The enjoyment afforded to the intelligent tourist on this delightful route of travel is being more and more appreciated annually, as clearly evinced by the fact that over two thousand excursionists participated in the trips of steamers from Puget Sound to Sitka last year, by way of Glacier Bay and Pyramid Harbor, representing nearly every State in the Union, and also embracing many European travelers. “I thought it would be as cold as Greenland,” said one of these tourists to us; “but after leaving Port Townsend I hardly once had occasion to wear my overcoat, night or day, during the whole of the fourteen days’ summer voyage through Alaska’s Inland Sea. The thermometer ranged between 68° and 78° during the whole trip, while the pleasant daylight never quite faded out of the sky.” Mount St. Elias, inexpressibly grand in its proportions, is probably the highest mountain in Alaska, and, indeed, is one of the half dozen loftiest peaks on the globe, reaching the remarkable height of nearly twenty thousand feet, according to the United States Coast Survey. It may fall short of, or it may exceed, this measurement by a few hundred feet. Owing to the low point to which the line of perpetual snow descends in this latitude, St. Elias is believed to present the greatest snow climb of all known mountains. Another notable peculiarity of this grand elevation is, like that of Tacoma, in its springing at once from the level of the Pacific Ocean, whereas most mountains, like those of Colorado, Norway, and Switzerland, say of twelve or fourteen thousand feet in height, rise from a plain already two or three thousand feet above sea level, detracting just so much from their effectiveness upon the eye, and from their apparent elevation. Vitus Behring, a Dane by birth and the discoverer of the strait which bears his name, first sighted this mountain on St. Elias’ day, and so gave it the name which it bears. When the American whalemen on the coast saw the summit of Mount Fairweather from the sea, they felt sure that some days of fair weather would follow, hence we have the expressive name which is bestowed upon it. Mount St. Elias, with its snow and ice mantle reaching nearly down to sea level, is higher than any elevation in Norway or Switzerland, rising from its base in pyramid form, straight, regular, and massive, to three times the height of our New England giant in the White Mountain range of New Hampshire, namely, Mount Washington. Only the Himalayas and the Andes exceed it in altitude. Eleven glaciers are known to come down from the south side of St. Elias, one of which, named Agassiz Glacier, is estimated to be twenty miles in width and fifty in length, covering an area of a thousand square miles!