 Chapter 5 of Travels in Alaska, this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Josh Smith. Travels in Alaska by John Muir. Chapter 5 A Cruise in the KCR Shortly after our return to Rangel, the missionaries planned a grand mission excursion up the coast of the mainland to the Chilcat country, which I gladly joined, together with Mr. Vanderbilt, his wife and a friend from Oregon. The river steamer in KCR was chartered and we had her all to ourselves. Ship and officers at our command to sail and stop where and when we would, and of course, everybody felt important and hopeful. The main object of the missionaries was to ascertain the spiritual wants of the warlike Chilcat tribe. With a view to the establishment of a church and school in their principal village, the merchant and his party were bent on business and scenery, while my mind was on the mountains, glaciers and forests. This was toward the end of July, in the very brightest and best of Alaska's summer weather, when the icy mountains towering in their pearly sky were displayed in all their glory, and the islands at their feet seemed to float and drow on the shining mirror waters. After we passed through the Rangel Narrows, the mountains of the mainland came in full view, gloriously arrayed in snow and ice, some of the largest and most river-like of the glaciers flowing through wide, hide-walled valleys like Yosemite. Their sources far back and concealed others in plain sight from their highest fountains to the level of the sea. Cares of every kind were quickly forgotten, and though the Cassiara engines soon began to wheeze inside with dull full solumenti, suggesting coming trouble, we were too happy to mind them. Every face glowed with natural love of wild beauty, the islands were seen in long perspective, their forests dark green in the foreground, with varying tones of blue growing more and more tender in the distance. Bays full of hazy shadows, graduating into open silvery fields of light and lofty headlands with fine arching insteps, dipping their feet in the shining water, but every eye was turned toward the mountains. Forgot now were the chill-cats and missions while the word of God was being read, and these majestic hieroglyphics blazoned along the sky. The earnest childish wonderment with which this glorious page of nature's Bible was contemplated was delightful to see, all evinced eager desire to learn. Is that a glacier, they asked, down in that canyon? And is it all solid ice? Yes. How deep is it? Perhaps five hundred or a thousand feet. You say it flows. How can the hard ice flow? It flows like water, though invisibly slow. And where does it come from? From snow that is heaped up every winter on the mountains. And how, then, is the snow changed into ice? It is welded by the pressure of its own weight. Are these white masses we see in the hollows of glaciers also? Yes. Are those bluish-draggled masses hanging down from beneath the snowfields, what you call the snouts of the glaciers? Yes. What made the hollows there, and the glaciers themselves, just as traveling animals make their own tracks? How long have they been there? Numberless centuries, etc. I answered, as best I could, keeping up in a running commentary on the subject in general, while busily engaged in sketching and noting my own observations, preaching glacial gospel in a rambling way, while the Cassiards slowly wheezing and creeping along the shore, shifted our position so that the icy canyons were open to a view and closed again in regular secession, like the leaves of a book. About the middle of the afternoon, we were directly opposite a noble group of glaciers, some ten in number, flowing from a chain of crater-like snow fountains, guarded around their summits and well down their sides by jagged peaks and coals and curving mural ridges. From each of the larger clusters of fountains, a wide, sheer walled canyon opens down to the sea. Three of the trunk glaciers descend to within a few feet of the sea level. The largest of the three, probably about fifteen miles long, terminates in a magnificent valley like Yosemite, an imposing wall of ice about two miles long and from three to five hundred feet high, forming a barrier across the valley from wall to wall. It was to this glacier that the ships of the Alaska Ice Company resorted for the ice they carried to San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands and, I believe, also to China and Japan. To load, they had only to sail up the fjord within a short distance of the front and drop anchor in the terminal moraine. Another glacier, a few miles to the south of this one, receives two large tributaries about equal in size and then flows down a force of valley to within a hundred feet or so of sea level. The third of this low descending group is four or five miles farther south and though less imposing than either of the two sketched above, is still a truly noble object, even as imperfectly seen from the channel and would of itself be worth a visit to Alaska to any lowlander. So unfortunate as never to have seen a glacier. The boilers of our little steamer were not made for seawater, but it was hoped that freshwater would be found at available points along our course where streams leaped down the cliffs. In this particular, we failed, however, and were compelled to use saltwater an hour or two before reaching Cape Fanshawe. The supply of 50 tons of freshwater brought from Rangel having then given out. To make matters worse, the captain and engineer were not in accord concerning the workings of the engine. The captain repeatedly called for more steam, which the engineer refused to furnish, cautiously keeping the pressure low because the saltwater foam and the boilers and some of it passed over into the cylinders causing heavy thumping at the end of each piston stroke and threatening to knock out the cylinder heads. At seven o'clock in the evening, we had made only about 70 miles, which caused dissatisfaction, especially among the Devines, who thereupon called a meeting in the cabin to consider what had better be done. In the discussions that followed, much indignation and economy were brought to light. We had chartered the boat for $60 per day, and the round trip was to have been made in four or five days. But at the present rate of speed, it was found that the cost of the trip for each passenger would be $5 or $10 above the first estimate. Therefore, the majority ruled that we must return the next day to Rangel, the extra dollars outweighing the mountains and missions as if they had suddenly become dust in the balance. Soon after the close of this economical meeting, we came to anchor in a beautiful bay, and as the long northern day had still hours of good light to offer, I gladly embraced the opportunity to go ashore and see the rocks and plants. One of the Indians, employed as a deckhand on the steamer, landed me at the mouth of a stream. The tide was low, exposing a luxuriant growth of algae, which sent up a fine fresh sea smell. The shingle was composed of slate, quartz, and granite, named in the order of abundance. The first land plant met was a tall grass, nine feet high, forming a meadow-like margin in front of the forest. Pushing my way well back into the forest, I found it composed almost entirely of spruce and two hemlocks, pysosiccensis, sugerheterophylla, and T. mertensiana. With a few specimens of yellow cypress, the ferns were developed in remarkable beauty and size, aspidiums, one of which is about six feet high, a woodsea, a maria, and several species of polypodium. The underbrush is chiefly alder, rubus, lidum, three species of vasinium, and echnoponics, horida. The hole, about from six to eight feet high, and in some places closely intertangled and hard to penetrate. On the opener spots beneath the trees, the ground is covered to a depth of two or three feet, with mosses of indescribable freshness and beauty. A few dwarf conifers often planted on their rich, furred bosses, together with pyrola, coptus, and Solomon seal. The tallest of the trees are about 150 feet high, with a diameter of about four or five feet. The branches mingling together and making a perfect shade. As the twilight began to fall, I sat down on the mossy instep of a spruce. Not a bush or a tree was moving. Every leaf seemed hushed in a brooding repose. One bird, a thrush, embroidered the silence with cheery notes, making the solitude familiar and sweet, while a solemn monotone of the stream sifting through the woods seemed like the very voice of God, humanized, terrestrialized, and entering one's heart as to a home prepared for it. Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before. The stream was bridged at short intervals with picturesque moss and boss logs, and the trees on its banks, leaning over from side to side, made high, empowering arches. The log bridge I crossed was, I think, the most beautiful of the kind I ever saw. The massive log is plushed to a depth of six inches or more with mosses of three or four species. They're different tones of yellow shading finally into each other, while their delicate fronted branches and foliage lie in exquisite order, and climbing outward and down the sides in rich, furred, clasping sheets, overlapping and felted together until the required thickness is attained. The pedestals and the spore cases give a purplish tinge, and the whole bridge is enriched with ferns and a row of small seedling trees and current bushes, with colored leaves, every one of which seems to have been culled from the woods for this special use. So perfectly do they harmonize in size, shape, and color with the mossy cover, the width of the span, and the luxuriant brushy abutments. Sauntering back to the beach, I found four or five Indian deckhands getting water, with whom I returned aboard the steamer, thanking the Lord for so noble an addition to my life as was this one big mountain, forest, and glacial day. Next morning most of the company seemed uncomfortably conscious, stricken, and ready to do anything in the way of compensation for our broken excursion that would not cost too much. It was not difficult, therefore, to convince the captain and disappointed passengers that instead of creeping back to Rangel, direct we should make an expiatory branch excursion to the largest of three low descending glaciers we had passed. The Indian pilot, well acquainted with this part of the coast, declared himself willing to guide us. The water in these fjord channels is generally deep and safe, and though at wide intervals rocks rise abruptly here and there, lacking only a few feet in height to enable them to take the rank as islands, the flat bottom cassier drew but little more water than a duck, so that even the most timid raised no objection on this score. The cylinder heads of our engines were the main source of anxiety, provided they could be kept on, all might yet be well. But in this matter, there was evidently some distrust. The engineer having imprudently informed some of the passengers that in consequence of using salt water and his frothing boilers, the cylinder heads might fly off at any moment. To the glacier, however, it was at length decided we should venture. Arriving opposite the mouth of its fjord, we steered straight inland between beautiful wooded shores, and the grand glacier came in sight in its granite valley, glowing in the early sunshine and extending a noble invitation to come and see. After we passed between the two mountain rocks that guard the gate of the fjord, the view that was now unfolded fixed every eye in wondering admiration. No words can convey anything like the adequate conception of its sublime grandeur, the noble simplicity and fineness of the sculpture of the walls, their magnificent proportion, their cascades, gardens and forests, adornments, the placid fjord between them, the great white and blue ice wall, and the snow-laden mountains beyond. Still more impudent are words in telling the peculiar awe one experiences in entering these mansions of the icy north. Notwithstanding, it is only the natural effect of appreciable manifestations of the presence of God. Standing in the gateway of this glorious temple and regarding it only as a picture, it outlines, maybe easily traced, the water foreground of a pale green color, a smooth mirror sheet sweeping back five or six miles like one of the lower reaches of a great river, bounded at the head by a beveled barrier wall of bluish white ice, four or five hundred feet high. A few snowy mountain tops appear beyond it, and on either hand rise a series of majestic, pale-gray granite rocks from three to four thousand feet high. Some of them thinly forested and striped with bushes and flowery grass on narrow shelves, especially about halfway up. Others severely sheer and bare and built together into walls like those of Yosemite extending far beyond the ice barrier. One immense brow appearing beyond another with their bases buried in the glacier. This is a Yosemite valley in the process of formation. The modeling and sculpture of the walls nearly completed and well planted, but no groves as of yet or gardens or meadows on the raw and unfinished bottom. It is as if the explorer in entering the Merced Yosemite should find the walls nearly in their present condition. Trees and flowers and the warm nooks and along the sunny portions of the moraine covered brows, but the bottom of the valley is still covered with water and beds of gravel and mud and the grand glacier that formed it slowly receding but still filling the upper half of the valley. Sailing directly up the edge of the low, outspread, water-washed terminal moraine, scarce noticeable in the general view, we seem to be separated from the glacier only by a bed of gravel a hundred yards or so in width, but on so grand a scale are all the main features of the valley. We afterwards found the distance to be a mile or more. The captain ordered the Indian deckhands to get out the canoe and take as many of us ashore as we wished to go and accompany us to the glacier in case we should need their help. Only three of the company in the first place availed themselves of this rare opportunity of meeting a glacier in the flesh. Mr. Young, one of the doctors and myself, paddling to the nearest and driest looking part of the moraine flat, we stepped ashore but gladly wallowed back into the canoe. For the grey mineral mud, a paste made of fine ground mountain meal kept unstable by the tides, at once began to take us in, swallowing us feet foremost with becoming glacial deliberation. Our next attempt, made nearer the middle of the valley, was successful and we soon found ourselves on firm, gravelly ground and made haste to the huge ice wall, which seemed to recede as we advanced. The only difficulty we met was a network of icy streams, at the largest of which we halted, not willing to get wet and forwarding. The Indian attendant probably carried us over on his back. When my turn came, I told him I would forward, but he bowed his shoulders and so ludicrously persuasive a manner, I thought I would try the queer mount. The only one of the kind I had enjoyed since boyhood days and playing leapfrog, a way staggered my perpendicular mule over the boulders into the brawling torrent and in spite of a top heavy predictions to the contrary, crossed without a fall. After being ferried in this way over several more of these glacial streams, we at length reached the foot of the glacier wall. The doctor simply played tag on it, touched it gently as if it were a dangerous wild beast and hurried back to the boat, taking portage Indian with him for safety, little knowing what he was missing. Mr. Young and I traced a glorious crystal wall, admiring its wonderful architecture, the play of light in the rifts and caverns and the structure of the ice as displayed in the less fractured sections, finding fresh beauty everywhere and facts for study. We then tried to climb it and by dint of patient zigzagging and doubling among the crevasses and cutting steps here and there, we met our way up to the over the brow and back a mile or two to a height of about 700 feet. The whole front of the glacier is gashed and sculptured into a maze of shallow caves and crevasses and to bewildering variety of novel architectural forms, clusters of glittering lance tips, spires, gables and obelisk, bold, outstanding bastions and plain mural cliffs adorned along the top with fretted cornice and battlement, while every gorge and crevasse groove and hollow was filled with light, shimmering and throbbing in pale blue tones of ineffable tenderness and beauty. The day was warm and back on the broad melting bosom of the glacier beyond the crevasse front, many streams were rejoicing, gurgling, ringing, singing and frictionless channels worn down to the white disintegrated ice of the surface into the quick and living blue in which they flowed with a grace of motion and flashing of light to be found only on the crystal hillocks and ravines of a glacier. Along the sides of the glacier, we saw the mighty flood grinding against the granite walls with tremendous pressure rounding out swelling bosses and deepening the retreating hollows into the forms they are destined to have when in the fullness of a pointed time the huge ice tool shall be withdrawn by the sun. Every feature glowed with intention reflecting the plans of God. Back a few miles from the front, the glacier is now probably but little more than a thousand feet deep, but when we examine the records on the walls surrounded, grooved, striated and polished features so surely glacial we learn that in the early days of the Ice Age they were all over swept and that this glacier has flowed at a height of from three to four thousand feet above its present level when it was at least a mile deep. Standing here with facts so fresh and telling and held up so vividly before us every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must readily apprehend the earth sculpting landscape making action of flowing ice and here too one learns that the world though made is yet being made that this is still the morning of creation that mountains long conceived are now being born channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollered for lakes that marine soil is being ground and outspread for coming plants coarse boulders and gravel for forests, finer soil for grasses and flowers while the finest part of the grist seen hasting out to sea in the draining streams is being stored away in darkness and build a particle on particle cementing and crystallizing to make the mountains and valleys and plains of other predestined landscapes to be followed by still others in endless rhythm and beauty. Gladly would we have camped out on this grand old landscape mill to study its ways and works but we had no bread and the captain was keeping the cassier whistles screaming for our return therefore in mean haste we threaded our way back through the crevasses and down the blue cliffs snatched a few flowers from a warm spot on the edge of the ice plashed across the marine streams and were paddled aboard rejoicing in the possession of so blessed a day and feeling that in every foundational truth we had been in one of God's own temples and had seen him and heard him working and preaching like a man streaming solemnly out of the fjord down the coast the islands and mountains were again passed in rear view the clouds that so often hide the mountain tops even in good weather were now floating high above them and the transparent shadows they cast were scarce perceptible on the white glacier fountains so abundant a novel are the objects of interest and pure wilderness that unless you are pursuing special studies it matters little where you go or how often you to the same place wherever you chance to be always seems to be at the moment of all places the best and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or any other for those who may not be happy here the bright hours were spent making notes and sketches and getting more of the wonderful region to memory in particular a second view of the mountains made me raise my first estimate of their height some of them must be seven or eight thousand feet at least also the glaciers seemed larger and more numerous I counted nearly a hundred large and small between a point ten or fifteen miles to the north of Cape Fansha in the mouth of the Strickeen River we made no more landings however until we had passed through the wrangle narrows and dropped anchor for the night in a small sequestered bay this was about sunset and I eagerly seized the opportunity to go ashore in the canoe and see what I could learn it is here only a step from the marine algae to terrestrial vegetation of almost tropical luxuriance parting the alders and the huckleberry bushes and the crooked stems of the prickly panics I made my way into the woods and lingered in the twilight doing nothing in particular only measuring a few of the trees listening to learn what birds and animals might be about and gazing along the dusky aisles in the meantime another excursion was being invented one of small size and price we might have reached Fort Wrangled this evening instead of anchoring here but the owners of the cassia would then receive only ten dollars fare from each person while they had incurred considerable expense in fitting up the boat for this special trip and had treated us well no, under the circumstances it would never do to return to Wrangled so meanly soon it was decided therefore that the cassia company should have the benefit of another day's hire and visiting the old deserted stricken village fourteen miles to the south of Wrangled we shall have a good time one of the most influential of the party said to me in a semi-apologetic tone as if dimly recognizing my disappointment and not going on to the chill cat we shall probably find stone axes and other curiosities Chief Karachan is going to guide us and the other Indians aboard will dig for us and there are interesting old buildings and totem poles to be seen it seems strange however that so important a mission to the most influential of the Alaskan tribes should end in a deserted village but divinity abounded nevertheless the day was divine and there was plenty of natural religion in the newborn landscapes that were being baptized in sunshine and sermons and the glacial boulders on the beach where we landed the side of the old village is on an out-swelling strip of ground about two hundred yards long and fifty wide sloping gently to the water with a strip of gravel and tall grass in front dark woods back of it and charming views over the water among the islands a delightful place the tide was low when we arrived and I noticed that the exposed boulders on the beach granite erratics that had been dropped by the melting ice toward the close of the glacial period were piled in parallel rows at right angles to the shoreline out of the way of the canoes that had belonged to the village most of the parties saundered along the shore for the ruins were overgrown with tall nettles, elder bushes prickly rubus vines through which it was difficult to force away accompanying with the most eager of the relics-seekers and two Indians I pushed back among the dilapidated dwellings they were deserted some sixty or seventy years before and some of them were at least a hundred years old so said our guide Kadakchen and his words were corroborated by the venerable aspect of the ruins though the damp climate is destructive many of the house timbers were still in good state of preservation particularly those hewn from the yellow cypress or cedar as it is called here the magnitude of the ruins and the excellence of the workmanship manifest in them was astonishing as belonging to Indians for example the first dwelling we visited was about forty feet square with walls built of planks two feet wide and six inches thick the ridge pole of yellow cypress was two feet in diameter forty feet long and as round and true as it if it had been turned in a lathe and though lying in the damp weeds it was still perfectly sound the nimble marks of the stone adds were still visible though crusted over with scale lichens in most places the pillars that had supported the ridge pole were still standing in some of the ruins they were all as far as I observed carved into life-sized figures of men, women, children, fishes, birds, and various other animals such as the beaver, wolf, or bear each of the wall planks had evidently been hewn out of a whole log and must have required sturdy deliberation as well as skill their geometrical truthfulness was admirable with the same tools, not one in a thousand of our skilled mechanics could do as good work compared with the bravest work of civilized back woodsmen is feeble and bungling the completeness of form, finish, and proportion of these timbers suggested skill of a wild and positive kind like that which guides the woodpecker in drilling round holes in the bee and making of its cells the carved totem pole monuments are the most striking of the objects displayed here the simplest of them consisted of a smooth round post 15 or 20 feet high in about 18 inches in diameter with the figure of some animal on top bear, porpoise, eagle, or raven about life-size or larger these were the totems of the families that occupied the houses in front of which they stood other support of the figure of a man or a woman life-size or larger usually sitting in a posture said to resemble the dead whose ashes were contained in a closed cavity in the pole the largest were 30 or 40 feet high carved from top to bottom into human and animal totem figures one above the another with their limbs grotesquely doubled and folded some of the most imposing were said to commemorate some event of a historical character but a telling display of family pride seemed to have been the prevailing motive all the figures were more or less rude and some were broadly grotesque but there was never any feebleness or obscurity in the expression on the contrary every feature showed grave force and decision while the childish audacity displayed in the designs combined with the manly strength in their execution was truly wonderful the colored lichens and mosses give them a venerable air while the larger vegetation often found on such as were most decayed and produced a picturesque effect here for example is a bearer five or six feet long reposing on top of his lichen clad pillar with paws comfortably folded a tuft of grass growing in each ear and rubus bushes along his back and yonder is an old chief poised on a taller pillar apparently gazing out over the landscape in a contemplative mood a tuft of bushes leaning back with jaunty air from the top of his weather-beaten hat and downy mosses about his massive lips but no rudeness or grotesqueness that may appear however combined with decorations that nature has added may possibly provoke mirth the whole work is serious in aspect and brave and true in execution similar monuments are made by other flinket tribes the erection of a totem pole is made a grand affair and is often talked of for a year or two beforehand a feast to which many are invited is held and the joyous occasion is spent in eating dancing and the distribution of gifts some of the larger specimens cost a thousand dollars or more from one to two hundred blankets worth three dollars apiece are paid to the genius who cars them while the presents and feasts usually cost twice as much so that only the wealthy families can afford them I talked with an old Indian who pointed out one of the carvings he had made in the Rangel village for which he told me he had received forty blankets a gun, a canoe, and other articles altogether worth about a hundred and seventy dollars Mr. Swan who has contributed much information concerning the British Columbian and Alaskan tribes describes a totem pole that cost twenty five hundred dollars they are always planted firmly in the ground and stand fast showing the sturdy erectness of their builders while I was busy with my pencil I heard chopping going on at the north end of the village followed by a heavy thud as if a tree had fallen it appeared that after digging about the old hearth and the first dwelling visited without finding anything of consequence the archeological doctor called the steamer deck hands to one of the most interesting of the totems and directed them to cut it down and solved the principal figure a woman measuring three feet three inches across the shoulders and conveyed aboard the steamer with a view to taking it on the east to enrich some museum or other this sacrilege came near causing trouble and would have cost us dear had the totem not chance to belong to the Kedachan family the representative of which is a member of the newly organized Rangel Presbyterian church the Kedachan looked very seriously into the face of the reverend doctor and pushed home the pertinent question how would you like to have an Indian go to a graveyard and break down and carry away a monument belonging to your family however the religious relations of the parties and a few trifling presence embedded in apologies served to hush and mend the matter sometime in the afternoon the steam whistle called us together to finish our memorable trip there was no trace of decay in the sky a glorious sunset gilded the water and cleared away the shadows of our meditations among the ruins we landed at the Rangel Wharf at dusk pushed our way through a group of inquisitive Indians across the two crooked streets and up to our homes in the fort we had been away only three days but they were so full of novel scenes and impressions the time seemed indefinitely long and our broken chill cat excursion far from being a failure as it seemed to some was one of the most memorable of my life End of Chapter 5 Recording by Josh Smith I made a second trip up the Stakeen in August and from the head of navigation pushed inland for general views over dry grassy hills and plains on the Cassier trail soon after leaving Telegraph Creek I met a merry trader who encouragingly assured me that I was going into the most wonderful region in the world that the scenery up the river was full of the very wildest freaks of nature surpassing all other sceneries either natural or artificial on paper or in nature and give yourself no bothering care about provisions for wild food grows in prodigious abundance everywhere a man was lost four days up there but he feasted on vegetables and berries and got back to camp in good condition a mess of wild parsnips and pepper for example will actually do you good and here's my advice go slow and take the pleasures and sceneries as you go at the confluence of the first north fork of the Stakeen I found a band of Tolton or stick Indians catching their winter supply of salmon and willow traps set where the fish are struggling in swift rapids on their way to the spawning grounds a large supply had already been secured and of course the Indians were well fed and merry they were camping in large booths made of poles set on end in the ground with many binding cross pieces on which tons of salmon were being dried the heads were strung on separate poles and the rows packed in willow baskets all being well smoked from fires in the middle of the floor the largest of the booths near the bank of the river was about 40 feet square beds made of spruce and pine vows were spread all around the walls on which some of the Indians lay asleep some were braiding ropes others sitting and lounging gossiping and courting while the little baby was swinging in a hammock all seemed to be lighthearted and jolly with work enough and wood enough to maintain health and comfort in the winter they are set to dwell on substantial huts in the woods where game, especially caribou, is abundant they are pale copper-colored their feet and hands are not at all negro-ish in lips or cheeks, like some of the coast tribes nor so thick-set, short-necked, or heavy-featured in general one of the most striking of the geological features of this region are immense gravel deposits displayed in sections on the walls of river gorges about two miles above the north fork confluence there is a bluff of basalt 350 feet high and above this a bed of gravel while beneath the basalt there is another bed at least 50 feet thick from wards 17 miles beyond telegraph and about 1,400 feet above sea level the trail ascends a gravel ridge to a pine and fir-covered plateau 2,100 feet above the sea then for three miles the trail leads through a forest of short, closely planted trees to the second north fork of the stickine where a still greater deposit of stratified gravel is displayed a section at least 600 feet thick resting on a red jaspery foundation 900 feet above the river there is a slightly dimpled plateau diversified with aspen and willow groves and mossy meadows at wilson's one and a half miles from the river the ground is carpeted with dwarf manzanita and the blessed linea borealis and forested with small pines, spruces, and aspen's the tallest 50 to 60 feet high wilson's to caribou, 14 miles no water was visible though the nearly level mossy ground is swampy looking at caribou camp, two miles from the river I saw two fine dogs a newfoundland and a spaniel the owner told me that he paid only $20 for the team and was offered $100 for one of them a short time afterwards the newfoundland, he said caught salmon on the ripples and could be sent back for miles that curly spaniel helped to carry the dishes from the table to the kitchen went for water when ordered took the pail and set it down at the streamside but could not be taught to dip it full but their principal work was hauling camp supplies on sleds up the river in winter these two were said to be able to haul a load of a thousand pounds when the ice was in fairly good condition they were fed on dried fish and oatmeal boiled together the timber hereabouts is mostly willow or poplar on the low ground with here and there pine, birch and spruce about 50 feet high none seen much exceeded a foot in diameter thousand-acre patches have been destroyed by fire some of the green trees had been burned off at the root the raised roots packed in dry moss being readily attacked from beneath a range of mountains about 5,000 to 6,000 feet high trending nearly north and south for 60 miles is forested to the summit only a few cliff faces and one of the highest points patched with snow are treeless no part of this range as far as I could see is deeply sculptured though the general denudation of the country must have been enormous as the gravel beds show at the top of a smooth flowery pass about 4,000 feet above the sea beautiful Deace Lake comes suddenly in sight shining like a broad tranquil river between densely forested hills and mountains it is about 27 miles long 1 to 2 miles wide and its waters, tributary to the Mackenzie flow into the Arctic Ocean by a very long roundabout romantic way the exploration of which in 1789 from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean must have been a glorious task for the heroic Scotchman Alexander Mackenzie whose name it bears Deace Creek, a fine rushing stream about 40 miles long and 40 or 50 feet wide enters the lake from the west drawing its sources from grassy mountain ridges Thiburt Creek about the same size and McDames and Defoe creeks with their many branches head together in the same general range of mountains or on more like table lands on the divide between the Mackenzie and Yukon and Stakeen all these Mackenzie streams had proved rich and gold the winged dams, flumes and sluice boxes on the lower 5 or 10 miles of their courses showed wonderful industry and the quantity of glacial and perhaps pre-glacial gravel displayed was enormous some of the beds were not unlike those of the so-called Dead Rivers of California several ancient drift-filled channels on Thiburt Creek blew at bedrock were exposed and had been worked a considerable portion of the gold though mostly coarse had no doubt come from considerable distances as boulders included in some of the deposits show the deepest beds though known to be rich had not yet been worked to any great depth on account of expense diggings that yield less than $5 a day to the man were considered worthless only three of the claims on Defoe Creek 18 miles from the mouth of Thiburt Creek were then said to pay one of the nuggets from this creek weighed 40 pounds while wandering about the banks of these gold besprinkled streams looking at the plants and mines and miners I was so fortunate as to meet an interesting French Canadian an old courier de Bois who after a few minutes conversation invited me to accompany him to his gold mine on the head of Defoe Creek near the summit of a smooth grassy mountain ridge which he assured me commanded extensive views of the region at the heads of Stikine, Takao, Yukon and Mackenzie tributaries though heavy laden with flour and bacon he strode lightly along the rough trails as if his load was only a natural balanced part of his body our way at first lay along Thiburt Creek now on gravel benches now on bedrock now close down on the bouldery edge of the stream above the mines the stream is clear and flows with a rapid current its banks are embossed with moss and grass and sedge well mixed with flowers daisies, larkspurs soledagos pernasia potentila, strawberry, etc small strips of meadow occur here and there and belts of slender arrowy fur and spruce with moss clad roots grow close to the water's edge the creek is about 45 miles long and the richest of its gold bearing beds so far discovered were on the lower four miles of the creek the higher four or five dollars a day diggings were considered very poor on account of the high price of provisions and shortness of the season after crossing many smaller streams with their strips of trees and meadows bogs and bright wild gardens we arrived at the Leclercabin about the middle of the afternoon before entering it he threw down his burden and made haste to show me his favorite flower a blue forget-me-not a specimen of which he found within a few rods of the cabin and proudly handed it to me with the finest respect and telling its many charms and lifelong associations showed in every endearing look and touch and gesture that the tender little plant of the mountain wilderness was truly his best love darling after lunch and we set out from the highest point on the divided bridge about a mile above the cabin and sauntered and gazed until sundown admiring the vast expanse of open rolling prairie-like highlands dotted with groves and lakes the fountain heads of countless cool glad streams Leclerc's simple childlike love of nature preserved undimmed through a hard wilderness life was delightful to see the grand landscapes with their lakes and streams, plants and animals all were dear to him in particular he was found of the birds nested near his cabin, watched the young and in stormy weather helped their parents to feed and shelter them some species were so conviting they learned to perch on his shoulders and take crumbs from his hand a little before sunset snow began to fly driven by a cold wind and by the time we reached the cabin though we had not far to go everything looked wintery and half past nine we ate supper while the good fire crackled cheerily and the ingle the little log cabin was only ten feet long eight wide and just high enough under the roof peak to allow one to stand upright the bedstead was not wide enough for two so Leclerc spread the blankets on the floor and we gladly lay down after our long happy walk our heads under the bedsheet our feet against the opposite wall and though comfortably tired it was long air we fell asleep for Leclerc finding me a good listener told me many stories of his adventurous life with Indians, bears and wolves snow and hunger and of his many camps in the Canadian woods hidden like the nests and dens of wild animals stories that have a singular interest to everybody for they awaken inherent memories of the Lang Lang sign when we were all wild he had nine children he told me the youngest eight years of age and several of his daughters were married his home was in Victoria next morning was cloudy and windy snowy and cold dreary December weather in August and I gladly ran out to see what I might learn a grey raggedy edge cloud capped the top of the divide it snowy fringes drawn out by the wind the flowers though most of them were buried or partly so were to some extent recognizable the blue bells bent over shining like eyes through the snow and the Gentians too with their corollas twisted shut Cassiopeia I could recognize under any disguise and two species of dwarf willow with their seeds already ripe one with comparatively small leaves were growing in mere cracks and crevices of rock ledges where the dry snow could not lie snowbirds and ptarmigan were flying bristly in the cold wind and on the edge of a grove I saw a spruce from which a bear had stripped large sections of bark for food about nine o'clock the clouds lifted and I enjoyed another wide view from the summit of the ridge of the vast grassy fountain region with smooth rolling features a few patches of forest broke the monotony of color and the many lakes one of them about five miles long were glowing like windows only the highest ridges were whitened with snow while rifts in the clouds showed beautiful bits of yellow green sky the limit of the tree growth is about 5,000 feet throughout all this region from Glenore to Cassiere the grasses grow luxuriously in openings in the woods and on dry hillsides where the trees seem to be covered by fire and over all the broad prairies above the timberline a kind of bunch grass in particular is often four or five feet high and close enough to be mowed for hay I never anywhere saw a finer or more bountiful wild pasture hear the caribou feed and grow fat braving the intense winter cold often forty to sixty degrees below zero winter and summer seem to be the only seasons here what may fairly be called summer lasts only two or three months winter nine or ten for a pure well defined spring or autumn there is scarcely a trace were it not for the long severe winters this would be a capital stock country equaling texas and the prairies of the old west from my outlook on the default ridge I saw thousands of square miles of this prairie like region drained by tributaries of the stikine, taku, Yukon and Mackenzie rivers the clear told me that the caribou or reindeer were very abundant on this high ground a flock of fifty or more was seen a short time before at the head of the default creek fine hardy able animals like their near relatives the reindeer of the arctic tundras the Indians here about he said hunted them with dogs mostly in the fall and winter on my return trip I met several bands of these Indians on the march going north to hunt some of the men and women were carrying puppies on top of their heavy loads of dried salmon while the grown dogs had saddle bags filled with odds and ends strapped on their backs small puppies unable to carry more than five or six pounds were thus made useful I overtook another band going south heavy laden with furs and skins to trade an old woman with short dress and leggings was carrying a big load of furs and skins on top of which was perched a little girl about three years old a brown speckled marmot one of the Claire's friends was getting ready for winter the entrance to his burrow was a little to one side of the cabin door a well-worn trail led to it through the grass and another to that of his companion fifty feet away he was a most amusing pet always on hand at mealtimes for bread crumbs and bits of bacon rind came when called answering in a shrill whistle moving like a squirrel with quick nervous impulses jerking his short flat tail his fur clothing was neat and clean fairly shining in the wintery light the snowy weather that morning must have called winter to mind for as soon as he got his breakfast he ran to a tough to dry grass chewed it into fuzzy mouthfuls and carried it to his nest coming and going with admirable industry forecast and confidence non-watching him as we did could found sympathize with him and I fancy that in practical weather wisdom no government forecaster with all his advantages surpasses this little Alaska rodent every hair and nerve a weather instrument I greatly enjoyed this little inland side trip the wide views the minors along the branches of the great river busy as moles and beavers young men dreaming and hoping to strug it rich and rush home to marry their girls faithfully waiting others hoping to clear off weary farm mortgages and brighten the lives of the anxious home folk but most I suppose just struggling blindly for gold enough to make them indefinitely rich to spend their lives endless affluence honor and ease I enjoyed getting acquainted with the trees especially the beautiful spruce and silver fur the flower gardens and great grassy caribou pastures the cheery able marmot mountaineer and above all the friendship and kindness of Mr. Leclerc whom I shall never forget bidding goodbye I sauntered back to the head of navigation on the Stakeen happy and rich without a particle of obscuring gold dust in the air End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Travels in Alaska this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Adam Marsatich Alexandria Virginia 2010 Travels in Alaska by John Muir Chapter 7 Glenora Peak On the trail to the steamboat landing at the foot of Dees Lake I met a Douglas squirrel nearly as red and rusty in color as his eastern relative the Chickaree except in color he differs but little from the California Douglas Squirrel in voice, language, gestures, temperament he is the same fiery, indomitable little king of the woods another darker and probably younger specimen met near the caribou house barked, chirruped, and showed off in fine style on a tree within a few feet of us what does a little rascal mean? said my companion a man I had fallen in with on the trail what is he making such a fuss about I cannot frighten him never mind I replied just wait until I whistle 100 and you will see him fly and disgust and so he did so as his California brother and do strange that no squirrel or spermophile I yet have found ever seem to have anything like enough of Scotch religion to enjoy this grand old tune the taverns along the Cassiar gold trail were the worst I had ever seen rough shacks with dirt floors dirt roofs and rough meals the meals are all alike a potato a slice of something like bacon some gray stuff called bread and a cup of muddy semi liquid coffee like that which the California miners call slickers or slum gullion the bread was terrible and sinful how the lord's good wheat could be made into stuff so mysteriously bad is past finding out the very devil it would seem in wicked anger and ingenuity had been the baker in our walk from Dees Lake to telegraph creek we had one of these rough luncheons at three o'clock in the afternoon of the first day then walked on five miles towards where we were solemnly assured that we could not have a single bite of either supper or breakfast but as a great favor we might sleep on his best gray bunk we replied that as we had lunch at the lake supper would not be greatly missed and as for breakfast we would start early and walk eight miles to the next road house we set out at half past four glad to escape into the fresh air and reach the breakfast place at eight o'clock the landlord was still a good and when at length he came to the door he scowled savagely at us as if our request for breakfast was preposterous and criminal beyond anything ever heard of in all gold full Alaska a good many in those days were returning from the mines dead broke and he probably regarded us as belonging to that disreputable class anyhow we got nothing and had to tramp on as we approached the next house three miles ahead we saw the tavern keeper keenly surveying us and as we afterwards learned taking me for a certain judge whom for some cause he wished to avoid he hurriedly locked his door and fled half a mile further on we discovered him in a thicket a little way off the trail explained our wants marched him back to his house and at length obtained a little sour bread sour milk and old salmon and our only lonely meal between the lake and telegraph creek we arrived at telegraph creek the end of my two hundred mile walk about noon after luncheon I went on down the river to glenora in a fine canoe owned and manned by kitty a stout intelligent looking indian woman who charged her passengers a dollar for the fifteen mile trip her crew was four indian paddlers in the rapids she also applied the paddle with stout telling strokes and a keen eyed old man probably her husband sat high in the stern and steered all seemed exhilarated as we shot down through the narrow gorge on the rushing roaring throttled river rattling all the more vigorously the faster the speed of the stream to hold good steering way the canoe danced lightly amid gray surges and spray as if alive and enthusiastically enjoying the adventure some of the passengers were pretty thoroughly drenched in unskillful hands the frail dugout would surely have been wrecked or upset most of the seasoned goods the cassiar gold camps were carried from glenora to telegraph creek in canoes the steamers not being able to overcome the rapids except during high water even then they had usually to line two of the rapids that is take a line ashore make it fast to a tree on the bank and pull up on the cap stand the freight canoes carried about three or four tons for which fifteen dollars per ton was charged slow progress was made by pulling along the bank out of the swiftest part of the current in the rapids a tow line was taken ashore only one of the crew remaining aboard to steer the trip took a day unless a favoring wind was blowing which often happened next morning I set out from glenora to climb glenora peak for the general view of the great coast range that I failed to obtain on my first ascent on account of the accident that befell Mr. Young when we were within a minute or two of the top it is hard to fail in reaching a mountaintop that one starts for let the cause be what it may this time I had no companion to care for but the sky was threatening I was assured by the local weather prophets that the day would be rainy or snowy because the peaks in sight were muffled in clouds that seemed to be getting ready for work I determined to go ahead however for storms of any kind are well worthwhile and if driven back I could wait and try again with crackers in my pocket and a light rubber coat that a kind Hebrew passenger on the steamer Gertrude loaned me he was ready for anything that might offer my hopes for the grand view rising and falling as the clouds rose and fell anxiously I watched them as they trailed their draggled skirts across the glaciers and fountain peaks as if thoughtfully looking for the places where they could do the most good from glenora there is a first terrace 200 feet above the river mostly with bushes yellow aposinum on the open spaces together with carpets of dwarf manzanita bunch grass and a few of the composite galleoms etc then comes a flat stretch a mile wide extending to the foothills covered with birch spruce, fir, and poplar now mostly killed by fire with a round strewn with charred trunks from this black forest the mountain rises in rather steep slopes covered with a luxuriant growth of bushes grass, flowers, and a few trees chiefly spruce and fir the firs gradually dwarfing into a beautiful chaparral the most beautiful I think I have ever seen the flat fan shaped plumes all the way down to the foothills covered with birch spruce and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs and firs Perhaps the most telling of the flowering plants. It grows up to 5,000 feet or more. Larx burrs are common, with epilobium, senesio, aerageron, and a few solidagos. The hair bell appears at about 4,000 feet and extends to the summit, dwarfing in stature, but maintaining the size of its handsome bells until they seem to be lying loose and detached on the ground, as if like snowflowers they had fallen from the sky. And, though frail and delicate looking, none of its companions is more enduring or rings out the praises of beauty-loving nature, in tones more appreciable to mortals, not forgetting even Cassiope, who is also here, and her companion, Brianthus, the loveliest and most widely distributed of the alpine shrubs. Then come crowberry, and two species of huckleberry, one of them from about 6 inches to a foot high with delicious berries, the other a most lavishly prolific and contented-looking dwarf, few of the bushes being more than 2 inches high, counting to the topmost leaf, each yet bearing from 10 to 20 or more large berries. Perhaps more than half the bulk of the whole plant is fruit, the largest and finest flavored of all the huckleberries or blueberries I ever tasted, spreading fine feasts for the grouse and ptarmigan, and many others of nature's mountain people. I noticed three species of dwarf willows, one with narrow leaves, growing at the very summit of the mountain in cracks of the rocks, as well as on patches of soil, another with large, smooth leaves now turning yellow. The third species grows between the others as to elevation. Its leaves, then orange-colored, are strikingly pitted and reticulated. Another alpine shrub, a species of seriocarpus, covered with handsome heads of feathery achinia, beautiful dwarf echeverias, with flocks of purple flowers pricked into their bright grass-green, cushion-like bosses of moss-like foliage, and a fine forget-me-not reach to the summit. I may also mention a large mertensia, a fine anemone, a veratrum, six feet high, a large blue daisy growing up to three to four thousand feet, and at the summit, a dwarf species, with dusky, hairy involucers, and a few ferns, a spidium, gymno-gramma, and small rock chelanthes leaving scarce a foot of ground bare, though the mountain looks bald and brown in the distance like those of the desert ranges of the Great Basin in Utah and Nevada. Armed with these plant people, I had almost forgotten to watch the sky, until I reached the top of the highest peak, when one of the greatest and most impressively sublime of all the mountain views I have ever enjoyed came in full sight. More than three hundred miles of closely packed peaks on the Great Coast Range, sculptured in the boldest manner imaginable. Their naked tops, and dividing ridges, dark in color, their sides and the canyons, gorges, and valleys between them loaded with glaciers and snow. From this standpoint, I counted upwards of two hundred glaciers, while dark-centered luminous clouds with fringed edges hovered and crawled over them, now slowly descending, casting transparent shadows on the ice and snow, now rising high above them, lingering like loving angels guarding the crystal gifts they had bestowed. Although the range is seen from this glenora-mountain top seems regular in its trend, as if the main axis were simple and continuous, it is, on the contrary, far from simple. In front of the highest ranks of peaks are others of the same form, with their own glaciers, and lower peaks before these, and yet lower ones with their ridges and canyons, valleys, and foothills. Alps rise beyond Alps as far as the eye can reach, and clusters of higher peaks here and there closely crowded together, clusters too of needles and pinnacles enumerable like trees and groves. Other the peaks seem comparatively slender and closely packed, as if nature had here been trying to see how many noble well-dressed mountains could be crowded into one grand range. The black rocks, too steep for snow to lie upon, were brought into sharp relief by white clouds and snow and glaciers, and these again were outlined and made tellingly plain by the rocks. The glaciers so grandly displayed are of every form, some crawling through gorge and valley like monster-glittering serpents, others like broad cataracts pouring over cliffs into shadowy gulfs, others, with their main trunks winding through narrow canyons, display long, white finger-like tributaries descending from the summits of pinnacled ridges, others lie back in fountains-circs walled in all around, save at the lower edge over which they pour in blue cascades. Snow, too, lay in folds and patches of every form on blunt, rounded ridges in curves, aero-y lines, dashes, and narrow ornamental flutings among the summit peaks, and in broad radiating wings on smooth slopes. And on many a bulging headland, and lower ridge there lay heavy, over-curling copings, and smooth, white domes where wind-driven snow was pressed and wreathed and packed into every form and in every possible place and condition. I never before had seen so richly sculptured a range, or so many awe-inspiring inaccessible mountains crowded together. If a line were drawn east and west from the peak on which I stood, and extended both ways to the horizon, cutting the whole round landscape into two equal parts, then all of the south half would be bordered by these icy peaks, which would seem to curve around half the horizon and about twenty degrees more, though extending in a general straight, or but moderately curved line. The deepest and thickest and highest of all this wilderness of peaks lie to the southwest. They are probably from about nine to twelve thousand feet high, springing to this elevation from near the sea level. The peak on which these observations were made is somewhere about seven thousand feet high, and from here I estimated the height of the range. The highest peak of all, or that seemed so to me, lies to the westward at an estimated distance of about one hundred and fifty, or two hundred miles. Only a solid white summit was visible. Possibly, it may be the topmost peak of St. Elias. Now look northward around the other half of the horizon, and instead of countless peaks crowding into the sky, you see a low brown region, heaving and swelling in gentle curves, apparently scarcely more waved than a rolling prairie. The so-called canyons of several forks of the upper stickine are visible, but even where best seen in the foreground and middle ground of the picture, they are like mere sunken gorges, making scarce perceptible marks on the landscape. While the tops of the highest mountain swells show only small patches of snow and no glaciers, Glenora Peak, on which I stood, is the highest point of a spur that points out from the main ridge in a northernly direction. It seems to have been a rounded, broad-backed ridge which has been sculpted into its present irregular form by short residual glaciers, some of which, a mile or two long, are still at work. As I lingered, gazing on the vast show, luminous shadowy clouds seem to increase in glory of color and motion, now fondling the highest peaks with infinite tenderness of touch, now hovering above them like eagles over their nests. When night was drawing near, I ran down the flowery slopes exhilarated, thanking God for the gift of this great day. The setting sun fired the clouds, all the worlds seemed newborn. Everything, even the commonest, was seen in new light and was looked at with new interest as if never seen before. The plant people seemed glad, as if rejoicing with me, the little ones as well as the trees, while every feature of the peak, and its traveled boulders, seemed to know what I had been about and the depth of my joy, as if they could read faces. CHAPTER VIII EXPLORATION OF THE STICKING GLACIERS Last day I planned an excursion to the so-called Dirt Glacier, the most interesting to Indians and steamer men of all the sticking glaciers from its mysterious floods. I left the steamer Gertrude for the Glacier Delta an hour or two before sunset. The captain kindly loaned me his canoe and two of his Indian deckhands, who seemed much puzzled to know what the rare service required of them might mean, and on leaving Beta Maria due to their companions. We camped on the west side of the river opposite the front of the Glacier in a small spacious valley surrounded by snowy mountains. Thirteen small glaciers were in sight in four waterfalls. It was a fine, serene evening, and the highest peaks were wearing turbans of flossy, gosmer cloud stuff. I had my supper before leaving the steamer, so I had only to make a campfire, spread my blanket, and lie down. The Indians had their own bedding and lay beside their own fire. The Dirt Glacier is noted among the river men as being subject to violent flood outbursts once or twice a year, usually in the late summer. The Delta of this Glacier stream is three or four miles wide, where it fronts the river and the many rough channels with which it is guttered, and the uprooted trees and huge boulders that roughen its surface manifest the power of the floods that swept them to their places. But under ordinary conditions, the Glacier discharges its drainage water into the river through only four or five of the Delta channels. Our camp was made on the south or lower side of the Delta, below all the draining streams, so that I would not have to ford any of them on my way to the Glacier. The Indians chose a sand pit to sleep in. I chose a level spot back of a drift log. I had but little to say to my companions, as they could speak no English, nor I much flinked or shunned. In a few minutes after landing, they retired to their pit, and were soon asleep in a snore. I lingered by the fire until after ten o'clock, for the night sky was clear, and the great white mountains in the starlight seemed nearer than by day, and to be looking down like guardians of the valley. While the water falls in the torrents escaping from beneath the big Glacier, roared in a broad, low monotone, sounding as if close at hand, though as it proved next day the nearest was three miles away. After wrapping myself in my blankets, I still gazed into the marvelous sky, and made out to sleep only about two hours. Then without waking the noisy sleepers, I arose, ate a piece of bread, and set out in my shirt sleeves, determined to make the most of the time at my disposal. The captain was to pick us up about noon at a woodpile about a mile from here, but within the meantime the steamer should run aground, and he should need his canoe, a three-wistle signal would be given. Following a dry channel for about a mile, I came suddenly upon the main outlet of the Glacier, which in the imperfect light seemed as large as the river, about 150 feet wide and perhaps three or four feet deep. A little farther up, it was only about 50 feet wide, and rushing on with impetuous roaring forests in its rocky channel, sweeping forward sand, gravel, cobblestones, and boulders. The bump and rumble sounds of the largest of these rolling stones being readily heard in the midst of the roaring. It was too swift and rough to forward, and no bridge-tree could be found, for the great floods had cleared everything out of their way. I was therefore compelled to keep on up the right bank, however difficult the way, where a strip of bare boulders lined the margin, the walking was easy, but where the current swept close along the ragged edge of the forest, progress was difficult and slow on account of snow-crinkled and interlaced thickets of alder and willow, reinforced with fallen trees and thorny devils' club. It kind of panics, horridium, making a jungle all but impenetrable. The mile of this extravagantly difficult growth through which I struggled inch by inch will not soon be forgotten. At length, arriving within a few hundred yards of the glacier, full of panicked barbs, I found that both the glacier and its unvortable stream were pressing hard against a shelving cliff dangerously steep, leaving no margin and compelling me to scramble along its face before I could get onto the glacier. But by sunrise, all these cliffs, jungle, and the torrent troubles were overcome, and I gladly found myself free on the magnificent ice river. The curving outbulging front of the glacier is about two miles wide, two hundred feet high, and its surface, for a mile or so above the front, is strewn with moraine detritus, giving it a strangely dirty dusky look, hence its name, the dirt glacier. This detritus-ladest portion being all that is seen in passing up the river. A mile or two beyond the moraine covered part, I was surprised to find alpine plants growing on the ice, fresh and green, some of them in full flower. These curious glacier gardens, the first I had seen, were evidently planted by snow avalanches from the high walls. They were well watered, of course, by the melting surface of the ice, and fairly well nourished by the humus still attached to the roots, and in some places formed beds of considerable thickness. Planting trees and bushes also were growing among the flowers. Admiring these novel floating gardens, I struck out for the middle of the pure white glacier, where the ice seemed smoother, and then held straight on for about eight miles, where I reluctantly turned back to meet the steamer, greatly regretting that I had not bought a weak supply of hard tack to allow me to explore the glacier to its head, and then trust to some passing canoe to take me down to the buck station, from which I could explore the big sticking glacier. Altogether I saw about fifteen or sixteen miles of the main trunk. The grade is almost regular, and the walls on either hand are about from two to three thousand feet high, sculptured like those of Yosemite Valley. I found no difficulty in of an extraordinary kind, many a crevasse had to be crossed, but most of them were narrow and easily jumped, while the few wide ones that lay in my way were crossed on silver bridges or avoided by passing around them. The structure of the glacier was strikingly revealed on its melting surface. It is made up of thin vertical or inclined sheets or slabs set on edge and welded together. They represent, I think, the success of snowfalls from heavy storms on the tributaries. One of the tributaries on the right side, about three miles above the front, has been entirely melted off from the trunk and has receded two or three miles, forming an independent glacier. Across the mouth of this abandoned part of its channel, the main glacier flows, forming a dam which gives rise to a lake. On the head of the detached tributary there are some five or six small residual glaciers, the drainage of which, with that of the snowy mountain slopes above them, discharges into the lake whose outlet is through a channel or channels beneath the dam and glacier. Now these sub-channels are occasionally blocked and the water rises until it flows alongside the glacier, but as the dam is a moving one, a grand outburst is sometimes made, which draining the large lake produces a flood of amazing power, sweeping down immense quantities of marine material and raising the river all the way down to its mouth, so that several trips may occasionally be made by the steamers after the season of low water has laid them up for a year. The occurrence of these floods are, of course, well known to the Indians and steamboat men, though they know nothing of their cause. They simply remark, the dirt glacier has broken out again. I greatly enjoyed my walk up to some majestic ice river, charmed by the pale blue ineffably fine light and crevasses, moulins and wells, and the innumerable azure pools and basins of azure ice and the network of surface streams, large and small, gliding, swirling with wonderful grace of motion in their frictionless channels, calling forth devout admiration at almost every step and filling the mind with a sense of nature's endless beauty and power. Looking ahead from the middle of the glacier, you see the broad white flood, though apparently rigid as iron, sweeping in graceful curves between its high mountain-like walls, small glaciers hanging in the hollows on either side, and snow in every form above them, and the great down-plunging granite buttresses and headlands of the walls, marvelous and bold massive sculpture, forests and side canyons to within fifty feet of the glacier, avalanche pathways overgrown with alder and willow, innumerable cascades keeping up a solemn harmony of water sounds blending with those of the glacier moulins and rills, and as far as the eye can reach, tributary glaciers at short intervals silently descending from their high white fountains to swell the Grand Central Ice River. In the angle formed by the main glacier and the lake that gives rise to the river floods, there is a massive granite dome sparsely feathered with trees, and just beyond this Yosemiteic rock is a mountain perhaps ten thousand feet high, laden with ice and snow which seem pure pearly white in the morning light. Last evening as seen from camp it was adorned with a cloud streamer, and both the streamer and the peak were flushed in the Alpine Glow. A mile or two above this mountain, on the opposite side of the glacier, there is a rock like the Yosemite Sentinel, and in general all the wall rocks as far as I saw them are more or less Yosemiteic in form and color and streaked with cascades. But wonderful as this noble ice river is in size and depth and in power display, and far more wonderful was the vastly greater glacier three or four thousand feet, or perhaps a mile in depth whose size and general history is inscribed on the sides of the walls and over the tops of the rocks and characters which have not yet been greatly dimmed by the weather. Comparing its present size with that when it was in its prime is like comparing a small rivulet to the same stream when it is a roaring torrent. The return trip to the camp passed a shelving cliff and through the wary Devil's Club jungle was made in a few hours. The Indians had gone off picking berries but were on the watch for me and hailed me as I approached. The captain had called for me and after waiting three hours departed for Rangel without leaving any food to make sure I suppose of a quick return of his Indians and canoe. This was no serious matter however for the swift current swept us down to Buck Station some thirty five miles distant by eight o'clock. Here I remained to study the big sticking glacier but the Indians set out for Rangel soon after supper though I invited them this day till morning. The weather that morning August 27th was dark and rainy and I tried to persuade myself that I ought to rest a day before setting out on a new icework but just across the river the big glacier was staring me in the face pouring its majestic flood to the broad mountain gateway and expanding in this spacious river valley to a width of four or five miles while dim in the gray distance loomed its high mountain fountains. So grand an invitation displayed in characters so telling was of course irresistible and body care and weather care vanished. Mr. Chouquette the keeper of the station fared me across the river and I spent the day in getting general views and planning the work that had long been in mind. I first traced the broad complicated terminal moraine to its southern extremity climbed up the west side along the lateral moraine three or four miles making my way now on the glacier. Now on the moraine covered bank and now compelled to climb up through the timber and brush in order to pass some rocky headland until I reached a point commanding a good general view of the lower end of the glacier. Heavy blotting rain then began to fall and I retraced my steps oftentimes stopping to admire the blue ice caves into which glad rejoicing streams from the mountainside were hurrying as if going home while the glaciers seemed to open its wide crystal gateways to welcome them. The following morning blotting rain was still falling but time and work was too precious to mind it. Kind Mr. Chouquette put me across the river in a canoe with a lot of biscuits his Indian wife had baked for me and some dried salmon a little sugar and tea a blanket and a piece of light sheeting for shelter from rain during the night all rolled into one bundle. When shall I expect you back? inquired Chouquette when I bade him goodbye. Oh anytime I replied I shall see as much as possible of the glacier and I know not how long it will hold me. Well but when will I come to look for you if anything happens? Where are you going to try to go? Years ago Russian officers from Sitka went up the glacier from here and none of them ever returned. It's a mighty dangerous glacier all full of damn deep holes and cracks. You've no idea what ticklish deceiving traps are scattered all over it. Yes I have I said I seen glaciers before though none so big as this one. Do not look for me until I make my appearance on the riverbank. Never mind me I'm used to caring for myself and so shouldering my bundle I treached off through the marine boulders and thickets. My general plan was to trace the terminal moraine to its extreme north end, pitch my little tent, leave the blanket and most of the hard tack and from this main camp go and come as hunger required or allowed. After examining a cross-section of the broad moraine roughened by concentric masses marking interruptions in the recession of the glacier of perhaps several centuries in which the success of moraines were formed and shoved together in closer or wider order I traced the moraine to its northeastern extremity and ascended the glacier for several miles along the left margin then crossed it at the grand cataract and down the right side to the river and along the moraine to the point of beginning. On the older portions of this moraine I discovered several kettles in process of formation and was pleased to find that they conformed in the most striking way with the theory I had already been led to make from observations on the old kettles which formed so curious a feature of the drift covering Wisconsin and Minnesota and some of the larger moraines of the residual glaciers in the California I found a pit 8 or 10 feet deep with raw shifting sides countersunk abruptly in the rough moraine material and at the bottom on sliding down by the aid of a light spruce tree that was being undermined I discovered after digging down a foot or two that the bottom was resting on a block of solid blue ice which had been buried in the moraine perhaps a century or more judging by the age of the tree that had grown above it probably more than a century will be required to complete the formation of this kettle by the slow melting of the buried ice block the marine material of course was falling in as the ice melted and the sides maintained an angle as steep as the material would lie all sorts of theories have been advanced for the formation of these kettles so abundant in the drift over a great part of the United States and I was glad to be able to set the question at rest at least as far as I was concerned the glacier and the mountains about it are on so grand a scale and so generally inaccessible in the ordinary sense it seemed to matter but little what course I pursued everything was full of interest even the weather though about as unfavorable as possible for wide views and scrambling through the marine jungle brush kept one as wet as if all the way was beneath the cascade I pushed on with many a rest and halt to admire the bold and marvelously sculptured ice front looking all the grander and more striking in the gray mist with all the rest of the glacier shut out until I came to a lake about 200 yards wide and two miles long with scores of small bergs floating in it some of ground close inshore against the moraine the light playing on their angles and shimmering in the blue caves and ravishing tones this proved to be the largest of the series of narrow lakelets that lie in shallow troughs between the moraine and the glacier a miniature arctic ocean its ice cliffs played upon whispering rippling waveless and its small berg flows drifting in its currents or with the wind or stranded here and there along its rocky moraine shore hundreds of small reels and good sized streams were falling into the lake from the glacier singing in low tones some of them pouring in sheer falls over blue cliffs from narrow ice valleys some spouting from pipe like channels in the solid front of the glaciers others gurgling out of arched openings at the base all these water streams were riding on the parent ice stream their voices joined in one grand anthem telling the wonders of their near far off fountains the lake itself is resting in a basin of ice and the forested moraine though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more than a century old is in great part resting on buried ice left behind as the glacier receded and melting slowly on account of the protection afforded by the moraine detritus which keeps shifting and falling on the interface long after it's overgrown with lichens mosses grasses bushes and even good sized trees these changes going on with marvelous deliberation until in fullness of time the whole moraine settles down upon its bedrock foundation the outlet of the lake is a large stream almost a river in size one of the main draining streams of the glacier i attempted to forward it where it begins to break and rapids and passing over the moraine but found it too deep and rough on the bottom it then tried to forward at its head where it is wider and glides smoothly out of the lake bracing myself against the current with my pole but found it too deep and when the icy water reached my shoulders i cautiously struggled back to the moraine i next followed it down through the rocky jungle to a place where in breaking across the moraine dam it was only about 35 feet wide here i found a spruce tree which i felled for a bridge it reached across about 10 feet of the top holding in the bank brush but the force of the torrent acting on the submerged branches and the slender end of the trunk bent it like a bow and made it very unsteady and after testing it by going out about a third of the way over it seemed likely to be carried away when bent deeper into the current by my weight fortunately i discovered another larger tree well situated a little farther down which i felled and though a few feet in the middle was submerged it seemed perfectly safe as it was now getting late i started back to the lake side where i'd left my bundle and in trying to hold a direct course found the interlaced jungle still more difficult than it was along the bank of the torrent for over an hour i had to creep and struggle close to the rocky ground like a fly in the spider web without being able to obtain a single glimpse of any guiding feature of the landscape finding a little willow taller than the surrounding alders i climbed it caught side of the glacier front took a compass bearing and sunk again into the dripping blinding maze of brush and that length emerged on the lake shore seven hours after leaving it all this time as wet as though i had been swimming thus completing a trying day's work but everything was deliciously fresh and i found new and old plant friends and lessons on nature's alaska marine landscape gardening that made everything bright and light it was now near dark and i made haste to make up my flimsy little tent the ground was desperately rocky i made out however to level down a strip large enough to lie on and by means of slim alder stems bent over it and tied together soon had a home while thus busily engaged i was startled by a thundering roar across the lake running to the top of the marine i discovered that the tremendous noise was only the outcry of a newborn burg about 50 or 60 feet in diameter rocking and wallowing in the waves it had raised as if enjoying its freedom after its long grinding work as part of the glacier after this fine last lesson i managed to make a small fire out of wet twigs got a cup of tea stripped off my dripping clothing wrapped myself in a blanket and lay brooding on the gains of the day and plans for the morrow glad rich and almost comfortable it was raining hard when i awoke but i made up my mind to disregard the weather put on my dripping clothing glad to know is fresh and clean eight biscuits and a piece of dried salmon without attempting to make a tea fire filled a bag with hard tacks slung it over my shoulder and with my indispensable ice axe plunged once more into the dripping jungle i found my bridge holding bravely in place against the swollen torrent crossed it and beat my way around pools and logs and through two hours of tangle back to the marine on the north side of the outlet a wet weary battle but not without enjoyment the smell of the washed ground and vegetation made every breath of pleasure and i found calypso borealis the first i had seen on this side of the continent one of my darlings worth any amount of hardship and i saw one of my Douglas squirrels on the margin of a grassy pool the drip of the rain on various leaves was pleasant to hear more especially marked with the flat low toned bumps and splashes of large drops from the trees and the broad horizontal leaves of the echio panics or idiom like the drumming of thundershower drops on veratrum and palm leaves while the mosses were indescribably beautiful so fresh so bright so cheerly green and also low and calm and silent however heavy and wild the wind and the rain blowing and pouring above them surely never a particle of dust has touched the leaf or crown of all these blessed mosses and how bright were the red rims of the cladonia cups beside them and the fruit of the dwarf Cornell and the wet berries nature's precious jewelry how beautiful they were huckleberries with pale bloom and crystal drop on each red and yellow salmon berries with clusters of smaller drops and the glittering berry like raindrops adorning the interlacing arches of the bent grasses and sedges around the edges of the pools every drop a mirror with all the landscape in it of that end of that and twice as muckles of that in this glorious alaska day recalling however different george herbert's sweet day so cool so calm so bright in the gardens and the forests of this wonderful moraine one might spend a whole joyful life when at last reached the end of the great moraine and the front of the mountain that forms the north side of the glacier basin i tried to make my way along its side but finding the climbing tedious and difficult took to the glacier and fared well though a good deal of step cutting was required on its ragged crevast margin when night was drawing nigh i scanned the steep mountainside in search of an accessible bench however narrow where a bed and a fire might be gathered for a camp about dark great was my delight to find a little shelf with a few small mountain hemlocks growing in cleavage joints projecting knobs below it enabled me to build a platform for a fireplace and a bed and by industrious creeping from one fissure to another cutting bushes and small trees and sliding them down to within reach of my rock shelf i made out to collect wood enough to last through the night in an hour or two i had a cheery fire and spent the night and turning from side to side steaming and drying after being wet two days in a night fortunately this night it did not rain but it was very cold pushing on next day i climbed to the top of the glacier by ice steps and along its side to the grand cataract two miles wide where the whole majestic flood of the glacier pours like a mighty surging river down a steep declivity in this channel after gazing a long time on the glorious show i discovered a place beneath the edge of the cataract where it flows over a hard resisting granite rib into which i crawled and enjoyed the novel and instructive view of the glacier pouring over my head showing not only its grinding polishing action but how it breaks off large angular boulder masses a most telling lesson in earth sculpture confirming many i had already learned in the glacier basins of the high seer of california i then crossed to the south side noting the forms of the huge blocks into which the glacier was broken and passing over the brow of the cataract and how they were welded the weather was now clear opening views according to my own heart far into the high snowy fountains i saw what seemed the farthest mountains perhaps 30 miles from the front everywhere winterbound but thick forested however steep for a distance of at least 15 miles from the front the trees hemlock and spruce cling to the rock by root holds among cleavage joints the greatest discovery was in methods of denudation displayed beneath the glacier after a few more days of exhilarating study i returned to the river bank opposite of shoket's landing promptly at sight of the signal i made the kind frenchman came across from me in this canoe at his house i enjoyed a rest while writing out notes then examined the smaller glacier fronting the one i had been exploring until a passing canoe bound for fort ringel took me aboard end of chapter eight recording by josh smith