Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/255
large for the waters to move. The finer material has been washed away, however, and a slight recession in the face of the ice bluff has resulted. The largest stream draining the glacier is the Yahtse. This river, as already stated, rises in two principal branches at the base of the Chaix hills, and flowing through a tunnel some six or eight miles long, emerges at the border of the glacier as a swift, brown flood fully one hundred feet across and fifteen or twenty feet deep. The stream, after its subglacial course, spreads out into many branches, and is building up an alluvial fan which has invaded and buried several hundred acres of forest.
In traversing the coast from the Yahtse to Yakutat bay, we crossed a large number of streams which drain the ice fields of the north, some of which were large enough to be classed as rivers. When the stream on flowing away from the glacier are large they divide into many branches, as do the Yahtse and Fountain, and enter the sea by several mouths. When the streams are small, however, they usually unite to form large rivers before entering the ocean. The Yahtse and Fountain, as we have seen, are examples of the first, while Manby and Yahna streams are examples of the second class. Manby stream rises in hundreds of small springs along the margin of the glacier which flow across a desolate torren-swept area and unite just before reaching the ocean into one broad, swift flood of muddy water much too deep for one to wade.
On the border of the glacier facing Yakutat Bay, however, the drainage is different. The flow of the ice is there eastward, although the margin is probably stagnant, and instead of forming a bold, continuous escarpment, ends irregularly and with a low frontal slope. The principal streams on the eastern margin in 1891 were the Osar, Kame and Kwik. Each of these issues from a tunnel and flows for some distance between walls of ice. Of the three streams mentioned the most interesting is the Kame, which issues as a swift brown flood partially choked with broken ice, from the mouth of a tunnel and flows for half a mile in an open cut between precipitous walls of dirty ice 80 to 100