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FROM here, on October 24, we
set sail foi Guide Charley's ice-mountains. The handle of our heaviest axe
was cracked, and as Charley declared that there was no firewood to be had in
the big ice-mountain bay, we would have to load the canoe with a store for
cooking at an island out in the Strait a few miles from the village. We were
therefore anxious to buy or trade for a good sound axe in exchange for our
broken one. Good axes are rare in rocky Alaska. Soon or late an unlucky
stroke on a stone concealed in moss spoils the edge. Finally one in almost
perfect condition was offered by a young Hoona for our broken-handled one
and a half-dollar to boot; but when the broken axe and money were given he
promptly demanded an additional twenty-five cents' worth of tobacco. The
tobacco was given him, then he required a half-dollar's worth more of
tobacco, which was also given; but when he still demanded something more,
Charley's patience gave way and we sailed in the same condition as to axes
as when we arrived. This was the only contemptible commercial affair we
encountered among these Alaskan Indians.
We reached the wooded island
about one o'clock, made coffee, took on a store of wood, and set sail direct
for the icy country, finding it very hard indeed to believe the woodless
part of Charley's description of the Icy Bay, so heavily and uniformly are
all the shores forested wherever we had been. In this view we were joined by
John, Kadachan, and Toyatte, none of them on all their lifelong canoe
travels having ever seen a woodless country.
We held a northwesterly
course until long after dark, when we reached a small inlet that sets in
near the mouth of Glacier Bay, on the west side. Here we made a cold camp on
a desolate, snow-covered beach in stormy sleet and darkness. At daybreak I
looked eagerly in every direction to learn what kind of place we were in;
but gloomy rain-clouds covered the mountains, and I could see nothing that
would give me a clue, while Vancouver's chart, hitherto a faithful guide,
here failed us altogether. Nevertheless, we made haste to be off; and
fortunately, for just as we were leaving the shore, a faint smoke was seen
across the inlet, toward which Charley, who now seemed lost, gladly steered.
Our sudden appearance so early that gray morning had evidently alarmed our
neighbors, for as soon as we were within hailing distance an Indian with his
face blackened fired a shot over our heads, and in a blunt, bellowing voice
roared, "Who are you?"
Our interpreter shouted,
"Friends and the Fort Wrangell missionary."
Then men, women, and children
swarmed out of the hut, and awaited our approach on the beach. One of the
hunters having brought his gun with him, Kadachan sternly rebuked him,
asking with superb indignation whether he was not ashamed to meet a
missionary with a gun in his hands. Friendly relations, however, were
speedily established, and as a cold rain was falling, they invited us to
enter their hut. It seemed very small and was jammed full of oily boxes and
bundles; nevertheless, twenty-one persons managed to find shelter in it
about a smoky fire. Our hosts proved to be Hoona seal-hunters laying in
their winter stores of meat and skins. The packed hut was passably well
ventilated, but its heavy, meaty smells were not the same to our noses as
those we were accustomed to in the sprucy nooks of the evergreen woods. The
circle of black eyes peering at us through a fog of reek and smoke made a
novel picture. We were glad, however, to get within reach of information,
and of course asked many questions concerning the ice-mountains and the
strange bay, to most of which our inquisitive Hoona friends replied with
counter-questions as to our object in coming to such a place, especially so
late in the year. They had heard of Mr. Young and his work at Fort Wrangell,
but could not understand what a missionary could be doing in such a place as
this. Was he going to preach to the seals and gulls, they asked, or to the
ice-mountains? And could they take his word? Then John explained that only
the friend of the missionary was seeking ice-mountains, that Mr. Young had
already preached many good words in the villages we had visited, their own
among the others, that our hearts were good and every Indian was our friend.
Then we gave them a little rice, sugar, tea, and tobacco, after which they
began to gain confidence and to speak freely. They told us that the big bay
was called by them Sit-a-da-kay, or Ice Bay; that there were many large
ice-mountains in it, but no gold-mines; and that the ice-mountain they knew
best was at the head of the bay, where most of the seals were found.
Notwithstanding the rain, I
was anxious to push on and grope our way beneath the clouds as best we
could, in case worse weather should come; but Charley was ill at ease, and
wanted one of the seal-hunters to go with us, for the place was much
changed. I promised to pay well for a guide, and in order to lighten the
canoe proposed to leave most of our heavy stores in the hut until our
return. After a long consultation one of them consented to go. His wife got
ready his blanket and a piece of cedar matting for his bed, and some
provisions - mostly dried salmon, and seal sausage made of strips of lean
meat plaited around a core of fat. She followed us to the beach, and just as
we were pushing off said with a pretty smile, "It is my husband that you are
taking away. See that you bring him back."
We got under way about 10
A.M. The wind was in our favor, but a cold rain pelted us, and we could see
but little of the dreary, treeless wilderness which we had now fairly
entered. The bitter blast, however, gave us good speed; our bedraggled canoe
rose and fell on the waves as solemnly as a big ship. Our course was
northwestward, up the southwest side of the bay, near the shore of what
seemed to be the mainland, smooth marble islands being on our right. About
noon we discovered the first of the great glaciers, the one I afterward
named for James Geikie, the noted Scotch geologist. Its lofty blue cliffs,
looming through the draggled skirts of the clouds, gave a tremendous
impression of savage power, while the roar of the newborn icebergs thickened
and emphasized the general roar of the storm. An hour and a half beyond the
Geikie Glacier we ran into a slight harbor where the shore is low, dragged
the canoe beyond the reach of drifting icebergs, and, much against my desire
to push ahead, encamped, the guide insisting that the big ice-mountain at
the head of the bay could not be reached before dark, that the landing there
was dangerous even in daylight, and that this was the only safe harbor on
the way to it. While camp was being made, I strolled along the shore to
examine the rocks and the fossil timber that abounds here. All the rocks are
freshly glaciated, even below the sea-level, nor have the waves as yet worn
off the surface polish, much less the heavy scratches and grooves and lines
of glacial contour.
The next day being Sunday,
the minister wished to stay in camp; and so, on account of the weather, did
the Indians. I therefore set out on an excursion, and spent the day alone on
the mountain-slopes above the camp, and northward, to see what I might
learn. Pushing on through rain and mud and sludgy snow, crossing many brown,
boulder-choked torrents, wading, jumping, and wallowing in snow up to my
shoulders was mountaineering of the most trying kind. After crouching
cramped and benumbed in the canoe, poulticed in wet or damp clothing night
and day, my limbs had been asleep. This day they were awakened and in the
hour of trial proved that they had not lost the cunning learned on many a
mountain peak of the High Sierra. I reached a height of fifteen hundred
feet, on the ridge that bounds the second of the great glaciers. All the
landscape was smothered in clouds and I began to fear that as far as wide
views were concerned I had climbed in vain. But at length the clouds lifted
a little, and beneath their gray fringes I saw the berg-filled expanse of
the bay, and the feet of the mountains that stand about it, and the imposing
fronts of five huge glaciers, the nearest being immediately beneath me. This
was my first general view of Glacier Bay, a solitude of ice and snow and
newborn rocks, dim, dreary, mysterious. I held the ground I had so dearly
won for an hour or two, sheltering myself from the blast as best I could,
while with benumbed fingers I sketched what I could see of the landscape,
and wrote a few lines in my notebook. Then, breasting the snow again,
crossing the shifting avalanche slopes and torrents, I reached camp about
dark, wet and weary and glad.
While I was getting some
coffee and hardtack, Mr. Young told me that the Indians were discouraged,
and had been talking about turning back, fearing that I would be lost, the
canoe broken, or in some other mysterious way the expedition would come to
grief if I persisted in going farther. They had been asking him what
possible motive I could have in climbing mountains when storms were blowing;
and when he replied that I was only seeking knowledge, Toyatte said, "Muir
must be a witch to seek knowledge in such a place as this and in such
miserable weather."
After supper, crouching about
a dull fire of fossil wood, they became still more doleful, and talked in
tones that accorded well with the wind and waters and growling torrents
about us, telling sad old stories of crushed canoes, drowned Indians, and
hunters frozen in snowstorms. Even brave old Toyatte, dreading the treeless,
forlorn appearance of the region, said that his heart was not strong, and
that he feared his canoe, on the safety of which our lives depended, might
be entering a skookumhouse (jail) of ice, from which there might be no
escape; while the Hoona guide said bluntly that if I was so fond of danger,
and meant to go close up to the noses of the ice-mountains, he would not
consent to go any farther; for we should all be lost, as many of his tribe
had been, by the sudden rising of bergs from the bottom. They seemed to be
losing heart with every howl of the wind, and, fearing that they might fail
me now that I was in the midst of so grand a congregation of glaciers, I
made haste to reassure them, telling them that for ten years I had wandered
alone among mountains and storms, and good luck always followed me; that
with me, therefore, they need fear nothing. The storm would soon cease and
the sun would shine to show us the way we should go, for God cares for us
and guides us as long as we are trustful and brave, therefore all childish
fear must be put away. This little speech did good. Kadachan, with some show
of enthusiasm, said he liked to travel with good-luck people; and dignified
old Toyatte declared that now his heart was strong again, and he would
venture on with me as far as I liked for my "wawa" was "delait" (my talk was
very good). The old warrior even became a little sentimental, and said that
even if the canoe was broken he would not greatly care, because on the way
to the other world he would have good companions.
Next morning it was still
raining and snowing, but the south wind swept us bravely forward and swept
the bergs from our course. In about an hour we reached the second of the big
glaciers, which I afterwards named for Hugh Tiller. We rowed up its fiord
and landed to make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The
berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide, and
broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and flat-topped
towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from pale, shimmering,
limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the most startling, chilling,
almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain mural spaces from which bergs had
just been discharged. Back from the front for a few miles the glacier rises
in a series of wide steps, as if this portion of the glacier had sunk in
successive sections as it reached deep water, and the sea had found its way
beneath it. Beyond this it extends indefinitely in a gently rising
prairie-like expanse, and branches along the slopes and canons of the
Fairweather Range.
From here a run of two hours
brought us to the head of the bay, and to the mouth of the northwest fiord,
at the head of which he the Hoona sealing-grounds, and the great glacier now
called the Pacific, and another called the Hoona. The fiord is about five
miles long, and two miles wide at the mouth. Here our Hoona guide had a
store of dry wood, which we took aboard. Then, setting sail, we were driven
wildly up the fiord, as if the storm-wind were saying, "Go, then, if you
will, into my icy chamber; but you shall stay in until I am ready to let you
out." All this time sleety rain was falling on the bay, and snow on the
mountains; but soon after we landed the sky began to open. The camp was made
on a rocky bench near the front of the Pacific Glacier, and the canoe was
carried beyond the reach of the bergs and berg-waves. The bergs were now
crowded in a dense pack against the discharging front, as if the storm-wind
had determined to make the glacier take back her crystal offspring and keep
them at home.
While camp affairs were being
attended to, I set out to climb a mountain for comprehensive views; and
before I had reached a height of a thousand feet the rain ceased, and the
clouds began to rise from the lower altitudes, slowly lifting their white
skirts, and lingering in majestic, wing-shaped masses about the mountains
that rise out of the broad, icy sea, the highest of all the white mountains,
and the greatest of all the glaciers I had yet seen. Climbing higher for a
still broader outlook, I made notes and sketched, improving the precious
time while sunshine streamed through the luminous fringes of the clouds and
fell on the green waters of the fiord, the glittering bergs, the crystal
bluffs of the vast glacier, the intensely white, far-spreading fields of
ice, and the ineffably chaste and spiritual heights of the Fairweather
Range, which were now hidden, now partly revealed, the whole making a
picture of icy wildness unspeakably pure and sublime.
Looking southward, a broad
ice-sheet was seen extending in a gently undulating plain from the Pacific
Fiord in the foreground to the horizon, dotted and ridged here and there
with mountains which were as white as the snow-covered ice in which they
were half, or more than half, submerged. Several of the great glaciers of
the bay flow from this one grand fountain. It is an instructive example of a
general glacier covering the hills and dales of a country that is not yet
ready to be brought to the light of day — not only covering but creating a
landscape with the features it is destined to have when, in the fullness of
time, the fashioning ice-sheet shall be lifted by the sun, and the land
become warm and fruitful. The view to the westward is bounded and almost
filled by the glorious Fairweather Mountains, the highest among them
springing aloft in sublime beauty to a height of nearly sixteen thousand
feet, while from base to summit every peak and spire and dividing ridge of
all the mighty host was spotless white, as if painted. It would seem that
snow could never be made to lie on the steepest slopes and precipices unless
plastered on when wet, and then frozen. But this snow could not have been
wet. It must have been fixed by being driven and set in small particles like
the storm-dust of drifts, which, when in this condition, is fixed not only
on sheer cliffs, but in massive, over curling cornices. Along the base of
this majestic range sweeps the Pacific Glacier, fed by innumerable cascading
tributaries, and discharging into the head of its fiord by two mouths only
partly separated by the brow of an island rock about one thousand feet high,
each nearly a mile wide.
Dancing down the mountain to
camp, my mind glowing like the sunbeaten glaciers, I found the Indians
seated around a good fire, entirely happy now that the farthest point of the
journey was safely reached and the long, dark storm was cleared away. How
hopefully, peacefully bright that night were the stars in the frosty sky,
and how impressive was the thunder of the icebergs, rolling, swelling,
reverberating through the solemn stillness! I was too happy to sleep.
About daylight next morning
we crossed the fiord and landed on the south side of the rock that divides
the wall of the great glacier. The whiskered faces of seals dotted the open
spaces between the bergs, and I could not prevent John and Charley and
Kadachan from shooting at them. Fortunately, few, if any, were hurt. Leaving
the Indians in charge of the canoe, I managed to climb to the top of the
wall by a good deal of step-cutting between the ice and dividing rock, and
gained a good general view of the glacier. At one favorable place I
descended about fifty feet below the side of the glacier, where its
denuding, fashioning action was clearly shown. Pushing back from here, I
found the surface crevassed and sunken in steps, like the Hugh Miller
Glacier, as if it were being undermined by the action of tide-waters. For a
distance of fifteen or twenty miles the river-like ice-flood is nearly
level, and when it recedes, the ocean water will follow it, and thus form a
long extension of the fiord, with features essentially the same as those now
extending into the continent farther south, where many great glaciers once
poured into the sea, though scarce a vestige of them now exists. Thus the
domain of the sea has been, and is being, extended in these ice-sculptured
lands, and the scenery of their shores enriched. The brow of the dividing
rock is about a thousand feet high, and is hard beset by the glacier. A
short time ago it was at least two thousand feet below the surface of the
over-sweeping ice; and under present climatic conditions it will soon take
its place as a glacier-polished island in the middle of the fiord, like a
thousand others in the magnificent archipelago. Emerging from its icy
sepulchre, it gives a most telling illustration of the birth of a marked
feature of a landscape. In this instance it is not the mountain, but the
glacier, that is in labor, and the mountain itself is being brought forth.
The Hoona Glacier enters the
fiord on the south side, a short distance below the Pacific, displaying a
broad and far-reaching expanse, over which many lofty peaks are seen; but
the front wall, thrust into the fiord, is not nearly so interesting as that
of the Pacific, and I did not observe any bergs discharged from it.
In the evening, after
witnessing the unveiling of the majestic peaks and glaciers and their
baptism in the down-pouring sunbeams, it seemed inconceivable that Nature
could have anything finer to show us. Nevertheless, compared with what was
to come the next morning, all that was as nothing. The calm dawn gave no
promise of anything uncommon. Its most impressive features were the frosty
clearness of the sky and a deep, brooding stillness made all the more
striking by the thunder of the newborn bergs. The sunrise we did not see at
all, for we were beneath the shadows of the fiord cliffs; but in the midst
of our studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were
startled by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a strange,
unearthly splendor on the topmost peak of the Fairweather Mountains. Instead
of vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, it spread and spread until the
whole range down to the level of the glaciers was filled with the celestial
fire. In color it was at first vivid crimson, with a thick, furred
appearance, as fine as the alpenglow, yet indescribably rich and deep — not
in the least like a garment or mere external flush or bloom through which
one might expect to see the rocks or snow, but every mountain apparently was
glowing from the heart like molten metal fresh from a furnace. Beneath the
frosty shadows of the fiord we stood hushed and awestricken, gazing at the
holy vision; and had we seen the heavens opened and God made manifest, our
attention could not have been more tremendously strained. When the highest
peak began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however
glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into the body of the sun
itself. Then the supernal fire slowly descended, with a sharp line of
demarcation separating it from the cold, shaded region beneath; peak after
peak, with their spires and ridges and cascading glaciers, caught the
heavenly glow, until all the mighty host stood transfigured, hushed, and
thoughtful, as if awaiting the coming of the Lord. The white, rayless light
of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra,
had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial
manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine,
and declared His glory in terms still more impressive. ' How long we gazed I
never knew. The glorious vision passed away in a gradual, fading change
through a thousand tones of color to pale yellow and white, and then the
work of the ice-world went on again in everyday beauty. The green waters of
the fiord were filled with sun-spangles; the fleet of icebergs set forth on
their voyages with the upspringing breeze; and on the innumerable mirrors
and prisms of these bergs, and on those of the shattered crystal walls of
the glaciers, common white light and rainbow light began to burn, while the
mountains shone in their frosty jewelry, and loomed again in the thin azure
in serene, terrestrial majesty. We turned and sailed away, joining the
outgoing bergs, while "Gloria in excelsis" still seemed to be sounding over
all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate,
feeling that, whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had
gained this glorious morning would enrich our lives forever.
When we arrived at the mouth
of the fiord, and rounded the massive granite headland that stands guard at
the entrance on the north side, another large glacier, now named the Reid,
was discovered at the head of one of the northern branches of the bay.
Pushing ahead into this new fiord, we found that it was not only packed with
bergs, but that the spaces between the bergs were crusted with new ice,
compelling us to turn back while we were yet several miles from the
discharging frontal wall. But though we were not then allowed to set foot on
this magnificent glacier, we obtained a fine view of it, and I made the
Indians cease rowing while I sketched its principal features. Thence, after
steering northeastward a few miles, we discovered still another large
glacier, now named the Carroll. But the fiord into which this glacier flows
was, like the last, utterly inaccessible on account of ice, and we had to be
content with a general view and sketch of it, gained as we rowed slowly past
at a distance of three or four miles. The mountains back of it and on each
side of its inlet are sculptured in a singularly rich and striking style of
architecture, in which subordinate peaks and gables appear in wonderful
profusion, and an imposing conical mountain with a wide, smooth base stands
out in the main current of the glacier, a mile or two back from the
discharging ice-wall.
We now turned southward down
the eastern shore of the bay, and in an hour or two discovered a glacier of
the second class, at the head of a comparatively short fiord that winter had
not yet closed. Here we landed, and climbed across a mile or so of rough
boulder-beds, and back upon the wildly broken, receding front of the
glacier, which, though it descends to the level of the sea, no longer sends
off bergs. Many large masses, detached from the wasting front by irregular
melting, were partly buried beneath mud, sand, gravel, and boulders of the
terminal moraine. Thus protected, these fossil icebergs remain unmelted for
many years, some of them for a century or more, as shown by the age of trees
growing above them, though there are no trees here as yet. At length
melting, a pit with sloping sides is formed by the falling in of the
overlying moraine material into the space at first occupied by the buried
ice. In this way are formed the curious depressions in drift-covered regions
called kettles or sinks. On these decaying glaciers we may also find many
interesting lessons on the formation of boulders and boulder-beds, which in
all glaciated countries exert a marked influence on scenery, health, and
fruitfulness.
Three or four miles farther
down the bay, we came to another fiord, up which we sailed in quest of more
glaciers, discovering one in each of the two branches into which the fiord
divides. Neither of these glaciers quite reaches tidewater. Notwithstanding
the apparent fruitfulness of their fountains, they are in the first stage of
decadence, the waste from melting and evaporation being greater now than the
supply of new ice from their snowy fountains. We reached the one in the
north branch, climbed over its wrinkled brow, and gained a good view of the
trunk and some of the tributaries, and also of the sublime gray cliffs of
its channel.
Then we sailed up the south
branch of the inlet, but failed to reach the glacier there, on account of a
thin sheet of new ice. With the tent-poles we broke a lane for the canoe for
a little distance; but it was slow work, and we soon saw that we could not
reach the glacier before dark. Nevertheless, we gained a fair view of it as
it came sweeping down through its gigantic gateway of massive Yosemite rocks
three or four thousand feet high. Here we lingered until sundown, gazing and
sketching;. then turned back, and encamped on a bed of cobblestones between
the forks of the fiord.
We gathered a lot of fossil
wood and after supper made a big fire, and as we sat around it the
brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the
stars; and their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as
compared with the deathlike apathy of weary town-dwellers, in whom natural
curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor shallow comfort.
After sleeping a few hours, I
stole quietly out of the camp,. and climbed the mountain that stands between
the two glaciers. The ground was frozen, making the climbing difficult in
the steepest places; but the views over the icy bay, sparkling beneath the
stars, were enchanting. It seemed then a sad thing that any part of so
precious a night had been lost in sleep. The starlight was so full that I
distinctly saw not only the berg-filled bay, but most of the lower portions
of the glaciers, lying pale and spirit-like amid the mountains. The nearest
glacier in particular was so distinct that it seemed to be glowing with
light that came from within itself. Not even in dark nights have I ever
found any difficulty in seeing large glaciers; but on this mountain-top,
amid so much ice, in the heart of so clear and frosty a night, everything
was more or less luminous, and I seemed to be poised in a vast hollow
between two skies of almost equal brightness. This exhilarating scramble
made me glad and strong and I rejoiced that my studies called me before the
glorious night succeeding so glorious a morning had been spent!
I got back to camp in time
for an early breakfast, and by daylight we had everything packed and were
again under way. The fiord was frozen nearly to its mouth, and though the
ice was so thin it gave us but little trouble in breaking a way for the
canoe, yet it showed us that the season for exploration in these waters was
well-nigh over. We were in danger of being imprisoned in a jam of icebergs,
for the water-spaces between them freeze rapidly, binding the floes into one
mass. Across such floes it would be almost impossible to drag a canoe,
however industriously we might ply the axe, as our Hoona guide took great
pains to warn us. I would have kept straight down the bay from here, but the
guide had to be taken home, and the provisions we left at the bark hut had
to be got on board. We therefore crossed over to our Sunday storm-camp,
cautiously boring a way through the bergs. We found the shore lavishly
adorned with a fresh arrival of assorted bergs that had been left stranded
at high tide. They stood in a curving row, looking intensely clear and pure
on the gray sand, and, with the sunbeams pouring through them, suggested the
jewel-paved streets of the New Jerusalem.
On our way down the coast,
after examining the front of the beautiful Geikie Glacier, we obtained our
first broad view of the great glacier afterwards named the Muir, the last of
all the grand company to be seen, the stormy weather having hidden it when
we first entered the bay. It was now perfectly clear, and the spacious,
prairie-like glacier, with its many tributaries extending far back into the
snowy recesses of its fountains, made a magnificent display of its wealth,
and I was strongly tempted to go and explore it at all hazards. But winter
had come, and the freezing of its fiords was an insurmountable obstacle. I
had, therefore, to be content for the present with sketching and studying
its main features at a distance.
When we arrived at the Hoona
hunting-camp, men, women, and children came swarming out to welcome us. In
the neighborhood of this camp I carefully noted the lines of demarcation
between the forested and deforested regions. Several mountains here are only
in part deforested, and the lines separating the bare and the forested
portions are well defined. The soil, as well as the trees, had slid off the
steep slopes, leaving the edge of the woods raw-looking and rugged.
At the mouth of the bay a
series of moraine islands show that the trunk glacier that occupied the bay
halted here for some time and deposited this island material as a terminal
moraine; that more of the bay was not filled in shows that, after lingering
here, it receded comparatively fast. All the level portions of trunks of
glaciers occupying ocean fiords, instead of melting back gradually in times
of general shrinking and recession, as inland glaciers with sloping channels
do, melt almost uniformly over all the surface until they become thin enough
to float. Then, of course, with each rise and fall of the tide, the sea
water, with a temperature usually considerably above the freezing-point,
rushes in and out beneath them, causing rapid waste of the nether surface,
while the upper is being wasted by the weather, until at length the fiord
portions of these great glaciers become comparatively thin and weak and are
broken up and vanish almost simultaneously.
Glacier Bay is undoubtedly
young as yet. Vancouver's chart, made only a century ago, shows no trace of
it, though found admirably faithful in general. It seems probable,
therefore, that even then the entire bay was occupied by a glacier of which
all those described above, great though they are, were only tributaries.
Nearly as great a change has taken place in Sum Dum Bay since Vancouver's
visit, the main trunk glacier there having receded from eighteen to
twenty-five miles from the line marked on his chart. Charley, who was here
when a boy, said that the place had so changed that he hardly recognized it,
so many new islands had been born in the meantime and so much ice had
vanished. As we have seen, this Icy Bay is being still farther extended by
the recession of the glaciers. That this whole system of fiords and channels
was added to the domain of the sea by glacial action is to my mind certain.
We reached the island from
which we had obtained our store of fuel about half-past six and camped here
for the night, having spent only five days in Sitadaka, sailing round it,
visiting and sketching all the six glaciers excepting the largest, though I
landed only on three of them, — the Geikie, Hugh Miller, and Grand Pacific,
— the freezing of the fiords in front of the others rendering them
inaccessible at this late season. |
