 Chapter 18 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 18. My Sled Trip on the Muir Glacier. I started off the morning of July 11 on my memorable sled trip to obtain general views of the main upper part of the Muir Glacier, and its seven principal tributaries, feeling sure that I would learn something, and at the same time get rid of a severe bronchial cough that followed an attack of the grip, and had troubled me for three months. I intended to camp on the glacier every night, and did so, and my throat grew better every day, until it was well, for no lowland microbe could stand such a trip. My sled was about three feet long, and made as light as possible. A sack of hardtack, a little tea and sugar, and a sleeping bag were firmly lashed on it, so that nothing could drop off however much it might be jarred and dangled in crossing crevasses. Two Indians carried the baggage over the rocky moraine to the clear glacier at the side of one of the eastern Nunatak Islands. Mr. Loomis accompanied me to this first camp, and assisted in dragging the empty sled over the moraine. We arrived at the middle Nunatak Island about nine o'clock. Here I sent back my Indian carriers, and Mr. Loomis assisted me the first day in hauling the loaded sled to my second camp at the foot of Hemlock Mountain, returning the next morning, July 13. I skirted the mountain to eastward, a few miles, and was delighted to discover a group of trees, high up on its ragged rocky side, the first trees I had seen on the shores of Glacier Bay, or on those of any of its glaciers. I left my sled on the ice, and climbed the mountain to see what I might learn. I found that all the trees were mountain hemlock, suga mirtensiana, and were evidently the remnant of an old well-established forest, standing on the only ground that was stable, all the rest of the forest below it having been sloughed off with the soil from the disintegrating slate-bed rock. The lowest of the trees stood at an elevation of about 2,000 feet above the sea, the highest at about 3,000 feet, or a little higher. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast between the raw, crumbling deforested portions of the mountain looking like a quarry that was being worked, and the forested part with its rich, shaggy beds of Cassiope and bryanthus in full bloom, and its sumptuous cushions of flower-enameled mosses. These garden patches are full of gay colors of genshin, erageron, anemone, larchsper, and columbine, and are enlivened with happy birds and bees and marmots, climbing to an elevation of 2,500 feet, which is about 1,500 feet above the level of the glacier at this point. I saw and heard a few marmots, and three ptarmigans that were as tame as barnyard fowls. The sod is sloughing off on the edges, keeping it ragged. The trees are storm-bent from the southeast. A few are standing at an elevation of nearly 3,000 feet, at 2,500 feet, pyrola, veratrum, vaccinium, fine grasses, sedges, willows, mountain ash, buttercups, and acres of the most luxuriant Cassiope are in bloom. A lake encumbered with icebergs lies at the end of Divide Glacier, a spacious, level-floored valley beyond it, 8 or 10 miles long, with forested mountains on its west side, perhaps discharges to the southeastward into Lynn Canal. The divide of the glacier is about opposite the third of the eastern tributaries. Another burg dotted lake, into which the drainage of the braided glacier flows, lies a few miles to the westward, and is one-and-a-half miles long. Burg Lake is next the remarkable girdled glacier to the southeastward. When the ice period was in its prime, much of the Muir Glacier that now flows northward into Howling Valley, flowed southward into Glacier Bay as a tributary of the Muir. All the rock contours show this, and so do the medial moraines. Burg Lake is crowded with birds, because they have no outlet and melt slowly. I heard none discharged. I had a hard time crossing the Divide Glacier, on which I camped. Half a mile back from the lake, I gleaned a little fossil wood, and made a fire on Maureen Boulder's Forte. I slept fairly well on the sled. I heard the roar of four cascades, on a shaggy green mountain on the west side of Howling Valley, and saw three wild goats, 1500 feet up, in the steep grassy pastures. July 14. I rose at four o'clock this cloudy and dismal morning, and looked for my goats, but saw only one. I thought there must be wolves where there were goats, and in a few minutes heard their low, dismal, far-reaching howling. One of them sounded very near, and came nearer, until it seemed to be less than a quarter mile away, on the edge of the glacier. They had evidently seen me, and one or more had come down to observe me, but I was unable to catch sight of any of them. About half an hour later, while I was eating breakfast, they began howling again, so near I began to fear that they had a mind to attack me, and I made haste to the shelter of a big square boulder, where, though I had no gun, I might be able to defend myself from a front attack with my Alpenstock. After waiting half an hour or so to see what these wild dogs meant to do, I ventured to proceed on my journey, to the foot of Snow Dome, where I camped for the night. There are six tributaries on the northwest side of Divide Arm, counting to the Grey Glacier, next after Granite Canyon Glacier going northwest. Next is Dirt Glacier, which is dead. I saw burgs on the edge of the main glacier, a mile back from here, which seemed to have been left by the draining of a pool, in a sunken hollow. A circling rim of driftwood, back twenty rods on the glacier, marks the edge of the Lake Lit Shore, where the burgs lie scattered and stranded. It is now half past ten o'clock, and getting dusk as I sit by my little fossil wood fire, writing these notes. A strange bird is calling and complaining. A stream is rushing into a glacier well, on the edge of which I am camped, back a few yards from the base of the mountain for fear of falling stones. A few small ones are rattling down the steep slope. I must go to bed. July 15. I climb the dome to plan away, scan the glacier, and take bearings, etc., in case of storms. The main divide is about fifteen hundred feet. The second divide, about fifteen hundred also, is about one and a half mile southeastward. The flow of water on the glacier noticeably diminished last night, though there was no frost. It is now already increasing. Stones begin to roll into the crevasses, and into new positions, sliding against each other, half turning over or falling on moraine ridges. Mud pellets with small pebbles slip and roll slowly from ice hummocks again and again. So often, and by how many ways, our boulders finished and finally brought to anything like permanent form and place in beds for farms and fields, forests and gardens. Into crevasses and out again, into moraines, shifted and reinforced and reformed by avalanches, melting from pedestals, etc. Rain, frost, and dew help in the work. They are swept in rills, caught in ground in pothole mills. Moraines of washed pebbles, like those on glacier margins, are formed by snow avalanches deposited in crevasses, then weathered out and projected on the ice as shallow raised moraines. There is one such at this camp. A ptarmigan is on a rock, twenty yards distant, as if on show. It has red over the eye, a white line, not conspicuous over the red, belly white, white markings over the upper parts on ground of brown and black wings, mostly white as seen when flying. But the coverts, the same as the rest of the body. Only about three inches of the folded primaries show white. The breast seems to have golden iridescent colors, white under the wings. It allowed me to approach within twenty feet. It walked down a sixty degree slope of the rock, took flight with a few whirring wingbeats, then sailed with wings perfectly motionless, four hundred yards down a gentle grade, and vanished over the brow of a cliff. Ten days ago, Loomis told me that he found a nest with nine eggs. On the way down to my sled, I saw four more ptarmigans. They utter harsh notes when alarmed. Crack, chunk, crack, with the R rolled and prolonged. I also saw fresh and old goat tracks and some bones that suggest wolves. There is a pass through the mountains at the head of the third glacier. Fine mountains stand at the head on each side. The one on the northeast side is the higher and finer every way. It has three glaciers, tributary to the third. The third glacier has altogether ten tributaries, five on each side. The mountain on the left side of white glacier is about six thousand feet high. The moraines of girdled glacier seems scarce to run anywhere. Only a little material is carried to Berg Lake. Most of it seems to be at rest as a terminal on the main glacier field, which here has little motion. The curves of these last, as seen from this mountaintop, are very beautiful. It has been a glorious day, all pure sunshine. An hour or more before sunset, the distant mountains, a vast host, seemed more softly ethereal than ever. Pale blue, ineffably fine, all angles and harshness melted off in the soft evening light. Even the snow and the grinding, cascading glaciers became divinely tender and fine in this celestial, emmestine light. I got back to camp at 7.15, not tired. After my hard-tack supper, I could have climbed the mountain again and got back before sunrise, but dragging my sled tires me. I have been out on the glacier, examining a moraine-like mass about a third of a mile from camp. It is perhaps a mile long, a hundred yards wide, and is thickly strewn with wood. I think that it has been brought down the mountain by a heavy snow avalanche, loaded on the ice, then carried away from the shore in the direction of the flow of the glacier. This explains detached moraine masses. This one seems to have been derived from a big roomy circ, or amphitheater, on the northwest side of this snow-dome mountain. To shorten the return journey, I was tempted to glissade down what appeared to be a snow-filled ravine, which was very steep. All went well, until I rushed a bluish spot, which proved to be ice, on which I lost control of myself, and rolled into a gravel talus at the foot, without a scratch. Just as I got up, and was getting myself oriented, I heard a loud, fierce scream, uttered into an exulting, diabolical tone of voice which startled me, as if an enemy, having seen me fall, was glorying in my death. Then suddenly, two ravens came swooping from the sky, and alighted on the jag of a rock, within a few feet of me, evidently hoping that I had been maimed, and that they were going to have a feast. But as they stared at me, studying my condition, impatiently waiting for bone-picking time, I saw what they were up to, and shouted, not yet, not yet. July 16. At 7 a.m. I left camp to cross the main glacier. Six ravens came to the camp as soon as I left. What wonderful eyes they must have! Nothing that moves in all this icy wilderness escapes the eyes of these brave birds. This is one of the loveliest mornings I ever saw in Alaska, not a cloud or faintest hint of one, in all the wide sky. There is a yellowish haze in the east, white in the west, mild and mellow as a Wisconsin Indian summer, but finer, more ethereal, God's holy light making all divine. In an hour or so, I came to the confluence of the first of the seven Grand Tributaries of the main Muir Glacier, and had a glorious view of it as it comes sweeping down, in wild cascades, from its magnificent, pure white, mountain-girt basin, to join the main crystal sea. Its main fountain peaks, clustered and crowded, all pouring forth their tribute to swell its grand current, I crossed its front a little below its confluence, where its shattered current, about two or three miles wide, is reunited, and many rills and good-sized brooks glide gurgling and ringing in pure blue channels, giving delightful animation to the icy solitude. Most of the ice surface crossed today has been very uneven, and hauling the sled and finding a way over humocks has been fatiguing. At times I had to lift the sled bodily, and to cross many narrow, nerve-trying, ice-silver bridges, balancing a stride of them, and cautiously shoving the sled ahead of me with tremendous chasms on either side. I had made, perhaps, not more than six or eight miles in a straight line, by six o'clock this evening. When I reached ice-soe-hummacky, and tedious, I concluded to camp, and not to try to take the sled any farther. I intend to leave it here in the middle of the basin, and carry my sleeping bag and provisions, the rest of the way across to the west side. I am cozy and comfortable here, in resting in the midst of glorious icy scenery, though very tired. I made out to get a cup of tea, by means of a few shavings and splintered, whittled from the bottom board of my sled, and made a fire in a little can, a small campfire, the smallest I ever made or saw, yet it answered well enough as far as tea was concerned. I crept into my sack before eight o'clock, as the wind was cold and my feet wet. One of my shoes is about worn out. I may have to put on a wooden sole. This day has been cloudless throughout, with lovely sunshine, a purple evening and morning. The circumference of mountains, beheld from the midst of this world of ice, is marvelous, the vast plain reposing in such soft, tender light. The fountain mountains so clearly cut, holding themselves aloft, with their loads of ice in supreme strength and beauty of architecture. I found a skull and most of the other bones of a goat, on the glacier, about two miles from the nearest land. It had probably been chased out of its mountain home by wolves, and devoured here. I carried its horns with me. I saw many considerable depressions in the glacial surface, also a pit-like hole, irregular, not like the ordinary wells across the slope of the many small dirt-clad hillocks faced to the south. Now the sun is down, and the sky is saffron-yellow, blending and fading into purple around the south and north. It is a curious experience to be lying in bed, writing these notes, hammock waves rising in every direction, their edges marking a multitude of crevasses and pits, while, all around the horizon, rise peaks innumerable of most intricate style of architecture, solemnly growling and grinding molens, contrast with the sweet, low-voiced whispering and warbling of a network of rills, singing like water-osals, glinting, gliding with indescribable softness and sweetness of voice, they are all around, one within a few feet of my hard-sled bed. July 17, another glorious, cloudless day, is dawning in yellow and purple, and soon the sun, over the eastern peak, will blot out the blue-peak shadows, and make all the vast white ice prairie sparkle. I slept well last night in the middle of the icy sea. The wind was cold, but my sleeping bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor intolerably cold. My three months cough is gone. Strange that, with such work and exposure, one should know nothing of sore throats and of what are called colds. My heavy, thick-soled shoes, resold just before starting on the trip six days ago, are about worn out, and my feet have been wet every night. But no harm comes of it. Nothing but good. I succeeded in getting a warm breakfast in bed. I reached over the edge of my sled, got a hold of a small cedar stick that I had been carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings from it, stored them on my breast, then set fire to a piece of paper in a shallow tin can, added a pinch of shavings, held the cup of water that always stood at my bedside, over the tiny blaze of the sun. Then I sat down with one hand, and fed the fire by adding little pinches of shavings until the water boiled. Then, pulling my bread sack within reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and eaten in bed. Thus refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of crevast, homucky ice, and concluded to try to drag my little sled a mile or two farther. Then, finding encouragement, persevered, getting it across innumerable crevasses and streams, and around several lakes and over and through the midst of Humox, and at length reached the western shore, between five and six o'clock this evening, extremely fatigued. Thus I consider a hard job well done, crossing so wildly broke in a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snowdome Mountain, in two days with a sled, weighing altogether not less than a hundred pounds. I found innumerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water. Just in most places, just where the ice was close pressed and welded, after descending cascades, and was being shoved over an upward slope, thus closing the crevasses at the bottom, leaving only the upper sun-melted beveled portion open for water to collect in. Vast must be the drainage from this great basin. The waste in sunshine must be enormous, while in dark weather, rains and winds also melt the ice, and add to the volume produced by the rain itself. The winds also, though in temperature they may be only a degree or two above freezing point, dissolve the ice as fast, or perhaps faster than clear sunshine. Much of the water caught in tight crevasses, doubtless freezes during the winter, and gives rise to many of the irregular veins seen in the structure of the glacier. Saturated snow also freezes at times and is incorporated with the ice, as only from the lower point of the glacier is the snow melted during the summer. I have noticed many traces of this action. One of the most beautiful things to be seen on the glacier is the myriads of minute and intensely brilliant radiant lights, burning in rows on the banks of streams and pools, and lakelets from the tips of crystals melting in the sun, making them look as if bordered with diamonds. These gems are red like stars and twinkle, no diamond radiates keener or more brilliant light. It was perfectly glorious to think of this divine light burning over all this vast crystal sea, in such ineffably fine effulgence, and over how many other of icy Alaska's glaciers where nobody sees it. To produce these effects, I fancy the ice must be melting rapidly, as it was being melted today. The ice in these pools does not melt with anything like an even surface, but in long branches and leaves, making fairy forests of points, while minute bubbles of air are constantly being set free. I am camped tonight on what I call Quarry Mountain from its raw, loose, plantless condition, seven or eight miles above the front of the glacier. I found enough fossil wood for tea. Glorious is the view to the eastward from this camp. The sun has set, a few clouds appear, and a torrent rushing down a gully, and under the edge of the glacier, is making a solemn roaring. No tinkling, whistling rills this night, ever and anon, I hear a falling boulder. I have had a glorious and instructive day, but am excessively weary, and to bed I go. July 18. I felt tired this morning and meant to rest today, but after breakfast at 8am, I felt I must be up and doing, climbing, sketching near views of the great tributaries from the top of Quarry Mountain. Weariness vanished, and I could have climbed, I think, 5,000 feet. Anything seems easy after sled dragging over hummocks and crevasses, and the constant nerve strain in jumping crevasses, so as not to slip in making the spring. Quarry Mountain is the barest I have seen, a raw quarry with infinite abundance of loose decaying granite all on the go. Its slopes are excessively steep. A few patches of epilobium make gay purple spots of color. Its seeds fly everywhere seeking homes. Quarry Mountain is cut across into a series of parallel ridges by oversweeping ice. It is still overswept in three places by glacial flows, a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, finely arched at the top of the divides. I have been sketching, though my eyes are much inflamed, and I can scarcely see. All the lines I make appear double. I fear I shall now be able to make the few more sketches I want tomorrow, but must try. I fear I shall not be able to make the few more sketches I want tomorrow, but must try. The day has been gloriously sunful. The glacier pale yellow toward five o'clock. The hazy air, white with a yellow tinge, gives an Indian summerish effect. Now the blue evening shadows are creeping out over the icy plain, some ten miles long, with sunny yellow belts between them. Folders fall now and again, with dull blunt booming, and the gravel pebbles rattle. July 19, nearly blind. The light is intolerable, and I fear I may be long unfitted for work. I have been lying on my back all day, with a snow poultice bound over my eyes. Every object I try to look at seems double. Even the distant mountain ranges are doubled. The upper and exact copy of the lower, though somewhat faint. This is the first time in Alaska that I have had too much sunshine. About four o'clock this afternoon, when I was waiting for the evening shadows to enable me to get nearer to the main camp, where I could be more easily found, in case my eyes should become still more inflamed, and I should be unable to travel. Thin clouds cast a grateful shade over all the glowing landscape. I gladly took advantage of these kindly clouds to make an effort to cross the few miles of the glacier that lay between me and the shore of the inlet. I made a pair of goggles, but am afraid to wear them. Fortunately, the ice here is but little broken. Therefore, I pulled my cap well down, and set off about five o'clock. I got on pretty well, and camped on the glacier in sight of the main camp, which, from here, in a straight line, is only five or six miles away. I went on shore on Granite Island, and gleaned a little fossil wood, with which I made tea on the ice. July 20. I kept wet bandages on my eyes, last night as long as I could, and feel better this morning, but all the mountains still seemed to have double summits, giving a curiously unreal aspect to the landscape. I packed everything on the sled, and moved three miles farther down the glacier, where I want to make measurements. Twice today, I was visited on the ice by a hummingbird, attracted by the red lining of the bear skin sleeping bag. I have gained some light on the formation of gravel beds along the inlet. The material is mostly sifted and sorted by successive railings and washings along the margins of the glacier tributaries, where the supply is abundant beyond anything I ever saw elsewhere. The lowering of the surface of a glacier, when its walls are not too steep, leaves a part of the margin dead and buried, and protected from the wasting sunshine beneath the lateral moraines. Thus, a marginal valley is formed, clear ice on one side, or, nearly so, buried ice on the other. As melting goes on, the marginal trough, or valley, grows deeper and wider, since both sides are being melted, the land side slower. The dead, protected ice, in melting first sheds off the large boulders, as they are not able to lie on slopes, where smaller ones can. Then the next larger ones are rolled off, and pebbles and sand in succession. Meanwhile, this material is subjected to torrent action, as if it were cast into a trough. When floods come, it is carried forward and stratified, according to the force of the current, sand, mud, or larger material. This exposes fresh surfaces of ice, and melting goes on again, until enough material has been undermined to form a veil in front. Then follows another washing and carrying away, and depositing, where the current is allowed to spread. In melting, protected margin terraces are oftentimes formed. Perhaps these terraces mark successive heights on the glacial surface. From terrace to terrace, the grist of stone is rolled and sifted. Some, meeting only feeble streams, have only the fine particles carried away, and deposited in smooth beds. Others, coarser, from swifter streams, overspread the fine beds, while many of the large boulders, no doubt, roll back upon the glacier to go on their travels again. It has been cloudy mostly today, though sunny in the afternoon, and my eyes are getting better. The steamer queen is expected in a day or two, so I must try to get down to the inlet tomorrow, and make signal to have some of the reed party ferry me over. I must hear from home, write letters, get rest, and more to eat. Near the front of the glacier, the ice was perfectly free, apparently of anything like a crevasse, and in walking almost carelessly down it, I stopped opposite the large granite Nunatuck Island, thinking that I would there be partly sheltered from the wind. I had not gone a dozen steps toward the island, when I suddenly dropped into a concealed water-filled crevasse, which on the surface showed not the slightest sign of its existence. This crevasse, like many others, was being used as a channel of a stream, and at some narrow point, the small cubical masses of ice into which the glacier surface disintegrates were jammed and extended, back farther and farther, till they completely covered and concealed the water. Into this I suddenly plunged, and after crossing thousands of really dangerous crevasse, but never before had I encountered a danger so completely concealed. Down I plunged over head and ears, but of course bobbed up again, and after a hard struggle, succeeded in dragging myself out over the farther side. Then I pulled my sled over, to close to Nunatuck Cliff, made haste to strip off my clothing, threw it in a sloppy heap, and crept into my sleeping bag to shiver away the night as best I could. July 21. Dressing this rainy morning was a miserable job, but might have been worse. After ringing my sloppy underclothing, getting it on was far from pleasant. My eyes are better, and I feel no bad effect from my icy bath. The last trace of my three-months cough is gone. No lowland-grip microbe could survive such experiences. I have had a fine-telling day examining the ruins of the old forest of Sitka Spruce that, no great time ago, grew in a shallow mud-filled basin near the southwest corner of the glacier. The trees were protected by a spur of the mountain that puts out here, and when the glacier advanced, they were simply flooded with fine sand and overborn. Stumps by the hundred, three to fifteen feet high, rooted in a stream of fine blue mud on cobbles, still have their bark on. A stratum of decomposed bark, leaves, cones, and old trunks is still in place. Some of the stumps are on rocky ridges of gravelly soil, about 125 feet above the sea. The valley has been washed out by the stream, now occupying it, one of the glacier's draining streams, a mile long or more, and an eighth of a mile wide. I got supper early, and was just going to bed, when I was startled by seeing a man coming across the moraine, Professor Reed, who had seen me from the main camp, and who came with Mr. Loomis, and the cook in their boat, to ferry me over. I had not intended making signals for them until tomorrow, but was glad to go. I had been seen also by Mr. Case, and one of his companions, who were on the western mountainside above the fossil forest, shooting ptermigans. I had a good rest and sleep, and leisure to find out how rich I was in new facts and pictures, and how tired and hungry I was. End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 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 19 Aurora's A few days later, I set out with Professor Reed's party to visit some of the other large glaciers that flow into the bay, to observe what changes have taken place in them since October 1879, when I first visited and sketched them. We found the upper half of the bay, closely choked with birds, through which it was exceedingly difficult to force away. After slowly struggling a few miles up the east side, we dragged the whaleboat and canoe over rough rocks into a fine garden and comfortably camped for the night. The next day was spent in cautiously picking away across to the west side of the bay. And as the strangely scanty stock of provisions was already about done, and the ice jam to the northward seemed impenetrable, the party decided to return to the main camp by a comparatively open, roundabout way to the southward. While with the canoe and a handful of food scraps, I pushed on northward. After a hard, anxious struggle, I reached the mouth of the Hugh Miller Fjord, about sundown, and tried to find a camp spot on its steep, boulder-bound shore. But no landing place where it seemed possible to drag the canoe above the high tide mark was discovered after examining a mile or more of this dreary, forbidding barrier. And as night was closing down, I decided to try to grope my way across the mouth of the Fjord in the starlight to an open sandy spot, on which I had camped in October, 1879, a distance of about three or four miles. With the utmost caution, I picked my way through the sparkling bergs, and after an hour or two of this nerve-trying work, when I was perhaps less than halfway across and dreading the loss of the frail canoe, which would include the loss of myself, I came to a pack of very large bergs, which loomed threateningly, offering no visible thoroughfare, paddling and pushing to right and left. I at last discovered a sheer walled opening, about four feet wide and perhaps two hundred feet long, formed apparently by the splitting of a huge iceberg. I hesitated to enter this passage, fearing that the slightest change in the tide current might close it, but ventured nevertheless, judging that the dangers ahead might not be greater than those I had already passed. When I had got about a third of the way in, I suddenly discovered that the smooth walled ice lane was growing narrower, and with desperate haste backed out. Just as the bow of the canoe cleared the sheer walls, they came together with a growling crunch. Terror stricken, I turned back, and in an anxious hour or two, gladly reached the rock-bound shore that had at first repelled me, determined to stay on guard, all night in the canoe, or find some place where with the strength that comes in a fight for life, I could drag it up the boulder wall, beyond ice danger. This at last was happily done, about midnight, and with no thought of sleep, I went to bed rejoicing. My bed was two boulders, and as I lay wedged and bent on their up-bouldering sides, beguiling the hard, cold time, engaging into the starry sky and across the sparkling bay. Magnificent upright bars of light, in bright, prismatic colors, suddenly appeared, marching swiftly, in close succession, along the northern horizon, from west to east, as if in diligent haste, an auroral display very different from any I had ever before beheld. Once long ago in Wisconsin, I saw the heavens draped in rich purple auroral clouds, fringed and folded, in most magnificent forms, but in this glory of light so pure, so bright, so enthusiastic in motion, there was nothing in the least cloud-like. The short-color bars, apparently about two degrees in height, though blending, seemed to be as well-defined as those of the solar spectrum. How long these glad, eager soldiers of light held on their way, I cannot tell, for sense of time was charmed out of mind, and the blessed nights circled away in measureless, rejoicing enthusiasm. In the early morning, after so inspiring a night, I launched my canoe, feeling able for anything, crossed the mouth of the Hugh Miller Fjord, and forced away three or four miles along the shore of the bay, hoping to reach the Grand Pacific Glacier, in front of Mount Fairweather. But the farther I went, the ice pack, instead of showing inviting little open streaks here and there, became so much harder jam, that on some parts of the shore, the bergs, drifting south with the tide, were shoving one another out of the water beyond high tide line. Farther progress to northward was thus rigidly stopped, and now I had to fight for a way back to my cabin, hoping that by good tide luck I might reach it before dark. But at sundown, I was less than half way home, and, though very hungry, was glad to land on a little rock island, with a smooth beach for the canoe, and a thicket of elder bushes for fire in bed, and a little sleep. But shortly after sundown, while these arrangements were being made, lo and behold another aurora enriching the heavens, and, though it proved to be one of the ordinary, almost colorless kind, thrusting long, quivering lances toward the zenith from a dark cloud-like base, after a night's wonderful display, one's expectations might well be extravagant, and I lay wide awake watching. On the third night, I reached my cabin and food. Professor Reed and his party came in to talk over the results of our excursions, and, just as the last one of the visitors opened the door after bidding good night, he shouted, Sure, come look here, here's something fine. I ran out in auroral excitement, and sure enough, here was another aurora, as novel and wonderful as the marching rainbow-colored columns, a glowing silver bow spanning the mure inlet in a magnificent arch right under the zenith, or a little to the south of it, the ends resting on the top of the mountain walls. And, though colorless and steadfast, its intense, solid white splendor, noble proportions, and fineness of finish excited boundless admiration, in form and proportion, it was like a rainbow, a bridge of one span five miles wide, and so brilliant, so fine and solid and homogenous in every part. I fancy that, if all the stars were raked together into one window, fused and welded and run through some celestial rolling-mill, all would be required to make this one glowing white colossal bridge. After my last visitor went to bed, I lay down on the moraine, in front of the cabin, and gazed and watched. Hour after hour, the wonderful arch stood perfectly motionless, sharply defined and substantial-looking, as if it were a permanent addition to the furniture of the sky. At length, while it yet spanned the inlet in serene, unchanging splendor, a band of fluffy, pale gray, quivering ringlets came suddenly, all in a row, over the eastern mountain top, glided in nervous haste, up and down the underside of the bow, and over the western mountain wall. They were about one-and-a-half times the apparent diameter of the bow in length, maintained vertical posture all the way across, and slipped swiftly along, as if they were suspended like a curtain on rings. Had these lively auroral fairies marched across the fjord on the top of the bow, instead of shuffling along underside of it, one might have fancied they were a happy band of spirit people, on a journey making use of the splendid bow for a bridge. There must have been hundreds of miles of them, for the time required for each to cross from one end of the bridge to the other seemed only a minute or less, while nearly an hour elapsed from their first appearance until the last of the rushing throng vanished behind the western mountain, leaving the bridge as bright and solid, and steadfast as before they arrived. But later, half an hour or so, it began to fade. Fishers, or cracks, crossed it diagonally, through which a few stars were seen, and gradually it became thin and nebulous, until it looked like the Milky Way, and at last vanished, leaving no visible monument of any sort to mark its place. I now returned to my cabin, replenished the fire, warmed myself, and prepared to go to bed, though too aurorally rich and happy to go to sleep. But just as I was about to retire, I thought I had better take another look at the sky to make sure that the glorious show was over, and, contrary to all reasonable expectations, I found that the pale foundation for another bow was being laid right overhead like the first. Then, losing all thought of sleep, I ran back to my cabin, carried out blankets, and lay down on the moraine to keep watch until daybreak, that none of the sky wonders of the glorious night within reach of my eyes might be lost. I had seen the first bow, when it stood complete in full splendor, and its gradual fading decay. Now I was to see the building of a new one from the beginning. Perhaps in less than half an hour the silvery material was gathered, condensed, and welded into a glowing, evenly proportioned arc like the first, and in the same part of the sky. Then in due time, over the eastern mountain wall came another throng of restless electric auroral fairies, the infinitely fine pale grey garments of each lightly touching those of their neighbors, as they swept swiftly along the underside of the bridge, and down over the western mountain, like the merry band that had gone the same way before them, all keeping quivery step and time to music too fine for mortal ears. While the gay throng was gliding swiftly along, I watched the bridge for any change they might make upon it, but not the slightest could I detect. They left no visible track, and after all had passed, the glowing arc stood firm and apparently immutable, but at last faded slowly away like its glorious predecessor, excepting only the vast purple aurora mentioned above, said to have been visible over nearly all the continent, these two silver bows in supreme, serene, supernatural beauty surpassed everything auroral I ever beheld. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. Today, shoreward, hayu, a great quantity of, plenty of, huchanu, a native liquor, see page 202. Yes, big, very, clutch, good. Comptox, no, understand. Mika, you, your, singular. Maka, mak, food. Puh, shoot, shooting. Saka, aya, how do you do? Skukum, strong. Skukum, house, jail. Tilikum, friend. Tola, lead, verb. Takte, seward. Tum, tum, mind, heart. Wah-wah, talk, noun or verb. End of Chapter 20. End of Travels in Alaska by John Muir.