Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/25

 retaining snow on the highest peaks throughout the summer season. Vancouver's island consists of another independent mass of rough mountains, except in the southeastern part, rising to elevations of 5,000 feet or more.

The country constituting the shores of Puget sound, including the numerous islands, is formed generally of immense stratified beds of clay, sand and gravel; but, going northward, the islands and headlands through the Canal de Haro, Rosario straits and the Gulf of Georgia become high and rocky.

Still further to the northward, through the wonderful labyrinth of fiords and inlets forming the inland navigation passages of British America, and up through the hundreds of islands of the Archipelago Alexander, in Alaska, as far as Cross sound and Glacier bay, the shores maintain their rugged, rocky character. The channels through these islands are very deep, the charts often showing 100 fathoms and no bottom; and, at the head of nearly every fiord penetrating the continent, great glaciers force their way down to the salt water. Above Cross sound the immense mountain range containing the peaks of Mounts Fairweather, Cook and Crillon commences, running northwest and culminating in Mount St. Elias, the loftiest mountain in North America. In this latitude the peninsula of Alaska projects towards the southeast, and in continuation the Fox islands, running along nearly parallel with the Arctic circle, stretch away towards the shores of Asia. The great river, Yukon, rises in British America, eastward of Mount St. Elias, traverses the whole width of Alaska, touching the Arctic circle, and flowing through many mouths into Behring sea.

To the north of this river the country is entirely unexplored, but is believed to be a sterile, treeless waste, covered with a thick growth of spagnum or moss, to the shores of the Arctic ocean.

The coast of Oregon and Washington, from the California line to Cape Flattery, runs nearly north and south, and presents no very great projections of capes, and affords but few harbors for vessels in distress.

The spurs of the Coast range of mountains often reach the seashore, and when the land first emerged from the waters the ocean reached much further inland than at present. Formerly the waves of the ocean broke directly on the shores of Young's bay and the present site of Astoria, as far as Tongue point. Afterwards the ocean currents, following along the shores, deposited the sand washed down from the cliffs, in the long beaches reaching from headland to headland, leaving an opening or entrance whose width was determined by the area of the tidal basins enclosed within.

Gradually the tide lands were built up from the silt brought down the streams, and the two great forces, the sea on one side and the enclosed waters on the other, established the present forms of the numerous small bays along the coast. Port Orford, on the southern coast of Oregon, is the largest and best summer roadstead, but it is exposed to the fury of winter gales. Destruction island, off the Washington shore, is the only spot of land on the coast large enough to be called an island.

The influence of man in improving for his benefit the conditions imposed by nature may be instanced in the works at the entrance to the Columbia river, where in place of a dangerous channel and bar a very good and secure one has been formed. The tremendous forces of nature may often be seen on our coasts in the effects produced by ocean waves breaking on the shore. In the summer of 1877, while at work on the adjacent coast, a very high tide occurred, with an immense surf rolling in from the westward, the result of some storm far out at sea. The beach had been piled up with drifting sand to a great depth, and the sea rose so high as to lash the foot of the cliffs; but one high tide sufficed to level the beach as smooth as a floor, and sweep the sand into the ocean, a result that 100,000 laborers could not have accomplished in many years.

The bottom of the ocean, off the shores of Oregon and Washington, is mainly a smooth plateau or floor, having a very gentle, regular slope many miles off the coast. The continuity of this sub-ocean plain is broken is some places by ranges of submarine hills, parallel with the Coast range. The summits of these hills are known as banks, and are the feeding-