of the others; bergs were breaking from its front, and even the smallest blocks retained this pronounced feature.

Late photographs have shown the entrance to Taku Inlet filled with floating bergs.

The tourist steamers that visit these waters now enter Taku Inlet and approach, as near as safety warrants, the face of the Foster Glacier. It is about one hundred and sixty feet above the water, which is sometimes nearly covered with bergs. (Memorandum from Pacific Coast Steamship Company, January 26, 1904.)

The Harriman Alaska Expedition says that the Taku Inlet "has three glaciers that reach the water; one, the beautiful Taku Glacier, now discharges bergs," (page 125, vol. I). This is evidently an oversight.

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STEPHENS PASSAGE.

Glaciers No. X.

Holkham Bay. Tebenkof gives no sign of ice along the eastern shore of Stephens Passage, but Whidbey says: "Much floating ice was seen within the islands" that lie at the entrance of Holkham Bay. These islands occupy a large space in the area of the bay as laid down by Vancouver. Whidbey had adverse weather, and did not enter the bay, from which we know that two great fiords *Vancouver, vol. III, page 279.

extend far into the mountains that attain elevations of seven and eight thousand feet. The Tracy Arm runs north for nine miles and then eastward thirteen miles to the face of the two Sawyer Glaciers, in front of which the depth of water is 148 fathoms. The south arm is named the Endicott Inlet, and it stretches twentyfour miles to the southeast to the face of the Dawes Glacier and feeders, with a mile wide front and 122 fathoms of water. It comes from an extensive mer de glace.

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In passing this locality on the 22d of August, 1841, Sir George Simpson writes:* "We ran through Stephen's Passage, and when "the mist cleared away sufficiently for the purpose, the land on either side displayed to us mountains rising abruptly from the sea, and bearing a glacier in their every ravine. Earlier in the season, these glaciers would have been concealed by the snow, but now they showed a surface of green ice."

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The U. S. Hydrographic chart No. 225, based on the Admiralty chart No. 2431 without either of the fiords noted, has a "glacier

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1,000 feet high" in the northeast part of Holkham Bay; and at the southeast part there is the legend "full of berg ice drifting "about but otherwise a good harbor."

These bergs must at times have reached the Sound, for another authority says: "In the sound we saw floating ice masses which "had detached themselves from glaciers."

THE STAKHEEN MER DE GLACE: FREDERICK SOUND,

Glaciers Nos. IX and X.

The retreating glaciers that once came directly upon the Souchoi Channel of Frederick Sound have their origin in the extensive mer de glace among the mountains between that channel and the Stakheen. Some of the more prominent peaks reach over nine thousand feet elevation.

Thomas Bay and Vicinity. Whidbey had continuous bad weather, yet his positions are readily located and his route traced into Prince Frederick Sound to Point Vandeput, the low land near Point Agassiz, and the Horn Cliffs, which "presented an uncommonly "awful appearance, rising with an inclination towards the water to

*"Narrative of a Journey Round the World During the Years 1841 and 1842." By Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson Bay Company's Territories in North America. London, -1847. Henry Colburn. 2 vols. See vol. I, page 214. Philadelphia Edition, page 126.

“a vast height, loaded with an immense quantity of ice and snow, "and overhanging their base," (page 281).

XXX. Tebenkof has no glacier marked where is now located the opening to the Le Conte Glacier, but on his chart, about seven miles southeastward from Point Vandeput of Vancouver, he has his usual mark for a glacier close to the shore, to the eastward of a point not named. This is twelve miles northwest of Conte Bay and also northwest of the Horn Cliffs. Unfortunately at this section Whidbey's shore line is not easily reconciled in details with the latest topography. If the glacier be placed just a little eastwardly of Point Agassiz, it will agree with the relation to Point Vandeput. In this case it would have been the face of an unnamed glacier coming from the east, but the foot of which is now eight miles from the mouth of the stream which drains it.

Tebenkof has added to Whidbey's survey and introduced the Wrangell Narrows, of which the northern entrance is six miles south of his glacier and across the sound. The distance is nearly correct, but the direction erroneous. He places it in latitude 56° 59', but certainly without observation, and evidently taken from Vancouver. He has no reference to it in his hydrographic notes.

Nearly in the position of Tebenkof's XXX Glacier the U. S. Hydrographic chart No. 225, based on Admiralty chart No. 2431, with corrections to 1869, locates a "large glacier." It lies nine miles nearly northnortheast from the north entrance of Wrangell Narrows.

In 1869, on our second trip through the Archipelago Alexander, we made occasional notes of matters other than our particular duties; some of these notes have been incorporated in the "Coast Pilot of "Alaska," 1869; and others were marked on the chart we used in 1867 and 1869.

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The note from the "Coast Pilot," (page 89), reads: "From "the north end of Wrangell Strait is visible the first great glacier 'we have seen upon the shores of these waters, although two are "reported even south of Port Simpson, on the arms penetrating the continent in that vicinity. This glacier is on the north side of "the eastern part of Frederick Sound, and from two islands, about "three miles northwest of Wrangell Strait, it bore north by west distant ten or fifteen miles, as well as we could judge through mist and rain. Rain clouds completely enveloped the tops of the

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