The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1880-12-24
An Alaska Yosemite.

John Muir, writing from Alaska TO
the San Francisco Bulletin" says OF one
Of the regions which he has visited near
Sum Dunn bay:
This is in form and origin typical
Yosemite valley, though as yet its floor
Is covered with ice and water-ice above
and beneath How noble q mansion in
which to spend winter and summer
Il is about ten miles long, and from
three-quarters of mile to one mile
wide. It contains ten large falls and
cascades, the finest one on the left side
near the head. After coming in an adj
mirable rush over granite brow where
| Il is first seen at height Of 900 OF
900 feet, it leaps sheer precipice OF
about $50 feet, then divides and reaches
the tide-water in broken rapids over
boulders. Another about 1000 feet
high drops at once on to the margin Of
the glacier two miles back from the
snort. Several Of the others arc upward
of 5000 feet high, descending through
narrow gorges as richly feathered with
ferns as any channel that water ever
flowed in, though tremendously abrupt
and Deep A gander array Of rocks
and waterfalls have never yet beheld.
The amount of timber on the walls is
about the same as that on the Yosemite
walls, but owing to greater moisture
there is more small Observation-Disclosures,
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
mountains 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 luxuriant
patches further down in gullies and
slopes where the declivity is not exces-
siye, are made up mostly of willows,
birch and hucldeberry bushes, with o
varying amount of prickly ribs, and
rubus, and echinopanax. This growth
when approached, especially on the
lower slopes near the level of the sea al
the Jaws of the great side canons, is
found to be the most impenetrable and
tedious and toilsome combination Of
fighting bushes that the weary explorer
ever fell into, incomparably more pun.
ishing than the buckthorn and manzan.
ita tangles of the Sierra.
The cliff gardens of this Yosemite are
exceedingly rich and beautiful. On
almost every rift and beach, however
small, as well as on the wide table rocks
where a little soil had lodged, we fine
companies of fine bright flowers, always
fresh, and also far more brilliantly
colored than would be looked for in sc
cool and beclouded region-larkspurs
geraniums, painted-cups, blue bells
gentians, sedums, saxifraxes, epilobiums
violets, parnassia, veratrum, orchids
fritilaria, smilax, spiranthes asters
daisies, the yellow pond lily, bryanthus
cassiope, linnea and great variety o.
Towering RIDES and rubus and heath
worts. Many of the above, though
with soft bush stems and leaves, are yet
as brightly painted as those of the warn
sunlands of the South. The heath
worts in particular are very abundant
and beautiful, both in flower and fruit
making delicate green carpets for the
rocks, flushed with pink bells, or dotted
with red and blue berries. The grasse.
are everywhere tall, with ribbon leave,
well tempered and arched, and with
no lack of bristly spikes, and noddinf
purple panicles The Alpine grasses O.
the Sierra, making close carpets on thu
glacier meadows. have not yet seen il
Alaska.