 Chapter 15 From Taku River to Taylor Bay I never saw Alaska looking better than it did when we bade farewell to Sum Dumb on August 22, and pushed on northward at the coast toward Taku. The morning was clear, calm, bright, not a cloud in all the purple sky, nor wind, however gentle, to shake the slender spires of the spruces, or due laden grass around the shores. Over the mountains and over the broad white bosoms of the glaciers, the sunbeams poured. Rosie as ever fell on fields of ripening wheat, drenching the forest, and kindling the glassy waters and icebergs into a perfect blaze of colored light. Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature's work was going on in glowing enthusiasm, not less appreciable in the deep repose that brooded over every feature of the landscape, suggesting the coming fruitfulness of the icy land, and showing the advance that has already been made from glacial winter to summer. Over care-laden commercial lives we leave close our eyes to the operations of God as a workman, though openly carried on that all who will look may see. The scarred rocks here and the moraines make a vivid showing of the old wintertime of the glacial period, and mark the bounds of the merged glass that once filled the bay and covered the surrounding mountains. Already that sea of ice is replaced by water, in which multitudes of fishes are fed, while the hundred glaciers lingering about the bay and the streams that pour from them are busy night and day, bringing in sand and mud and stones, at the rate of tons every minute, to fill it up. Then as the seasons grow warmer, there will be fields here for the plow. Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls and plovers, and pulled heartily at their oars, evidently glad to get out of the ice with the whole boat. Now for Taku, they said, as we glided over the shining water. Good-bye, ice-mountains, good-bye, some dumb. Soon a light breeze came, and they unfurled the sail and laid away their oars, and began, as usual in such free times, to put their goods in order, unpacking and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old flintlocked musket, suggestive of Hudson's Bay Times, which he wished to discharge and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at a gull that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell slowly with outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping from its bill. I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which he could offer no other excuse than that he had learned from the whites to be careless about taking life. The tie-in denounced the deed as likely to bring bad luck. Before the whites came, most of the thling-kits held with agassiz that animals have souls, and that it was wrong and unlucky to even speak disrespectfully of the fishes or any of the animals that supplied them with food. A case illustrating their superstitious beliefs in this connection occurred at Fort Rangel while I was there the year before. One of the subcheats of the Stakeens had a little son, five or six years old, to whom he was very much attached, always taking him with him in his short canoe trips and leading him by the hand while going about town. Last summer the boy was taken sick, and gradually grew weak and thin, whereupon his father became alarmed and feared, as is usual in such obscure cases, that the boy had been bewitched. He first applied in his trouble to Dr. Carlos, one of the missionaries who gave medicine, without effecting the immediate cure that the fond father demanded. He was to some extent a believer in the powers of missionaries, both as to material and spiritual affairs, but in so serious an exegency it was natural that he should go back to the faith of his fathers. Accordingly, he sent for one of the shamans, or medicinemen, of his tribe, and submitted the case to him, who, after going through the customary incantations, declared that he had discovered the cause of the difficulty. Your boy, he said, has lost his soul, and this is the way it happened. He was playing among the stones down on the beach when he saw a crawfish in the water, and made fun of it, pointing his finger at it and saying, Oh, you crooked legs, oh, you crooked legs! You can't walk straight, you go sideways. Which made the crab so angry that he reached out his long nippers, seized the land's soul, pulled it out of him, and made off with it into deep water, and continued the medicinemen, unless his stolen soul is restored to him, and put back in its place he will die. Your boy is really dead already. It is only his lonely, empty body that is living now, and though it may continue to live in this way for a year or two, the boy will never be of any account not strong nor wise nor brave. The father then inquired whether anything could be done about it, was the soul still in possession of the crab, and if so, could it be recovered and reinstalled in his forlorn son? Yes, the doctor rather thought it might be charmed back and reunited, but the job would be a difficult one, and would probably cost about fifteen blankets. After we were fairly out of the bay into Stephen's passage, the wind died away, and the Indians had to take to their oars again, which ended our talk. On we sped over the silvery level, close along shore. The dark forests extending far and near, planted like a field of wheat, might seem monotonous in general views, but the appreciative observer, looking closely, will find no lack of interesting variety, however far he may go. The steep slopes on which they grow allow almost every individual tree, with its peculiarities of form and color, to be seen like an audience on seats rising above one another. The blue-green, sharply tapered spires of the menzies spruce, the warm yellow-green merton spruce with their finger-like tops all pointing in the same direction, or drooping gracefully like leaves of grass, and the airy, feathery, brownish-green Alaska cedar. The outer fringe of bushes along the shore and hanging over the brows of the cliffs, the white mountains above, the shining water beneath, the changing sky overall, form pictures of divine beauty in which no healthy eye may ever grow weary. Toward evening at the head of a picturesque bay we came to a village belonging to the Taku tribe. We found it silent and deserted. Not a single shaman or policeman had been left to keep it. These people are so happily rich as to have but little of a perishable kind to keep, nothing worth fretting about. They were away catching salmon, our Indians said. All the Indian villages hereabout are thus abandoned at regular periods every year, just as a tent is left for a day while they repair to fishing, bearing, and hunting stations, supplying each in succession for a week or two at a time, coming and going from the main, substantially built villages. Then, after their summer's work is done, the winter supply of salmon dried and packed, fish oil and seal oil stored in boxes, berries and spruce bark pressed into cakes, their trading trips completed, and the year's stock of quarrels with the neighboring tribe patched up in some way, they devote themselves to feasting, dancing, and huchinu drinking. The Takus, once a powerful and warlike tribe, were at this time, like most of the neighboring tribes, whiskied nearly out of existence. They had a larger village on the Taku River, but according to the census taken that year by the missionaries, they numbered only 269 in all, 109 men, 79 women, and 81 children, figures that showed the vanishing condition of the tribe at a glance. Our Indians wanted to camp for the night in one of the deserted houses, but I urged them on into the clean wilderness until dark, when we landed on a rocky beach fringed with devils' clubs, greatly to the disgust of our crew. We had to make the best of it, however, as it was too dark to seek further. After supper was accomplished among the boulders, they retired to the canoe, which they anchored a little way out beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I, at the expense of a good deal of scrambling and panics stinging, discovered a spot on which we managed to sleep. The next morning, about two hours after leaving our thorny camp, we rounded a great mountain rock nearly a mile in height and entered the Taku Fjord. It is about 18 miles long and from three to five miles wide and extends directly back into the heart of the mountains, draining hundreds of glaciers and streams. The ancient glacier that formed it was far too deep and broad and too little concentrated to erode one of those narrow kenyons, usually so impressive in sculpture and architecture, but it is all the more interesting on this account when the grandeur of the icework accomplished is recognized. This fjord, more than any other I have examined, explains the formation of the wonderful system of channels extending along the coast from Puget Sound to about latitude fifty-nine degrees, for it is a marked portion of the system, a branch of Stephen's passage. Its trends and general sculpture are as distinctly glacial as those of the narrowest fjord, while the largest tributaries of the great glacier that occupied it are still in existence. I counted some forty-five altogether, big and little, in sight from the canoe in sailing up the middle of the fjord. Three of them, drawing their sources from magnificent groups of snowy mountains, came down to the level of the sea and formed a glorious spectacle. The middle one of the three belongs to the first class pouring its majestic flood, shattered and crevast, directly into the fjord and crowding about twenty-five square miles of it with bergs. The next below it also sends off bergs occasionally, though a narrow strip of glacial detritus separates it from the tide water. That forenoon a large mass fell from it, damming its draining system, which at length broke the dam, and the resulting flood swept forward thousands of small bergs across the mud flat into the fjord. In a short time all was quiet again, the floodwaters receded, leaving only a large blue scar on the front of the glacier and stranded bergs on the moraine flat to tell the tale. These two glaciers are about equal in size, two miles wide, and their fronts are only about a mile and a half apart. While I sat sketching them from a point among the drifting icebergs, where I could see far back into the heart of the distant fountains, two Taku seal hunters, father and son, came gliding towards us in an extremely small canoe. Coming alongside with a good-natured Saga-ya, they inquired who we were, our objects, et cetera, and gave us information about the river, their village, and two other large glaciers that descend nearly to the sea level a few miles up the river canyon. Crouching in their little shell of a boat among the great bergs, with paddle and barb spear, they formed a picture as arctic and remote from anything to be found in civilization as ever was sketched for us by the explorers of the far north. Making our way through the crowded bergs to the extreme head of the fjord, we entered the mouth of the river, but were soon compelled to turn back on account of the strength of the current. The Taku River is a large stream, nearly a mile wide at the mouth, and like the Stakeen, Chilkat, and Chilkut draws its sources from far inland, crossing the mountain chain from the interior through a majestic canyon and draining a multitude of glaciers on its way. The Taku Indians, like the Chilkats, with a keen appreciation of the advantages of their position for trade, hold possession of the river and compel the Indians of the interior to accept their services as middlemen, instead of allowing them to trade directly with the whites. When we were baffled in our attempt to ascend the river, the day was nearly done, and we began to seek a campground. After sailing two or three miles along the left side of the fjord, we were so fortunate as to find a small nook described by the two Indians where firewood was abundant and where we could drag our canoe up the bank beyond reach of the berg waves. Here we were safe with a fine outlook across the fjord, to the great glaciers and near enough to see the birth of the icebergs and the wonderful commotion they make, and hear their wild roaring rejoicing. The sunset sky seemed to have been painted for this one mountain mansion, fitting it like a ceiling. After the fjord was in shadow, the level sunbeams continued to pour through the miles of bergs with ravishing beauty, reflecting and refracting the purple light like cut crystal. Then all, save the tips of the highest, became dead white. These two were speedily quenched, the glowing points vanishing like stars sinking beneath a horizon. And after the shadows had crept higher, submerging the glaciers and the ridges between them, the divine alpin glow still lingered on their highest fountain peaks as they stood transfigured in glorious array. Now the last of the twilight purple has vanished, the stars begin to shine, and all trace of the day is gone. Looking across the fjord, the water seems perfectly black, and the two great glaciers are seen stretching dim and ghostly into the shadowy mountains, now darkly masked against the starry sky. Next morning it was raining hard. Everything looked dismal, and on the way down the fjord a growling headwind battered the rain in our faces. But we held doggedly on, and by 10 a.m. got out of the fjord into Stephen's passage. A breeze sprung up in our favor, and that swept us bravely on across the passage and around the end of Admiralty Island by dark. We camped in a boggy hollow on a bluff amongst craggy eusnia-bearded spruces. The rain, bitterly cold and driven by a stormy wind, thrashed us well, while we floundered in the stumpy bog trying to make a fire and supper. When daylight came we found our campground a very savage place. How we reached it and established ourselves in the thick darkness it would be difficult to tell. We crept along the shore a few miles against strong headwinds, then hoisted sail and steered straight across Linn Canal to the mainland, which we followed without great difficulty, the wind having moderated toward evening. Near the entrance to Icy Strait we met Ahuna, who had seen us last year and who seemed glad to see us. He gave us two salmon, and we made him happy with tobacco, and then pushed on and camp near Sitka Jack's deserted village. Though the wind was still ahead next morning, we made about twenty miles before sundown and camped on the west end of Farewell Island. We bumped against a hidden rock and sprung a small leak that was easily stopped with resin. The salmon berries were ripe. While climbing up bluff for a view of our course I discovered Moneses, one of my favorites, and saw many well-traveled deer trails, though the island is cut off from the mainland and other islands by at least five or six miles of icy, burgun-covered water. We got under way early next day, a gray, cloudy morning with rain and wind. Fair and headwinds were about evenly balanced throughout the day. Tides run fast here, like great rivers. We rode and paddled around Point Wimbledon against both wind and tide, creeping close to the feet of the huge, bold rocks of the north wall of Cross Sound, which here were very steep and awe-inspiring as the heavy swells from the open sea, coming in past Cape Spencer, dashed wide against them, tossing our frail canoe up and down, lightly as a feather. The point reached by vegetation shows that the surf dash is up to a height of about seventy-five or a hundred feet. We were awestruck and began to fear that we might be upset should the ocean waves rise still higher. But little stickine seemed to enjoy the storm and gazed at the foam-weathered cliffs, like a dreamy, comfortable tourist admiring a sunset. We reached the mouth of Taylor Bay about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had a view of the open ocean before we entered the bay. Many large bergs from Glacier Bay were seen drifting out to sea past Cape Spencer. We reached the head of the fjord now called Taylor Bay at five o'clock, and camped near an immense glacier with the front about three miles wide, stretching across from wall to wall. No icebergs are discharged from it, as it is separated from the water of the fjord at high tide by a low, smooth mass of outspread, overswept marine material, netted with tarnes and small shallow rills from the glacier front, with here and there a lakelet, and patches of yellow mosses and garden spots bright with epilobium, saxofragin, grass tufts, sedges, and creeping willows on the higher ground. But only the mosses were sufficiently abundant to make conspicuous masses of color to relieve the dull, slaty gray of the glacial mud and gravel. The front of the glacier, like all those which do not discharge icebergs, is rounded like a brow, smooth-looking in general views, but cleft and furrowed, nevertheless, with chasms and grooves in which the light glows and shimmers in glorious beauty. The granite walls of the fjord, though very high, are not deeply sculptured. Only a few deep side kenyons with trees, bushes, grassy and flowery spots interrupt their massive simplicity, leaving but few of the cliffs absolutely sheer and bare like those of Yosemite, Sumdum, or Taku. One of the side kenyons is on the left side of the fjord, the other on the right, the tributaries of the former leading over by a narrow tide channel to the bay next to the eastward, and by a short portage over into a lake into which pours a branch glacier from the great glacier. Still another branch from the main glacier turns to the right. Counting all three of these separate fronts, the width of this great Taylor Bay glacier must be about seven or eight miles. While camp was being made, Hunter Joe climbed the eastern wall in search of wild mutton, but found none. He fell in with a brown bear, however, and got a shot at it, but nothing more. Hunter Young and I crossed the moraine slope, splashing through pools and streams up to the ice wall, and made the interesting discovery that the glacier had been advancing of late years, plowing up and shoving forward moraine soil that had been deposited long ago, and overwhelming and grinding and carrying away the forest on the sides and front of the glacier. Though not now sending off icebergs, the front is probably far below sea level at the bottom, thrust forward beneath its wavewashed moraine. Along the base of the mountain wall we found abundance of salmon berries, the largest measuring an inch and a half in diameter. Strawberries, too, are found hereabouts. Some which visiting Indians brought us were as fine in size and color and flavor as any I ever saw anywhere. After wandering and wandering an hour or two, admiring the magnificent rock and crystal scenery about us, we returned to camp at sundown, planning a grand excursion for the morrow. I set off early the morning of August 30 before anyone else in camp had stirred, not waiting for breakfast but only eating a piece of bread. I had intended getting a cup of coffee, but a wild storm was blowing and calling, and I could not wait. Running out against the rain-laden gale and turning to catch my breath, I saw that the minister's little dog had left his bed in the tent and was coming boring through the storm, evidently determined to follow me. I told him to go back, and that such a day as this had nothing for him. Go back, I shouted, and get your breakfast. But he simply stood with his head down, and when I began to urge my way again, looking around, I saw he was still following me. So I had last told him to come on, if he must, and gave him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket. Instead of falling, the rain, mixed with misty shreds of clouds, was flying in level sheets, and the wind was roaring as I had never heard wind roar before. Over the icy levels and over the woods on the mountains, over the jagged rocks and spires and chasms of the glacier it boomed and moaned and roared, filling the fjord an even gray, structureless gloom, inspiring and awful. I first struggled up in the face of the blast to the east end of the ice wall, where a patch of forest had been carried away by the glacier when it was advancing. I noticed a few stumps well out on the moraine flat, showing that its presence bare, raw condition was not the condition of 50 or 100 years ago. In front of this part of the glacier there is a small moraine lake about a half a mile in length, around the margin of which are a considerable number of trees standing knee-deep and, of course, dead. This also is a result of the recent advance of the ice. Pushing up through the ragged edge of the woods on the left margin of the glacier, the storm seemed to increase in violence, so that it was difficult to draw breath in facing it, therefore I took shelter back of a tree to enjoy it and wait, hoping that it would at last somewhat abate. Here the glacier, descending over an abrupt rock, falls forward in grand cascades, while a stream, swollen by the rain, was now a torrent, wind, rain, ice torrent and water torrent in one grand symphony. At length the storm seemed to abate somewhat, and I took off my heavy rubber boots, with which I had waded the glacial streams on the flat, and laid them with my overcoat on a log, where I might find them on my way back, knowing I would be drenched anyhow, and firmly tied my mountain shoes, tightened my belt, shouldered my ice axe, and, thus free and ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as possible of mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite slope, its projecting polished bosses encumbered here and there by boulders, and the ground and bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been uprooted by the glacier during its recent advance, I traced the side of the glacier for two or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of its having encroached on the woods, which here run back along its edge for fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of this vast ice river, I could see down beneath it to a depth of fifty feet or so in some places, where logs and branches were being crushed to pulp, some of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it is stringy and coarse. After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for three or four miles, I chopped steps and climbed to the top, and as far as the eye could reach, the nearly level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the gray cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now almost moderate, though rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a tendency to mist in the drooping, draggled clouds made me hesitate about attempting to cross to the opposite shore. Although the distance was only six or seven miles, no traces at this time could be seen of the mountains on the other side, and in case the sky should grow darker, as it seemed inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of land and perhaps into a maze of crevasses I might find difficulty in winning a way back. Lingering a while and sauntering about inside of the shore, I found this eastern side of the glacier remarkably free from large crevasses. Nearly all I met were so narrow I could step across them almost anywhere, while the few wide ones were easily avoided by going up or down along their sides to where they narrowed. The dismal cloud ceiling showed rifts here and there, and thus encouraged I struck out for the west shore, aiming to strike at five or six miles above the front wall, cautiously taking compass bearings at short intervals to enable me to find my way back, should the weather darken again with mist or rain or snow. The structure lines of the glacier itself were, however, my main guide. All went well. I came to a deeply furrowed section about two miles in width, where I had to zigzag in long tedious tacks and make narrow doublings tracing the edges of wide longitudinal furrows and chasms until I could find a bridge connecting their sides, oftentimes making the direct distance ten times over. The walking was good of its kind, however, and by dint of patient doubling and axework on dangerous places, I gained the opposite shore in about three hours, the width of the glacier at this point being about seven miles. Occasionally, while making my way, the clouds lifted a little, revealing a few bald, rough mountains sunk to the throat in the broad ICC, which can compass them on all sides, sweeping on forever and forever as we count time, wearing them away, giving them the shape they are destined to take when in the fullness of time they shall be parts of new landscapes. Here I lost sight of the east side mountains. Those on the west came in sight, so that holding my course was easy, and though making haste, I halted for a moment to gaze down into the beautiful, pure, blue cavasses, and to drink at the lovely blue wells, the most beautiful of all nature's water basins, or at the rills and streams outspread over the Iceland prairie, never ceasing to admire their lovely color and music as they glided and swirled in their blue crystal channels and potholes, and the rumbling of the mula, or mills, where streams poured into blue-walled pits of unknown depth, some of them as regularly circular as if bored with augers. Interesting too were the cascades over blue cliffs, where streams fell into crevasses or slid almost noiselessly down slope so smooth and frictionless their motion was concealed. The round or oval wells, however, from one to ten feet wide, and from one to twenty or thirty feet deep, were perhaps the most beautiful of all, the water so pure as to be almost invisible. My widest views did not probably exceed fifteen miles, the rain and mist making distances seemed greater. On reaching the farther shore and tracing it a few miles to northward, I found a large portion of the glacier current sweeping out westward in a bold and beautiful curve around the shoulder of a mountain as if going direct to the open sea. Leaving the main trunk, it breaks into a magnificent uproar of pinnacles and spires and upheaving, splashing wave-shaped masses, a crystal cataract incomparably greater and wilder than a score of Niagara's. Tracing its channel three or four miles, I found that it fell into a lake which it fills with bergs. The front of this branch of the glacier is about three miles wide. I first took the lake to be the head of an arm of the sea, but going down to its shore and tasting it, I found it fresh, and by my aneroid perhaps less than a hundred feet above sea level. It is probably separated from the sea only by a moraine dam. I had not time to go round its shores, as it was now near five o'clock, and I was about fifteen miles from camp, and I had to make haste to recross the glacier before dark, which would come on about eight o'clock. I therefore made haste up to the main glacier, and, shaping my course by compass and the structure lines of the ice, set off from the land out onto the grand crystal prairie again. All was so silent and so concentrated, owing to the low dragging mist, the beauty close about me was all the more keenly felt, though tinged with a dim sense of danger, as if coming events were casting shadows. I was soon out of sight of land, and the evening dusk that on cloudy days precedes the real night gloom came stealing on, and only ice was in sight, and the only sounds saved the low rumbling of the mills, and the rattle of falling stones at long intervals were the low, terribly earnest moanings of the wind, or distant waterfalls coming through the thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to a maze of crevasses of appalling depth and width, which could not be passed apparently either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve, developed by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on dizzy edges after cutting footholds, taking wide crevasses at a grand leap at once frightful and inspiring. Many a mile was thus traveled, mostly up and down the glacier, making but little real headway, running much of the time as the danger of having to pass the night on the ice became more and more imminent. This I could do, though with the weather and my rain-soaked condition it would be trying at best. In treading the mazes of this crevasse section I had frequently to cross bridges that were only knife edges for 20 or 30 feet, cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little stickine could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped. But now that it was becoming dark and the crevasses became more troublesome he followed close at my heels instead of scampering far and wide, where the ice was at all smooth as he had in the forenoon. No land was now in sight, the mist fell lower and darker and snow began to fly. I could not see far enough up and down the glacier to judge how best to work out of the bewildering labyrinth and how hard I tried while there was yet hope of reaching camp that night, a hope which was fast growing dim like the sky. After dark on such ground to keep from freezing I could only jump up and down until morning on a piece of flat ice between the crevasse, dancing to the boating music of the winds and waters. As I was already tired and hungry I would be in bad condition for such ice work. Many times I was put to my metal, but with a firm braced nerve all the more unflinching as the dangers thickened I worked out of that terrible ice web and with blood fairly up Stakeen and I ran over common danger without fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very last of the sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest crevasses I followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and discovered that its narrowest spot was about eight feet wide which was the limit of what I was able to jump. Moreover the side I was on, that is the west side, was about a foot higher than the other and I feared that in case I should be stopped by a still wider impassable crevasse ahead that I would hardly be able to take back that jump from its lower side. The ice beyond however as far as I could see it looked tentingly smooth. Therefore after carefully making a socket for my foot on the rounded brink I jumped but found that I had nothing to spare and more than ever dreaded having to retrace my way. Little Stakeen jumped us however without apparently taking a second look at it and we ran ahead joyfully over smooth level ice hoping we were now leaving all danger behind us. But hardly had we gone a hundred or two yards. When to our dismay we found ourselves on the very widest of all the longitudinal crevasses we had yet encountered. It was about forty feet wide. I ran anxiously up the side of it to northward eagerly hoping that I could get around its head but my worst fears were realized when at a distance of about a mile or less it ran into the crevasse that I had just jumped. I then ran down the edge for a mile or more below the point where I had first met it and found that its lower end also united with the crevasse I had jumped showing dismally that we were on an island two or three hundred yards wide and about two miles long and the only way of escape from this island was by turning back and jumping again that crevasse which I dreaded or venturing ahead across the giant crevasse by the very worst of the sliver bridges I had ever seen. It was so badly weathered and melted down that it formed a knife edge and extended across from the side to side in a low drooping curve like that made by a loose rope attached at each end at the same height. But the worst difficulty was that the ends of the down-curving sliver were attached to the sides at a depth of about eight or ten feet below the surface of the glacier. Getting down to the end of the bridge and then after crossing it getting up the other side seemed hardly possible. However, I decided to dare the dangers of the fearful sliver rather than to attempt to retrace my steps. Accordingly I dug a low groove in the rounded edge for my knees to rest in and, leaning over, began to cut a narrow foothold on the steep smooth side. When I was doing this, Stakeen came up behind me, pushed his head over my shoulder, looked into the crevasses and along the narrow knife edge, then turned and looked in my face, muttering and whining as if trying to say, surely you are not going down there. I said, yes, Stakeen, this is the only way. He then began to cry and ran wildly along the rim of the crevasse, searching for a better way. Then returning baffled, of course, he came behind me and lay down and cried louder and louder. After getting down one step I cautiously stooped and cut another and another in succession until I reached the point where the sliver was attached to the wall. There, cautiously balancing, I chipped down the up-curved end of the bridge until I had formed a small level platform about a foot wide. Then, bending forward, got a stride at the end of the sliver, steadied myself with my knees, then cut off the top of the sliver, hitching myself forward an inch or two at a time, leaving it about four inches wide for Stakeen. Arrived at the farther end of the sliver, which was about seventy-five feet long, I chipped another little platform on its up-curved end, cautiously rose to my feet and with infinite pains cut narrow notch steps and finger-holds in the wall and finally got safely across. All this dreadful time poor little Stakeen was crying as if his heart was broken, and when I called to him in as reassuring a voice as I could muster, he only cried the louder as if trying to say that he never, never could get down there, the only time that the brave little fellow appeared to know what danger was. After going away as if I was leaving him, he still howled and cried without venturing to try to follow me. Returning to the edge of the crevasse, I told him that I must go, that he could come if he only tried, and finally, in despair, he hushed his cries, slid his little feet slowly down into my footsteps out on the big sliver, walked slowly and cautiously along the sliver as if holding his breath while the snow was falling and the wind was moaning and threatening to blow him off. When he arrived at the foot of the slope below me I was kneeling on the brink ready to assist him in case he should be unable to reach the top. He looked up along the row of notch steps I had made as if fixing them in his mind. Then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and passed me out onto the level ice, and ran and cried and barked and rolled about fairly hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth of despair to triumphant joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell him how good and brave he was, but he would not be caught. He ran round and round, swirling like autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled head over heels. I told him we still had far to go, and that we must now stop all nonsense and get off the ice before dark. I knew by the ice lines that every step was now taking me nearer the shore and soon it came in sight. The headland four or five miles back from the front, covered with spruce trees, loomed faintly but surely through the mist and light fall of snow not more than two miles away. The ice now proved good all the way across and we reached the lateral moraine just at dusk. Then with trembling limbs, now that the danger was over, we staggered and stumbled down the bouldery edge of the glacier and got over the dangerous rocks by the cascades while yet a faint light lingered. We were safe, and then, too, came limp weariness such as no ordinary work ever produces, however hard it may be. Wearily we stumbled down through the woods, over logs and brush and roots, devils' clubs pricking us at every faint blundering tumble. At last we got out on the smooth mud slope, with only a mile of slow but sure dragging of weary limbs to camp. The Indians had been firing guns to guide me and had a fine supper and fire ready, though fearing they would be compelled to seek us in the morning, a care not often applied to me. Stickine and I were too tired to eat much and, strange to say, too tired to sleep. Both of us, springing up in the night again and again, fancied we were still on that dreadful ice-bridge in the shadow of death. Nevertheless we arose next morning in newness of life. Never before had rocks and ice and trees seemed so beautiful and wonderful, even the cold-biding rainstorm that was blowing seemed full of loving-kindness, wonderful compensation for all that we had endured. And we sailed down the bay through the grey driving rain, rejoicing. CHAPTER XVI. While Stickine and I were away, Ahuna, one of the headmen of the tribe, paid Mr. Young a visit, and presented him with porpoise meat and berries and much interesting information. He naturally expected a return visit, and when we called at his house a mile or two down the fjord, he said his wives were out in the rain gathering fresh berries to complete a feast prepared for us. We remained, however, only a few minutes, for I was not aware of this arrangement or of Mr. Young's promise until after leaving the house. Anxiety to get around Cape Wimbledon was the cause of my haste, fearing the storm might increase. On account of this ignorance, no apologies were offered him, and the upshot was that the good Ahuna became very angry. We succeeded, however, in the evening of the same day in explaining our haste and by sincere apologies and presence made peace. After a hard struggle we got around Stormy Wimbledon and into the next fjord to the northward, Clunas Tuxana, Dundas Bay. A cold drenching rain was falling, darkening but not altogether hiding its extraordinary beauty, made up of lovely reaches and side fjords, feathery headlands and islands, beautiful everyone and charmingly collocated. But how it rained, and how cold it was, and how weary we were, pulling most of the time against the wind. The branches of this bay were so deep and so numerous that with the rain and low clouds concealing the mountain landmarks, we could hardly make out the main trends. While groping and gazing among the islands through the misty rain and clouds, we discovered wisps of smoke at the foot of a sheltering rock in front of a mountain, where a choir of cascades were chanting their rain songs. Gladly we made for this camp, which proved to belong to a rare old Ahuna sub-chief, so tall and wide and dignified in demeanor he looked grand even in the sloppy weather, and every inch a chief in spite of his bare legs and the old shirt and draggled ragged blanket in which he was dressed. He was given to much handshaking, gripping hard, holding on, and looking you gravely in the face while most emphatically speaking in flinket, not a word of which we understood until interpreter John came to our help. He turned from one to the other of us, declaring, as John interpreted, that our presence did him good, like food and fire, that he would welcome white men, especially teachers, and that he and all his people, compared to ourselves, were only children. When Mr. Young informed him that a missionary was about to be sent to his people, he said he would call them all together four times and explain that a teacher and preacher were coming, and that they therefore must put away all foolishness and prepare their hearts to receive them and their words. He then introduced his three children, one a naked lad, five or six years old, who, as he fondly assured us, would soon be a chief, and later, to his wife, an intelligent-looking woman of whom he seemed proud. When we arrived, she was out at the front of the Cascade Mountain gathering salmon berries. She came in dripping and loaded. A few of the fine berries saved for the children she presented, proudly and fondly beginning with the youngest, whose only clothing was a nose ring and a string of beads. She was lightly apparelled in a cotton gown and bit of blanket, thoroughly bedraggled, but after unloading her berries she retired with a dry calico gown around the corner of a rock and soon returned fresh as a daisy, and with becoming dignity took her place by the fireside. Soon two other berry-laden women came in, seemingly enjoying the rain like the bushes and trees. They put on little clothing so that they may be more easily dried, and, as for the children, a thin shirt of sheeting is the most they encumber themselves with, and get wet and half-dry without seeming to notice it while we shiver with two or three dry coats. They seem to prefer being naked. The men also wear but little in wet weather. When they go out for all day they put on a single blanket, but in choreing around the camp, getting firewood, cooking, or looking after their precious canvas, they seldom wear anything, braving wind and rain and undernakedness to avoid the bother of drying clothes. It is a rare sight to see the children bringing in big chunks of firewood on their shoulders, balancing and crossing boulders with firmly set bow-legs and bulging back muscles. We gave Cahoodo Shoe, the old chief, some tobacco and rice and coffee, and pitched our tent near his hut among tall grass. Soon after our arrival the Taylor Bay sub-chief came in, from the opposite direction from ours, telling us that he came through a cut-off passage not on our chart. As stated above, we took pains to conciliate him and soothe his hurt feelings. Our words and gifts, he said, had warmed his sore heart and made him glad and comfortable. A view down the bay among the islands was, I thought, the finest of this kind of scenery that I had yet observed. The weather continued cold and rainy. Nevertheless, Mr. Young and I and our crew, together with one of the Hoonas, an old man who acted as guide, left camp to explore one of the upper arms of the bay, where we were told there was a large glacier. We managed to push the canoe several miles up the stream that drains the glacier to a point where the swift current was divided among rocks, and the banks were overhung with alders and willows. I left the canoe and pushed up the right bank past a magnificent waterfall, some twelve hundred feet high, and over the shoulder of a mountain, until I secured a good view of the lower part of the glacier. It is probably a lobe of the Taylor Bay or Brady Glacier. On our return to camp, thoroughly drenched and cold, the old chief came to visit us, apparently as wet and cold as ourselves. I have been thinking of you all day, he said, and pitting you, knowing how miserable you were, and as soon as I saw your canoe coming back, I was ashamed to think that I had been sitting warm and dry at my fire, while you were out in the storm. Therefore I made haste to strip off my dry clothing and put on these wet rags to share your misery and show how much I love you. I had another long talk with Kahuru Sho the next day. I am not able, he said, to tell you how much good your words have done me. Your words are good, and they are strong words. Some of my people are foolish, and when they make their salmon traps they do not take care to tie the poles firmly together, and when the big rain floods come the traps break and are washed away because the people who made them are foolish people. But your words are strong words, and when storms come to try them they will stand the storms. There was much handshaking as we took our leave and assurances of eternal friendship. The grand old man stood on the shore watching us and waving farewell until we were out of sight. We now steered for the Muir Glacier and arrived at the front on the east side the evening of the third and camped on the end of the moraine where there was a small stream. Captain Tyene was inclined to keep at a safe distance from the tremendous threatening cliffs of the discharging wall. After a good deal of urging he ventured within half a mile of them on the east side of the fjord where, with Mr. Young, I went ashore to seek a campground on the moraine, leaving the Indians in the canoe. In a few minutes after we landed a huge berg sprung aloft with awful commotion and the frightened Indians incontinently fled down the fjord, plying their paddles with admirable energy in the tossing waves until a safe harbor was reached around the south end of the moraine. I found a good place for a camp in a slight hollow where a few sprue stumps afforded firewood, but all efforts to get Tyene out of his harbor failed. Nobody knew, he said, how far the angry ice mountain could throw waves to break his canoe. Therefore I had my bedding and some provisions carried to my stump camp, where I could watch the bergs as they were discharged and get night views of the brow of the glacier and its sheer jagged face all the way across from side to side of the channel. One night the water was luminous and the surge from discharging icebergs churned the water into silver fire, a glorious sight in the darkness. I also went back up the east side of the glacier five or six miles and ascended a mountain between its first two eastern tributaries, which, though covered with grass near the top, was exceedingly steep and difficult. A bulging ridge near the top I discovered was formed of ice, a remnant of the glacier when it stood at this elevation, which had been preserved by moraine material, and later by a thatch of dwarf bushes and grass. Next morning at daybreak I pushed eagerly back over the comparatively smooth eastern margin of the glacier to see as much as possible of the upper fountain region. About five miles back from the front I climbed a mountain, 2,500 feet high, from the flowery summit of which, the day being clear, the vast glacier and its principal branches were displayed in one magnificent view. Instead of a stream of ice winding down a mountain walled valley, like the largest of the Swiss glaciers, the mure looks like a broad undulating prairie streaked with medial moraines and gashed with crevasses surrounded by numberless mountains from which flow its many tributary glaciers. There are seven main tributaries from ten to twenty miles long and from two to six miles wide where they enter the trunk, each of them fed by many secondary tributaries so that the whole number of branches, great and small, pouring from the mountain fountains, perhaps number upward of two hundred, not counting the smallest. The area drained by this one grand glacier can hardly be less than seven or eight hundred miles and probably contains as much ice as all the eleven hundred Swiss glaciers combined. Its length from the frontal wall back to the head of its farthest fountain seemed to be about forty or fifty miles and the width just below the confluence of the main tributaries about twenty-five miles. Though apparently motionless as the mountains, it flows on forever, the speed varying in every part with the seasons, but mostly with the depth of the current and the declivity, smoothness and directness of the different portions of the basin. The flow of the central cascading portion near the front as determined by Professor Reed is at the rate of from two and a half to five inches an hour or from five to ten feet a day. A strip of the main trunk about a mile in width, extending along the eastern margin about fourteen miles to a lake filled with bergs, has so little motion and is so little interrupted by crevasses a hundred horsemen might ride abreast over it without encountering very much difficulty. But far the greater portion of the vast expanse looking smooth in the distance is torn and crumpled into a bewildering network of humickey ridges and blades, separated by yawning gulfs and crevasses, so that the explorer crossing it from shore to shore must always have a hard time. In hollow spots here and there in the heart of the icy wilderness are small lakelets fed by swift glancing streams that flow without friction in blue shining channels, making delightful melody, singing and ringing in silvery tones of peculiar sweetness. Radiant crystals like flowers ineffably fine growing in dazzling beauty along their vacs. Few, however, will be likely to enjoy them. Fortunately to most travelers the thundering ice wall, while comfortably accessible, is also the most strikingly interesting portion of the glacier. The mountains about the great glacier were also seen from this standpoint in exceedingly grand and telling views. First and grouped in glorious array along the valleys of the main tributaries to the northwestward I saw far into their shadowy depths, one noble peak in its snowy robes appearing beyond another in fine perspective. One of the most remarkable of them, fashioned like a superb crown with delicately fluted sides, stands in the middle of the second main tributary, counting from left to right. To the westward the magnificent fairweather range is displayed in all its glory, lifting its peaks and glaciers into the blue sky. Mount Fairweather, though not the highest, is the noblest and most majestic in port and architecture of all the sky-dwelling company. La Peruse, at the south end of the range, is also a magnificent mountain, symmetrically peaked and sculptured, and wears its robes of snow and glaciers in noble style. La Tullia, as seen from here, is an immense tower, severely plain and massive. It makes a fine and terrible and lonely impression. Crelon, though the loftiest of all, being nearly 16,000 feet high, presents no well-marked features. Its ponderous glaciers have grounded away into long curling ridges until, from this point of view, it resembles a huge twisted shell. The lower summits about the Muir Glacier, like this one, the first that I climbed, are richly adorned and enlivened with flowers, though they make but a faint show in general views. Lines and dashes of bright green appear on the lower slopes as one approaches them from the glacier, and a fainter green tinge may be noticed on this subordinate summits, at a height of 2,000 or 3,000 feet. The lower are mostly alder bushes and the topmost alavish perfusion of flowering plants, chiefly Cassiopeia, Vassinium pyrola, Erygeron, Gentiana, Campanula, Campanula, Anenomy, Larkspur, and Columbine, with a few grasses and ferns. Of these, Cassiope is at once the commonest and the most beautiful and influential. In some places, its delicate stems make mattresses more than a foot thick over several acres, while the bloom is so abundant that a single handful plucked at random contains hundreds of its pale pink bells. The very thought of this Alaska garden is a joyful exhilaration. Though the storm-beaten ground it is growing on is nearly half a mile high, the glacier centuries ago flowed over it as a river flows over a boulder. But out of all the cold darkness and glacial crushing and grinding comes this warm, abounding beauty and life to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation finer and finer. When night was approaching I scrambled down out of my blessed garden to the glacier and returned to my lonely camp, and getting some coffee and bread, again went up the moraine to the east end of the Great Ice Wall. It is about three miles long, but the length of the jagged burg-producing portion that stretches across the fjord from side to side like a huge green and blue barrier is only about two miles and rises above the water to a height of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet. Soundings made by Captain Carroll show that seven hundred and twenty feet of the wall is below the surface, and a third unmeasured portion is buried beneath the moraine detritus deposited at the foot of it. Therefore were the water and rocky detritus cleared away, a sheer precipice of ice would be presented nearly two miles long and more than a thousand feet high. Seen from a distance as you come up the fjord, it seems comparatively regular in form, but it is far otherwise, bold, jagged capes jut forward into the fjord, alternating with deep, re-entering angles and craggy hollows with plain bastions, while the top is roughened with innumerable spires and pyramids and sharp hacked blades leaning and toppling, or cutting straight into the sky. The number of bergs given off varies somewhat with the weather and the tides, the average being about one every five or six minutes, counting only those that roar loud enough to make themselves heard at a distance of two or three miles. The very largest, however, may, under favorable conditions, be heard ten miles or even farther. When a large mass sinks from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there is first a keen, prolonged, thundering roar, which slowly subsides into a low, muttering growl, followed by numerous smaller, grating clashing sounds, from the agitated bergs that dance in the waves about the newcomer as if in welcome, and these again are followed by the swash and roar of the waves that are raised and hurled up the beach against the moraines, but the largest and most beautiful of the bergs, instead of thus falling from the upper weathered portion of the wall, rise from the submerged portion with a still grander commotion, springing with tremendous voice and gestures nearly to the top of the wall, tons of water streaming like hair down their sides, plunging and rising again and again before they finally settle in perfect poise, free at last, after having formed part of the slow-crawling glacier for centuries. And as we contemplate their history, as they sail calmly away down the fjord to the sea, how wonderful it seems that ice formed from pressed snow on the far-off mountains two or three hundred years ago should still be pure and lovely in color after all its travel and toil in the rough mountain quarries, grinding and fashioning the features of predestined landscapes. When sunshine is sifting through the midst of the multitude of icebergs that fill the fjord and through the jets of radiant spray ever rising from the tremendous dashing and splashing of the falling and up-springing bergs, the effect is indescribably glorious. Glorious, too, are the shows they make in the night when the moon and stars are shining. The berg thunder seems far louder than by day, and the projecting buttresses seem higher as they stand forward in the pale light. Relieved by gloomy hollows, while the newborn bergs are dimly seen, crowned with faint lunar rainbows in the up-dashing spray, but it is in the darkest nights when storms are blowing and the waves are phosphorescent that the most impressive displays are made. Then the long range of ice bluffs is plainly seen stretching through the gloom in weird, unearthly splendor. Luminous wave foam dashing against every bluff and drifting berg, and ever and a none, amid all this natural auroral splendor, some huge newborn berg dashes the living water into yet brighter foam, and the streaming torrents pouring from its sides are worn as robes of light. While they roar in awful accord with the winds and waves, deep calling unto deep, glacier to glacier, from fjord to fjord, over all the wonderful bay. After spending a few days here, we struck across to the main Huna village on the south side of Icy Strait, thence by a long cut-off with one short portage to Chatham Strait, and thence down through Peril Strait, sailing all night, hoping to catch the male steamer at Sitka. We arrive to the head of the Strait about daybreak. The tide was falling, and rushing down with a swift current as if descending a majestic cataract was a memorable experience. We reach Sitka the same night, and there I paid and discharged my crew, making allowance for a couple of days or so for the journey back home to Fort Rangel, while I boarded the steamer for Portland, and thus ended my explorations for this season. END OF CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII. I left San Francisco for Glacier Bay on the steamer City of Pueblo, June 14th, 1890, at 10 a.m. This being my third trip to southeastern Alaska and fourth to Alaska, including northern and western Alaska, as far as unalaska and Point Barrow, and the northeastern coast of Siberia. The bar at the Golden Gate was smooth, the weather cool and pleasant, the redwoods and sheltered coves approached the shore closely, their dwarfed and shorn tops appearing here and there in ravines along the coasts up to Oregon. The windswept hills, beaten with scud, are of course bare of trees. Along the Oregon and Washington coast the trees get nearer the sea for spruce and contoured pine endure the briny winds better than the redwoods. We took the inside passage between the shore and the race rocks, a long range of islets and which many a good ship has been wrecked. The breakers from the deep pacific driven by the gale made a glorious display of foam on the bald islet rocks sending spray over the tops of some of them, a hundred feet high or more in sublime curving jagged edged and flame-shaped sheets. The gestures of these up-spring purple-tinged waves as they dashed and broke were sublime and serene, combining displays of graceful beauty of motion and form with tremendous power. A truly glorious show. I noticed several small villages on the green slopes between the timbered mountains and the shore. Long beach made quite a display of new houses along the beach, north of the mouth of the Columbia. I had pleasant company on the Pueblo and sat at the chief engineers' table. Who was a good and merry talker? An old San Francisco lawyer, rather stiff and dignified, knew my father-in-law, Dr. Strenzel. Three ladies, opposed to the pitching of the ship, were absent from the table the greater part of the way. My best talker was an old Scandinavian sea-captain who was having a new bark build at Port Blakely. An interesting old salt, every sentence of his conversation flavored with sea-brine, bluff and hearty as a sea-wave, keen-eyed, courageous, self-reliant, and so stubbornly skeptical he refused to believe in even glaciers. After you see your bark, I said, and find everything being done to your mind, you had better go on to Alaska and see the glaciers. Oh, I have seen many glaciers already. But are you sure that you know what a glacier is? I asked. Well, a glacier is a big mountain all covered up with ice. Then a river, I said, must be a big mountain all covered up with water. I explained what a glacier was and succeeded in exciting his interest. I told me must reform, for a man who neither believed in God nor glaciers must be very bad indeed the worst of all unbelievers. At Port Townsend I met Mr. Loomis who had agreed to go with me as far as the mirror glacier. We sailed from here on the steamer queen. We touched again at Victoria and I took a short walk into the adjacent woods and gardens and found the flowery vegetation in its glory. Especially the large wild rose for which the region is famous in the spirea and English honeysuckle of the gardens. June 18th we sailed from Victoria on the queen at 10 30 a.m. The weather all the way to Fort Rangel was cloudy and rainy, but the scenery is delightful even in the dullest weather the marvelous wealth of forest islands and waterfalls the cloud wreath heights the many avalanche slopes and slips the pearl gray tones of the sky the browns of the woods their purple flower edges and mist fringes the endless combinations of water and land and ever-shifting clouds none of these greatly interest the tourists. I noticed one of the small whales that frequent these channels and mentioned the fact then called attention to a charming group of islands but they turned their eyes from the island saying yes yes they are very fine but where did you see the whale the timber is larger and apparently better every way as you go north from Victoria that's on the islands perhaps on account of fires from less rain to the southward all the islands have been over swept by the ice sheet and are but little changed as yet save a few of the highest summits which have been sculpted by local residual glaciers all have approximately this form of greatest strength with reference to the overflow of an ice sheet accepting those mentioned above which have been more or less eroded by local residual glaciers every channel also has a form of the greatest strength with reference to ice action islands as we have seen are still being born in Glacier Bay and elsewhere to the northward I found many pleasant people aboard but strangely ignorant on the subject of earth sculpture and landscape making Professor Niles of the Boston Institute of Technology is aboard also Mr. Russell and Mr. Kerr of the Geological Survey who are now on their way to Mount St. Elias hoping to reach the summit and a granddaughter of Peter Burnett the first governor of California we arrived at Rangel in the rain at 10 30 p.m. there was a grand rush on shore to buy curiosities and to see totem poles the shops were jammed and mod high prices paid for shabby stuff manufactured expressly for tourist trade silver bracelets hammered out of dollars and half dollars by indian smiths are the most popular articles then baskets yellow cedar toy canoes paddles et cetera most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at great is the power of the guidebook maker however ignorant i inquired for my old friends tyene and shakes who are both absent june 20 we left Rangel early this morning and passed through the Rangel narrows at high tide i noticed a few bergs near Cape Fanshawe from Rangel Glacier the water 10 miles from Rangel is colored with particles derived mostly from the Stakeen River glaciers and Laconte Glacier all the waters of the channels north of Rangel are green or yellowish from glacier erosion we had a good view of the glaciers all the way to Juno but not of their high cloud veiled fountains the stranded bergs on the marine bar at the mouth of some dumb bay looked just as they did when i first saw them 10 years ago before reaching Juno the queen proceeded up the taku inlet that the passengers might see the fine glacier at its head and ventured to within half a mile of the berg discharging front which is about three quarters of a mile wide bergs fell but seldom perhaps one and a half an hour the glacier makes a rapid descent near the front the inlet therefore will not be much extended beyond its present limit by the recession of the glacier the grand rocks on either side of its channel show ice action and telling style the Norris Glacier about two miles below the taku is a good example of a glacier in the first stage of decadence the taku river enters the head of the inlet a little to the east of the glaciers coming from beyond the main coast range all the tourists are delighted at seeing a grand glacier in the flesh the scenery is very fine here and in the channel at Juno on Douglas Island there is a large mill of 240 stamps all run by one small water wheel which however is acted on by water at enormous pressure the forests around the mill are being rapidly nibbled away wind here is said to be very violent at times blowing away people and houses and sweeping scud far up the mountain side winter snow is seldom more than a foot or two deep June 21 we arrived at Douglas Island at five in the afternoon and went sightseeing through the mill 600 tons of low-grade quarts are crushed per day Juno on the mainland opposite the Douglas Island mills is quite a village well supplied with stores churches etc a dance house in which Indians are supposed to show native dances of all sorts is perhaps the best patronized of all the places of amusement a mr. Brooks who prints a paper here gave us some information on Mount Saint Elias Mount Rangel and the cook inlet and Prince William Sound region he told Russell that he would never reach the summit of Saint Elias that it was inaccessible he saw no glaciers that discharge birds into the sea at cook inlet but many in Prince William Sound June 22 leaving Juno at noon we had a good view of the awk glacier at the mouth of the channel between Douglas Island and the mainland end of the Eagle Glacier a few miles north of the awk on the east side of the Lynn Canal then the Davidson Glacier came in sight finally curved striped with medial moraines and girdled in front by its magnificent tree fringe terminal moraine and besides these many others of every size and pattern on the mountains bounding Lynn canal most of them comparatively small completing their sculpture the mountains on either hand and at the head of the canal are strikingly beautiful at any time of the year the sky today is mostly clear with just clouds enough hovering about the mountains to show them to the best advantage as they stretch onward and sustain grandeur like two separate and distinct ranges each mountain with its glaciers and clouds and fine sculpture glowing and bright and smooth graded light only a few of them exceed 5,000 feet in height but as one naturally associates great height with ice and snow laden mountains and with glacial sculpture so pronounced they seem much higher there are now two canneries at the head of Lynn canal the Indians furnish some of the salmon at 10 cents each everybody sits up to see the midnight sky at this time of the year there is no night here though the sun drops a degree or two below the horizon june 23 early this morning we arrived in glacier bay we passed through the crowds of birds at the mouth of the bay though owing to wind and tide there were but a few at the front of mirror glacier a fine bright day the last of a group of a week or two as shown by the dryness of the sand along the shore and on the moraine rare weather hereabouts most of the passengers want to shore and climb the marine on the east side to get a view of the glacier from a point a little higher than the top of the front wall a few ventured on a mile or two farther the day was delightful and our 180 passengers were happy gazing at the beautiful blue of the birds and the shattered pinnacle crystal wall awed by the thunder and commotion of the falling and rising icebergs which ever in a nonsense spray flying several hundred feet into the air and race swells that set all the fleet of birds in motion and roared up the beach telling the story of the birth of every iceberg far and near the number discharge varies much influenced in part no doubt by the tides and weather and seasons sometimes one every five minutes for a half a day at a time on the average though intervals of 20 or 30 minutes may occur without any considerable fall then three or four immense discharges will take place in as many minutes the sound they make is like heavy thunder with a prolonged roar after deep thudding sounds a perpetual thunderstorm easily heard three or four miles away the roar in our tent and the shaking of the ground one or two miles distant from points of discharge seems startingly near i had to look after camp supplies and left the ship late this morning going with a crowd to the glacier then taking advantage of the fine weather i pushed off alone into the silent prairie to the east to the noon attack island about 500 feet above the ice i discovered a small lake on the larger of the two islands and many battered and ground fragments of fossil wood large and small they seem to have come from trees that grew on the island perhaps centuries ago i mean to use this island as a station and setting out stakes to measure the glacial flow the top of mount fair weather is in sight at a distance of perhaps 30 miles the ice all smooth on the eastern border wildly broken in the central portion i reached the ship at 2 30 p.m i had intended getting back at noon and sending letters and bidding friends goodbye but could not resist this glacier saunter the ship moved off as soon as i was seen on the moraine bluff and lumus and i waved our hats in farewell to the many wavings of handkerchiefs of acquaintances we had made on the trip our goods blankets provisions tent etc lay in a rocky moraine hollow within a mile the great terminal wall of the glacier and the discharge of the rising and falling icebergs kept up an almost continuous thundering and echoing while a few goals flew about on easy wing or stood like specks of foam on the shore these were our neighbors after my 12 mile walk i ate a cracker and planned the camp i found that one of my boxes had been left on the steamer but still we have more than enough of everything we obtained two cords of dry wood at juno which captain caro kindly had his men carry up the moraine to our campground we piled the wood as a windbreak then laid a floor of lumber brought from seattle for a square tent nine feet by nine we set the tent stored our provisions in it and made our beds this work was done by 11 30 p.m good daylight lasting to this time we slept well in our roomy cotton house dreaming of california home nests in the wilderness of ice june 25 a rainy day for a few hours i kept count of the number of bergs discharged then sauntered along the beach to the end of the crystal wall a portion of the way is dangerous the moraine bluff being capped by an overlying lobe of the glacier which as it melts sends down boulders and fragments of ice while the strip of sandy shore at high tide is only a few rods wide leaving but little room to escape from the falling moraine material and the berg waves the view of the ice cliffs pinnacle spires and ridges was very telling a magnificent picture of nature's power and industry of love and beauty about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet from the shore a large stream issues from an arched tunnel like channel in the wall of the glacier the blue of the ice hall being of an exquisite tone contrasting with the strange sooty smoky brown colored stream the front of the wall of mirror glacier is about two and a half or three miles wide only the central portion about two miles wide discharges icebergs the two wings advanced over the washed and stratified moraine deposits have little or no motion melting and receding as fast or perhaps faster than it advances they have been advanced at least a mile over the old reformed moraines as is shown by the overlying angular recent moraine deposits now being laid down which are continuous with the medial moraines of the glacier in the old stratified moraine banks trunks and branches of trees showing but little sign of decay occur at a height of about a hundred feet above tide water i've not yet compared this fossil wood with that of the opposite shore deposits that the glacier was once withdrawn considerably back of its present limit seems plain immense torrents of water had filled the inlet with stratified marine material and for centuries favorable climatic conditions allowed forests to grow upon it at length the glacier advanced probably three or four miles uprooting and burying the trees which it had grown undisturbed for centuries then came a great thaw which produced the flood that deposited the uprooted trees also the trees which grew around the shores above the reach of the floods were shed off perhaps by the thawing of the soil that was resting on the buried margin of the glacier left on its retreat and protected by a covering of moraine material for melting as fast as the exposed surface of the glacier what appeared to be remnants of the margin of the glacier when it stood at a much higher level still exist on the left side and probably all along its banks on both sides just below its present terminus june 26 we fixed a mark on the left wing to measure the motion if any it rained all day but i had a grand tramp over mud ice and rock to the east wall of the inlet brown metamorphic slate close grained in places dips away from the inlet presenting edges to ice action which has given rise to a singularly beautiful and striking surface polished and grooved and fluted all the next day it rained the mountains were smothered in dull colored mist and fog the great glacier looming through the gloomy gray fog fringes with wonderful effect the thunder of bergs booms and rumbles through the foggy atmosphere it is bad weather for exploring but delightful nevertheless making all the strange mysterious region yet stranger and more mysterious june 28 a light rain we were visited by two parties of indians a man from each canoe came ashore leaving the woman in the canoe to guard against the berg waves i tried my chinook and made out to say that i wanted to hire two of them in a few days to go a little way back on the glacier and around the bay their seal hunters and promised to come again with charlie who hayu kum tux wah wah boston knew well how to speak english i saw three huge bergs born spray rose about 200 feet lovely reflections showed off the pale blue tones of the ice wall and mountains in the calm water mirages are common making the stranded bergs along the shore look like sheer frontal wall the glacier from which they were discharged i am watching the ice wall berg life and behavior etc yesterday and today a solitary small flycatcher was feeding about camp a sandpiper on the shore loons ducks gulls and crows a few of each and a bald eagle are all the birds i've noticed thus far the glacier is thundering gloriously june 30 clearing clouds and sunshine in less than a minute i saw three large bergs born first there is an unusually a preliminary thundering of comparatively small masses as the large mass begins to fall then the grand crash and boom and reverberating roaring oftentimes three or four heavy main throbbing thuds and booming explosions are heard as the main mass falls in several pieces and also secondary thuds and thunderings as the mass or masses plunge and rise again and again ear they come to rest seldom if ever do the towers battlements and pinnacles into which the front of the glacier is broken fall forward headlong from their bases like falling trees at the water level or above or below it they mostly sink vertically or nearly so as if undermined by the melting action of the water of the inlet occasionally maintaining their upright position after sinking far below the level of the water and rising again a hundred feet or more into the air with water streaming like hair down the sides of the crowns then launch forward and fall flat with yet another thundering report raising spray and magnificent flame like radiating jets and sheets occasionally to the very top of the front wall illuminated by the sun the spray and the angular crystal masses are indescribably beautiful some of the discharges pour in fragments from the clefts in the wall like waterfalls white and mealy looking even dusty with minute swirling ice particles followed by a rushing succession of thunder tones combining into a huge blunt solemn roar most of these crumbling discharges are from the excessively shattered central part of the ice wall the solid deep blue masses from the ends of the wall forming the large bergs rise from the bottom of the glacier many lesser reports are heard at a distance of a mile or more from the fall of pinnacles into crevasses or from the opening of new crevasses the berg discharges are very irregular from three to twenty two an hour on one rising tide six hours there were 60 bergs discharged large enough to thunder and be heard at distances of three quarters to one and a half miles and on one succeeding falling tide six hours 69 were discharged july one we were awakened at four o'clock this morning by the whistle of the steamer george w elder i went out on the marine and waved my hand in salute and was answered by a toot from the whistle soon a party came ashore and asked if i was professor mirror the leader professor harry fielding reed of cleveland ohio introduced himself and his companion mr cushing also of cleveland and six or eight young students who had come well provided with instruments to study the glacier they landed seven or eight tons of freight and pitched can't beside ours i'm delighted to have companions so congenial we have now a village as i set out to climb the second mountain 3000 feet high on the east side of the glacier i met many tourists returning from a walk on the smooth east margin of the glacier and had to answer many questions i had a hard climb but wonderful views were developed and i sketched the glacier from this high point and most of its upper fountains many fine alpine plants grew here in an eminy on the summit two species of chesapea and shaggy mats three or four dwarf willows large blue harry lupines 18 inches high pernacea flocks saldago dandelion white flowered branthus daisy pedicolaris epilobium etc with grasses sedges mosses and lichens forming a delightful deep spongy sod woodchuck stood erect and piped dolefully for an hour gee gee with jaws absurdly stretched to emit the thin note rusty looking seedy fellows also a smaller striped species which stood erect and cheaped and whistled like a douglas squirrel i saw three or four species of birds a finch flew from her nest at my feet and i almost stepped on a family of young ptarmigan air they scattered little bunches of downy brown silk small but able to run well they scattered along a snow bank over boulders through willows grass and flowers while the mother very lame tumbled and sprawled at my feet i stood still until the little ones began to peep the mother answered do do do and showed admirable judgment and devotion she was in a brown plumage with white on the wings primaries she had a fine grounds onto which to lead and feed her young cloud in the sky today a faint film to the north vanished by noon leaving all the sky full of soft hazy light the magnificent mountains around the widespread tributaries of the glacier the great gently undulating prairie like expanse of the main trunk bluish on the east pure white on the west and north its trains of moraines and magnificent curving lines and many colors black gray red and brown the stormy cataract like crevasse sections the hundred fountains the lofty pure white fair weather range the thunder of the plunging birds the fleet of birds sailing tranquilly in the inlet formed by a glowing picture of nature's beauty and power july 2 i crossed the inlet with mr reed and mr adams today the stratified drift on the west side all the way from the top to base contains fossil wood on the east side as far as i have seen it the wood occurs only in one stratum at a height of about 120 feet in sand and clay some in the bank on the west side are rooted in clay soil i noticed a large grove of stumps in a washed out channel near the glacier front but had no time to examine it closely evidently a flood carrying great quantities of sand and gravel had overwhelmed and broken off these trees leaving high stumps the deposit about 100 feet or more above them had been recently washed out by one of the draining streams of the glacier exposing a part of the old forest floor certainly two or three centuries old i climbed along the right bank of the lowest tributaries and set a signal flag on a ridge 1400 feet high this tributary is about one and a fourth or one and a half miles wide and has four secondary tributaries it reaches tide water but gives off no bergs later i climbed the large noon attack island 7 000 feet high near the west margin of the glacier it is composed of crumbling granite dragled with washed boulders but has some enduring bosses which on sides and top are polished and scored rigidly showing that it had been heavily over swept by the glacier when it was thousands of feet deeper than now like a submerged boulder in a river channel this island is very irregular in form owing to the variations in the structure joints of the granite it has several small lake lits and has been loaded with glacial drift but by the melting of the ice about its flanks it's shedding it off together with some of its own crumbling surface i descended a deep rock gully on the north side the rawest dirtiest dustiest most dangerous that i've seen here about there is also a large quantity of fossil wood scattered on this island especially on the north side that on the south side have been cleared off and carried away by the first tributary glacier which being lower and melting earlier has allowed the soil the marine material to fall together with its forest and to be carried off that on the north side is now being carried off or buried the last of the main ice foundation is melting and the marine material reformed over and over again and the fallen tree trunks decayed or half decayed or in a fair state of preservation are also unburied or buried again or carried off to the terminal or lateral moraine i found three small sea links sit cast spruce is feeble beginnings of a new forest the circumference of the island is about seven miles i arrived at camp about midnight tired and cold sailing across the inlet in a cranky rotten boat through the midst of icebergs was dangerous and i was glad to get ashore july 4 i climbed the east wall to the summit about 3100 feet or so by the northernmost ravine next to the yellow ridge finding about a mile of snow in the upper portion of the ravine and patches on the summit a few of the patches probably lie all year the ground beneath them is so plantless on the edge of some of the snow banks i know is casiope the thin green moss like patches seen from camp are composed of a rich shaggy growth of casiope white flowered brianthus dwarf vicinium with bright pink flowers sacks of fridges and enemies blue bells gentians small ridger on pedacoloris dwarf willow and a few species of grasses of these casiope tetragona is far the most influential and beautiful here it forms mats a foot thick and an acre or more in an area the sections being measured by the size and drainage of the soil patches i saw a few plants anchored in the less crumbling parts of the steep faced bosses and steps pernacea potentilla head sarm let kia et cetera the lower rough looking patches halfway up the mountain are mostly alder bushes 10 and 15 feet high i had a fine view of the top of the mountain mass which forms a boundary wall the upper portion of the inlet on the west side and of several glaciers tributary to the first of the eastern tributaries of the main mirror glacier five or six of these tributaries were seen most of them now melted off from the trunk and independent the highest peak to the eastward has an elevation of about 5000 feet or a little less i also had glorious views of the fair weather range lapros crillian letia and fair weather mount fair weather is the most beautiful of all the giants that stand guard about glacier bay when the sun is shining on its from the east or south its magnificent glaciers and colors are brought out in most telling display in the late afternoon its features become less distinct the atmosphere seems pale and hazy though around to the north and northeastward of fair weather innumerable white peaks are displayed the highest fountain heads of the mirror glacier crowded together in the wildering array most exciting and inviting to the mountaineer although i have had a delightful day a truly glorious celebration of the fourth july six i sailed three or four miles down the east coast of the inlet with the reed party's cook who was supposed to be an experienced camper and prospector and landed at a stratified marine bank it was here that i camped in 1880 a point at that time less than half a mile from the front of the glacier now one and a half miles i found my indians old camp made just 10 years ago and professor writes of five years ago their alder bow beds and fireplace were still marked and but little decayed i found 33 species of plants and flour not counting willows a showy garden on the shore only a few feet above high tide watered by a fine stream let kia head is saram par nasia epilobium bluebell solidago habanaria strawberry with the fruit half grown arctose phylos merton sea irigeron willows tall grasses and alder are the principal species there are many butterflies in this garden gulls are breeding near here i saw young in the water today on my way back to camp i discovered a group of monumental stumps in a washed out valley of the marine and went ashore to observe them they're in the dry course of a flood channel about 80 feet above mean tide and four or five hundred yards back from the shore where they have been pounded and battered by boulders rolling against them over them making them look like gigantic shaving brushes the largest is about three feet in diameter and probably 300 years old i mean to return and examine them at leisure a smaller stump still firmly rooted is standing astride of an old crumbling trunk showing that at least two generations of trees flourished here and undisturbed by the advanced or retreat of the glacier or by its draining stream floods there are sick of spruces and the wood is mostly in good state of preservation how these trees are broken off without being uprooted is dark to me at present perhaps most of their companions were uprooted and carried away july 7 another fine day scars a cloud in the sky the icebergs in the bay are mirage in the distance to look like the frontal wall of a great glacier i am writing letters in anticipation of the next steamer the queen she arrived about 2 30 p.m with 230 tourists what a show they made with their ribbons and kodaks all seemed happy enthusiastic though it was curious to see how promptly all of them seized gazing when the dinner bell rang and how many turned from the great thundering crystal world of ice to look curiously at the indians that came alongside to sell trinkets and how our little camp and kitchen arrangements excited so many to loiter and waste their precious time prying into our poor hut july 8 a fine clear day i went up the glacier to observe stakes and found that a marked point near the middle of the current had flowed about a hundred feet in eight days on the medial marine one mile from the front there was no measurable displacement i found a raven devouring a tom cod that was alive on the shallow at the mouth of the creek it had probably been wounded by a seal or an eagle july 10 i've been getting acquainted with the main features of the glacier and its fountain mountains with reference to exploration of its main tributaries and the upper part of its prairie like trunk a trip i have long had in mind i have been building a sled and must now get fully ready to start without reference to the weather yesterday evening i saw a large blue burg just as it was detached sliding down from the front to a professor reed's party rode out to it as it sailed past the camp estimating it to be 140 feet in length and 100 feet high end of 17 recording by josh smith