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

ALASKA RIVERS, Their Number and Characteristics- The Stickine. sjiiblime Alpine Scenery—An Alaska Canyon. Glacier Mud—Stupendous Glacial Phenomena. [SPECIAL C03J3ESPOKDENCE 03? THE BULLETIN.] Sitka, December 27,1879. Alaska is covered with a network of deep, cool, perennial streams, that flow on, ever fresh and sweet through grassy plains and mossy bogs and rock-bound glacial cafions, telling ever where, all the way down to the sea. how bountiful are the clouds that fill their ample fountains. Some thirty or forty rivers have been discovered in the Territory, the number varying as the smaller ones have been called rivers, or creeks, by the map-makers. But not one of them all, from the mighty Yukon, 2,000 miles long, to the shortest of the mountain torrents falling white from the glaciers, has thus far been explored. Dall Kennicott and others have done good work on. the Tucon, aud miners, trappers and traders have been over most of the region in a rambling way, and each have brought in detached bits of river knowledge, which, though too often misty and uncertain, have been put together in maps that are better than nothing. The coast line in particular, with the mouths and lower reaches of the rivers, has been fairly drawn, but their upper courses are in great part invisible, like mountains with tiieir heads in a cloud. Perhaps about twenty of the Alaska rivers are a hundred miles or more in length. The Yukon drains about as large an area as that drained by all the other streams of the territary combined, flowing through British territory for a distance of six or seven hundred miles in a general northwesterly direction, then approaching the Alaska boundary near Fort Yukon, it turns abruptly to the left, and pursues a southwesterly course across the territory to the Behring Sea, in latitude about 62° 30\u27. It is a broad, majestic flood, scarce at all interrupted by rapids, nearly twenty miles wide in some places, and navigable for light-draft steamers about fifteen hundred miles—a noble companion of the great Mackenzie, the two heading together in the smoothly sculptured Rocky Mountain plateau, THE XUSKOQUIM. The largest of the rivers whose sources all lie within the bounds of Alaska is the Kuskoquim, which flows into the bay of that name in lat. 60°, and is supposed to be about five or six hundred miles in length. To the north of the Yukon delta a considerable number of short streams fall into Norton Sound, Norton Bay and Kolzebue Sound. But from the northmost of this series around the shores of the Arctic ocean to the boundary line, a distance of nearly a thousand miles, there is only one river of considerable size, the Colvflle, which tails into the Arctic ocean in lat. 70° 30\u27, Ion., 150° 30\u27. Between the mouths of the Yukon and Mount St. Elias, creeks and rivers occur at short intervals, most of which flow quietly as they approach the sea, through low bogs and beds of glacial drift. The principal streams are the Kuskoquim, Suchitno and Copper rivers. On the last mentioned, which is supposed to be three or four hundred miles in length, rolled masses of native copper have been found. The Indians were acqainted with this metal before the advent of the whites, and probably obtained their supplies of it for the manufacture of knivesi and ornaments from mines located somewhere in the basin of this river. From St. Elias the coast mountains extend in a lofty unbroken chain beyond the southern boundary of the Territory, gashed with stupendous cafions, every one of which carries a majestic stream, deep enough and wide enough to be called a river, though comparatively short, drawing their sources from the glaciers back thirty or forty miles in the white solitudes of the range. A few, however, of this foaming brotherhood—the Chilcat, Chilcot. Takoo and Stickine rivers—come from far \u27 beyond the coast range, though flowing across it through canons cut for them by the glaciers, heading iu the broad Rocky Mountain plateau, in company with the Makehzie and Yukon. The tributary canons of the great trunk cafions of all these rivers are still occupied by glaciers, which descend in glorious array on both sides, their massive bulging snouts back a little way in the shadows, or pushed grandly forward among the cottonwoods of the banks of the streams, or blocking their way, and compelling them to flow beneath the ice through long arching tunnels. THE STICKINE-SUBLIME ALPINE HCTUEK. S Stickine is perhaps better known _than t,v other river in Alaska, because of its being Sf USc to *e Cassiar d JJJ*5 about 350 or 400 mixes long, navig abie lor small steamers *6KO firSt in 3t*m/darkened here and grassy, undulamgpi Thirty-five miles above the mouth of the river, the most striking object of all comes in - sight. This is the lower expanded portion of the great glacier, measuring about six miles around the snout, pushed boldly forward into the middle ot the valley among the trees, while its sources are mostly hidden. It takes its rise in the heart of the range, some thirty or forty miles away. Compared with this the Swissmer ate.glace is a small thing. It is called the Ice Mountain and seems to have been regarded as a motionless mass, created on the spot, like the rooks and trees about it, without venturing a guess as to how or when. The frontof the snout is about 300 feet high, but rises rapidly back for a few miles to a height of about a thousand feet. Seen through gaps in the trees growing on one of its terminal moraines, as one sails slowly along against the current, the marvelous beauty of the ehasms and clustered pinnacles show to fine advantage in the sunshine; but tame indeed must be the observer who is satisfied with so cheap a view. INDIAN TRADITIONS—INDIAN TRADER. On the opposite side of the river there - is another large glacier flowing, river like, through the forested mountain bosses. Some 300 years ago these two glaciers, say the Indians, once pushed their snouts together and the river flowed beneath in a grand tunnel, through which they sometimes ventured in canoes. This tradition is interesting as containing a truth carried hundreds of years without suffering much. That they did meet is undoubtedly true, though more than 300 years ago, as the age of the spruces growing on the banks of the river show. Between the snouts of these two noble glaciers lives Choquette. Happy man— perhaps somewhat blind to his blessings. It was not without grave misgivings, he told me, that he ventured to build herej fearing something would happen in connection with that j strange ice mountaia. He is an Indian trader, the only settler on the river up to within a few miles of Glenora. Some thirty-five miles above this place the Hudson Bay Company had a. trading post, now abandoned. MORE GLACIERS. The great glacier is hardly out of sight ere we come upon another of grand size, pouring\u27a majestic white flood .through the evergreens of the river level, while almost every hollow and tributary canon contains a smaller one, accord- ing to the size of the area it drains ; some like \u27 mere snow banks, others with the blue ice apparent, depending in heavy bulging curves and graduating into the river-like forms that maze through the lower forested regions, and are so striking in appearance that they are admired even by the passing minors with, gold dust in their eyes. Z counted a hundred and sixty-one In sight from the river, but the whole number drained by the river throughout its entire course is probably three hundred or more. A very short, geological time ago this magnificent cafion was occupied by a grand trunk Racier that-flowed to the sea, to which all these residual glaciers were united as tributaries. A T0UN6 WORLD. The Stickine, like all the other rivers of Alaska, is still young and imperfect, like a half-developed plant. The trunk is wellformed, but. the branches are only short stumps, slowly growing upward right and left over a hundred mountains as the glaciers melt back in compliance with climate. The trunks of some of the shorter rivers heading in the Coast Range are still as imperfect as the branches of the larger onae, while a few that are predestiaed to take their places in the general system have not yet commenced to flow. Over the region stretching from the north arm of Cross Sound towards Mount St. Elias, the glacial winter still rules. All the landscape is covered by a remnant of the ice-sheet. When it melts the area of the sea will be somewhat extended, and several rivers added to the number already in existence. A short time ago there was not a single river in Alaska. , John Muir.https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1186/thumbnail.jp