Arizona republican., 1892-01-14
EXPLORING ALASKA.
THRILLING EXPERIENCES OF A PARTY
 OF SCIENTISTS.

The Strange Land of the Far Northwest
 Has Many Interesting Features--Lux-
 urisnt Vegetation Where There Is No
 Ice-st. Elias Not a Volcano.
 Mir. Israel c. Russell has returned to Washington from that region of eternal ice and snow in Alaska, where the high est peak in North America rises to an altitude of 19,000 feet from glacier 1000 square miles in area and as big as all those of the Alps put together.
 Along the edge of the glacier, all the way from Icy bay to Yakutat bay, there extends a strip of green coast which is covered with luxuriant vegetation. Strawberry vines cover the ground for miles, and the verdant fields are red dened as far as the eye can reach with luscious fruit, which compares favor ably in point of size and flavor with the finest grown in temperate attitudes There are huckleberries, too, and "sal- mon berries," which are something be- tween blackberries and raspberries, but of giant size, measuring nearly two inches in diameter. All the lowlands
  yellow monkey flowers and other wild blossoms. Here and there, in the midst of the vast ice fields, are the loveliest gardens watered by the melting snow.
 There are plenty of grizzly bears in the vicinity of Mount St Elias, but MT Russell did not find them very danger ous. He says that his encounters with them reminded him of killing pigs. Of brown and black bears he saw and shot a great many. The expedition met with enough periIs, however, to satisfy the most adventurous geographical explor- CTS. Nearly all of the climbing had to be done up steep walls of ice and snow by cutting steps. At almost any time a slip would have precipitated the party down the frozen precipices thousands of feet. On one occasion they were de- scending when they found that an ava lanche had carried away the steps which they had made in going up. The i'm proInptu staircase was destroyed for 300 feet, and they had to lower a man by a rope to chop out another, there being no other way of getting down. Such acci- dents as this were not uncommon.
 HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES.
 Avalanches were continually falling, rushing down the slopes with the speed of railway trains and with a roar like thunder that could be heard twenty miles away
 One night-aboEt 12 o'clock the party was passing over bad place in the Agassiz glacier. Two men were in the lead, drawing sled. Suddenly they disappeared from sight, having fallen into a Assure in the ice. Luckily they were caught upon projecting ledge al the depth of about twenty feet, else they would never have been seen again. They were hauled out with ropes. The next day in the same neighborhood Mr Russell chanced to look behind him and saw that the ice field over which he had just passed was gone, leaving an enor- nous hole of unknown depth. Another time one of his men tumbled into crev. ice, and was only saved by the pack fastened to his shoulder, which inter- rupted his progress through a twist in the frozen tunnel that had yawned for him. The Agassiz glacier is one of the four great glaciers which, together with about a thousand small ones, flow out from the mountains at the north to the mighty Malaspna glacier, pouring their streams of ice continually into this vast frozen sea. This glacier of Malaspina, from 1,500 to 2,000 feet thick, is interesting, not merely because of its enormous size, hf1t a1s lEyr ,.ft Inn. fa. hot ,o the only one now in existence of the same type as the glacier which formerly covered all of this continent as far south as Philadelphia and St. Louis, leaving traces that are visible to this day in scratches on the rocks.
 A GLACIAL RIVER
 Where the land in that region is bare of ice the vegetation attains an almost tropical luxuriauce, and the Arctic jungles are well nigh impossible to the explorer. One of the chief obstacles en- countered in threading them is plant known as the "devil's club" which grows to height of ten or fifteen feet, it's stems running along the ground for some dis tance and tlRn turning upward. Every part of its surface, even to the ribs of
  the leaves, is thickly set with spines, which infict painful wounds, and break ing off in the flesh cause fostering sores. In the Lucia glacier occurs most inter- esting feature in the shape of glacial river which comes out from a mountain through an archway of ice, flows for mile and a half in plain view, and then is lost to sight in another tunnel. Where the stream emerges finally is unknown. No explorer has as yet been bold enough to enter the tunnel and drift through, after the fashion of Allan Quatermain and Umslopogaas. The greatest risk in such an undertaking would be from fall idg blocks of ice. At the mouth of the tunnel there are always confused noises and rhythmic vibrations to be heard from the dark recesses within. The air is filled with pulsations like deep organ notes, and it requires but little imagina- tion to transform these strange sounds into the voices and songs of inhabitants of the neither world. It used to be sup posed that Mount St. Elias was volcano, and sea captains sailing on the Pacific have often beheld what they imagined to Ia, smoke issuing from its summit but this is a mistake, and it is probable that the alleged smoke was really ava lanche dust blown upward by the wind. Washington Cor New York Sun,