p, dark, velvety tints of the
crinkled and crumpled mountains as they shelved to the sea and came in
contact there with an edging of foam from the blue Pacific. Huge
jelly-fish flapped about in the clear water, nebular patches of
protoplasmic existence, capable, apparently, of no other functions than
sensation, motion, and self-propagation. Some of them were richly
streaked, long-tailed, delicately margined, with comet-like streamers,
jelly-frills, and nuclei like a wide-open sunflower. Their motion was so
indolently graceful that I could not help gazing at them.

Mount St. Elias! Yes, there it was, they affirmed, on the northeastern
horizon, a vapory, unsubstantial cone, dancing up and down in the
refracting light. I looked and looked, persuading myself that I saw the
glorious vision nineteen thousand five hundred feet high. Others
persuaded themselves of the same fact, being naturally ambitious of
carrying away remembrances of the tallest mountain in all America. But,
after all, I fancy that nobody had a very strong faith in his discovery,
particularly as the reputed mountain seemed to change its place, flit
hither and thither on the curve of the sky, and finally disappear.

But yonder! What is that? Clouds? Apparently. But look again. What, that
small speck just on the edge of the water? No, higher up--up--up. What
a sight! Certainly the grandest view we have had yet. A huge, white,
snow-tipped back, like a camel's hump, now loomed apparently right out
of the water's edge,--the mighty range of Mount Fairweather, Mount
Crillon, and eight or ten other domes and peaks, the highest fifteen
thousand five hundred feet high, according to the measurement of the
United States Coast Survey. This is the finest mountain-landscape we
have ever seen, not even excepting the Alps from Neufchatel. The peaks
looked enormously high as they shot up just behind the sea-edge, far
above the first stratum of cloud which ran along midway of the mountain
in deep slate-colored belts. Now and then the vapor thinned to the
fineness of tulle and Brousa gauze, behind which the mountain-colors
loomed in vague and yet radiant purity. Gradually the ardent sun melted
away the misty striated belts of cloud, and the great peaks stood out
calmly and gloriously effulgent in the crystal August air, a scene of
exquisite loveliness and sublimity. At one end a mighty glacier ran down
to the sea, and at the other the pygmy mountains (two or three thousand
fee