Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1880-11-24
An Alaska Yosemite

John Muir says that one of the
regions he visited near Sum Dunn Bay,
Alaska is in form and origin typical
Yosemite valley. though as yetits floor
is covered with ice and water-ice
above and beneath. How noble man.
sion in which TO spend winter and a
summer, 1t is about ten miles long,
and from three-quarters of mile to
one mile wide. 1t contains ten large
falls and cascades, the finest one on the
left side, near the he I'd. After coming
In an admirable rush over a granite
brow where ii is first seen at height of
800 or LOCO feet, il leans sheer pre-
cipice of about $50 feet, then divides
and reaches the tide-water in broken
rapids over powders. Another about
/ 900 feet high drops at once on TO the
margin of the glacier two miles back
from the spout. Several of the others
are upward OF 1000 feet high, descend
ing through narrow gorges as richly
feathered with ferns rs any channel
that water ever flowed in, though
tremendously abrupt and deep. a
grander array of rocks and waterfalls
have never yet b eheld. The amount
of timber Oh the walls is about the
same as that on the Yosemite walls,
but owing 10 greater moisture there is
more small vege.ables-bushes, moses,
grasses, etc., though by far the greater
portion of the area of the wall surface
is bare, and shining with the polish it
received when occupied by the glacier
that formed the entire canon. The
deep green patches seen on the noun
tains' back of the walls at the limit OF
vegetation are grass, where the wild
goats, or chamois rather, roam and
feed. The still greener and more lux
uriant pasture farther down in the
gullies and slopes where the decliviiy
Is not excessive, are made up mostly Of
Willows, birch and huckleberry bushes,
with varying amount of prickly ribes
and rubus and echihopanax. This
growth when approached, especially
on the lower slopes near the level of
the sea at the jaws of the great side
canons, is found TO be most impenetra-
bic and tedious and toilsOme combina-
tion of fighting bushes that the weary
explorer ever fell into, incomplrably
more Furnishing than the buckthorn
and manzanita tangles ot the Sierra.
The cliff gardens of this hidden Yose-
mite are exceedingly Iich and beauti-
ful. On almost every rift and bench,
however small, as well as on the wider
table rocks where n little soil had lodg-
ed, We find companies of fine bright
flowers, always fresh, and also tar
more brilliant colored than could be
looked for in so cool and beclouded a
region-larkspurs, geraniums, painted
cups, blue-bells, gencians, sedums, sax
ifraxes, epiIhbiums, violets, parnassia.
veIatrum, orchids, fritilaria, smilax,
spranthes, asters, dasies, the yellow
pond lily, bryanthus, cassiope, linnea
and a great variety of towering ribes
and rubus and heathwOrts. Many of
the aboye, though with soft bush stems
and leaves, are yet as brightly painted
as those Cf the warm sunland5 of the
south. The heathworts in particular
are very sbundant and beautiful, both
in flower and fruit, making delicate
green carpets Tor the rocks, flushed
with pink bells or dotted with red and
blue berries. The grasses are every
where tsll, with ribbon leaves well
tempered and arched, and with no lack
of bristIy spikes and nodding, purple
panicles. The Alpine grasses of the
Sierra, making close carpets on the
glacier meadows, L have not yet seen
in a laska.