[Illustration: INDIAN RIVER, ALASKA.] [Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN NEAR MUIR GLACIER.] According to general opinion Alaska is a cold and forbidding region, fit for habitation only by Esquimau Indians and fur traders. But this opinion is very much overdrawn, for in the valleys and along the islands of the coast, where the influence of the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean is felt, the climate is mild, and a vegetation almost semi- tropical is produced. This is shown to a considerable extent in the photograph of Indian River on this page.—The companion picture, with our photographer in the foreground, represents a front view of a portion of Muir Glacier, where the ice accumulation of centuries has piled up until it is mountain high. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: CAVE IN THE GREAT GLACIER, BRITISH AMERICA.] Glancing for a moment at the results of a general exploration, we find that there are between sixty and seventy small residual glaciers in the California Sierras. Through Oregon and Washington, glaciers, some of them of considerable size, still exist on the highest volcanic cones of the Cascade Mountains—the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Tacoma, Baker, and others, though none of them approach the sea. Through British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska the broad, sustained chain of mountains extending along the coast is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly every cañon are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in size to the northward until the lofty region between Glacier Bay and Mount St. Elias is reached. The largest of the glaciers that discharge into Glacier Bay is the Muir, and being also the most accessible is the one to which tourists are taken and allowed to go ashore and climb about its ice-cliffs and watch the huge blue bergs as with tremendous thundering roar and surge they emerge and plunge from the majestic vertical ice-wall in which the glacier terminates. The front of the glacier is about three miles wide, but the central berg-producing portion, that stretches across from side to side of the inlet, like a huge jagged barrier, is only about half as wide. The height of the ice-wall above the water is from 250 to 300 feet, but soundings made by Captain Carroll show that about 720 feet of the wall is below the surface, while still a third portion is buried beneath moraine material. Therefore, were the water and rocky detritus cleared away, a sheer wall of blue ice would be presented a mile and a half wide and more than a thousand feet high. [Illustration: SCUZZIE FALLS, NEAR NORTH BEND, BRITISH AMERICA.]