Salmon is the staple article of food, and hangs drying by the scores and hundreds on racks in front of each shack or house and upon the walls within. The fish on the racks seemed small, possibly such are reserved for home consumption, while the larger ones had been sold to the canneries. The Alaskan salmon, however, is not a large one. It must be fattening food, for men and women are generally plump and the children as rounded as well-fed pigs. The little ones are as frisky and happy as in j.a.pan, which I thought the paradise of babies. I was struck by the full rounded paunches of the little ones. This, too, is remarkable among their little cousins in the land of the rising sun; possibly a result of fish diet. During the summer season the Indians consume large quant.i.ties of berries--blue or huckleberries and salmon berries. The English call the latter, cloud berry in Norway. I saw a basket full of a white cl.u.s.tered root in front of a shack; a sort of bunch of small seed like bulbs compacted into a single bulb, very white, not unlike a ma.s.s of snow-drops glued together into a ball walnut-sized. I asked a woman who was washing them if they were good.
She grinned and put a handful into her mouth as answer, at the same time handing me some. They tasted like a starchy paste made from impalpable flour. I asked the name. She replied "Chinook (Indian) lice." They cannot p.r.o.nounce the "r," but Chinese-like subst.i.tute "l"
for it.
Another delicacy is a kind of very small fish egg, deposited by a sort of herring on fine twigs of hemlock placed by the natives in certain places in the sea for the purpose. The eggs are cl.u.s.tered on the twigs until they are as big as one"s thumb, thousands upon thousands, upon a small branched limb. The branches are hung up to dry. When used they are soaked in fresh water and the eggs stripped off by the hand. The eggs when soaked swell till they seem perfectly fresh. I asked the woman I saw soaking them if they were good. A smile from ear to ear illumined her face; she offered me some and then opened her capacious mouth into which she threw a handful which she crushed with evident delight. Though of an enquiring mind, I abstained heroically from accepting the proffered hospitality. Had the eggs been fried I doubt not they would have made a good dish. The dry ones were shriveled and as dead looking as the roe in a smoked herring, yet when soaked they seemed as plump and fresh as if just taken from the mother fish.
GUM-CHEWING AMONG THE NATIVES.
When selling berries to the ship pa.s.sengers the women are either all the while eating of their goods or are chewing some kind of gum, generally the latter. Why should not Alaska"s 400 chew gum as well as our own. One of their fashions is very grotesque. We saw several women with their faces, necks, arms and hands stained almost black. Whether this was done for ornamentation, or as a sort of mourning badge, I could not definitely learn. Both solutions were given us by people residing among them. If the latter, it furnished another evidence of j.a.panese origin. A j.a.panese married woman blackens her teeth, and plucks her eye brows and lashes to make herself unattractive, as a proof of her love for her lord. These women carry out the same idea when in sorrow. Their grief is certainly much more economical than in politer lands where, robes de deul are both n.o.bby and costly.
At each town visited by us lines of women with some men were crouched down on their haunches, with their wares for sale; dressed skins, carved wood, spoons, totems, and uncouth images of animals; baskets beautifully woven of a kind of gra.s.s, very close, very strong, and decorated in bold, natural colors. They have what so many untutored but somewhat self-cultured half savage people have, a thorough conception of harmony of color. At first, to our cultivated estheticism, the coloring used by them is too glaring, but when toned down by time, or when seen at a little distance, no civilized people can surpa.s.s them.
The baskets made by the people of a sort of strong gra.s.s probably mixed with some kind of bark, are very strong and so closely woven, that they will hold water. They can be folded tightly without breaking the fiber. I had considerable difficulty in getting a native to part with an old one. It would seem they recognize the softness lent by age. I offered several women two or three times as much for old ones, which they had in use, as they asked for new ones. The one I succeeded in getting was from a woman who had no new ones for sale. It probably had held rather unsavory messes, but its coloring is exquisitely soft and mellow. A pa.s.senger asked what I wanted with the dirty thing. Its soft tone being pointed out, she spent over an hour going from shack to shack fruitlessly endeavoring to obtain one.
The same difference is observable between old and new Turkish rugs.
Their beauty is not in the texture or weight but in the harmony of color, which no European has yet been able to surpa.s.s, if equal. The high art of France has not yet learned to create in large ungraceful figures the result found in rugs laboriously made by the half civilized people of Eastern Turkey and of the Caucasus. The French attain it only by grouping small figures of graceful design. The Thlinkets are the most numerous of the native tribes, and are the ones which so resemble the j.a.panese. A Thlinket when playing merchant to the tourist visitors offers his wares with an utter indifference and apparently never drops a t.i.ttle from his first price. If you purchase he or she seems pleased; if you decline his air is of one utterly indifferent. We saw a large number at work about the Treadwell mines in different capacities, and in drilling and quarrying the quartz.
They seem to work as well as the average white man.
By the way, the Treadwell mine is an extraordinary thing. Gold-bearing quartz is quarried like common stone. The vein, if it can be so termed, is 500 feet wide, open upon the surface and extending to an unknown depth. It is of low grade ore, yielding only from four to eight dollars per ton, but is so easily reached and worked with such cheapness that many think it the most valuable mine in the world. The mine runs 240 stamps, being the largest number in existence under one roof. It is controlled by so close a corporation that the yield is never divulged and its value is a secret. It is said, however, that an offer of $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 has been refused. Its machinery is almost if not entirely run by water power furnished by a mountain stream tumbling from a lofty height immediately behind and over the mine. It is on Douglas Island, which is separated from the main land at Juneau by a channel about a mile in width.
Other paying mines are being worked about Juneau, and promising claims have been located in many parts of the Territory. The seal produce of the land is too well known to need any comment, but it will probably surprise the majority of our people when they learn that the salmon crop of last year was of about 750,000 cases. Each case I believe, holds two dozen cans. When one considers the fact that the waste of fish at the great packing canneries is enormous, not more than half of an eight pound sock-eye salmon--the best of all--being used, and then considers the number caught by the natives for themselves and for their dogs, we can easily marvel at the vast schools which frequent these Northern waters. The waste spoken of is not because more cannot be saved, but because the middle part of the fish cans best and is saved with a minimum of labor. The back with its fin is removed by one stroke of the knife, then the same is done with the belly. The head and tail is then cut so deep into the body that only four pounds of an eight-pounder is left. This is divided into four equal parts. One part is then rolled and pressed by the hand into a can. The cans are closed and placed in great vats, where they are boiled. When about done they are taken out and p.r.i.c.ked to let the air out, and again soldered. They go again into vats to be boiled an hour and a half. This long cooking in air-tight cans causes the bones to be absorbed without wasting the juices and flavor of the fish. When this is done, each can is again examined and any one at all puffed up is again p.r.i.c.ked to let all air escape and is again boiled. They are then cooled for boxing. Some canneries on the Pacific pack from forty all the way up to a hundred thousand fish a day.
I spoke of dogs. There are a great many in the Indian villages. They are all more or less mixed of Esquimaux breed. They exceed the number of children, are all wolf-like, and are on the best of terms with the people. It is amusing to set one of them to barking, especially if the bark be of the howl kind, for immediately it is caught up by his nearest neighbor and carried on until every dog in the camp is squatting on his haunches and lifting his voice to its highest pitch.
The medley of sounds, from the pup"s quaver through the whole gamut of different ages to the sober howls of the grandfather, is very droll, especially when the hearer sees the performers in their dead earnestness. They lift their heads and look so solemn, and howl in so lugubrious a key, that one feels that in this dogish art at least they are unequaled by the canines of any other part of the world.
LETTER VII.
STEAMING UP THE ICE-PACKED FIORDS AND CHANNELS OF THE ARCTIC COUNTRY OWNED BY UNCLE SAM. SALMON CANNERIES. CANOE BUILDING BY NATIVES.
ASCENT OF THE "MUIR" GLACIER, 300 FEET ABOVE WATER. FANTASTIC ICE FORMATIONS AT TAKOU. SUMMER AND WINTER CLIMATES. IMPUDENT CROWS AND ORATORICAL RAVENS.
STEAMER QUEEN, GULF OF GEORGIA, Aug. 10.
The salmon canneries of Alaska are not all in the neighborhood of the towns at which the excursion steamer calls, but are at or near every considerable stream which flows into the straits, channels and inlets.
The instinct of the fish send them at regular seasons into fresh water, where and near which, they are caught in vast numbers. Other steamers, some of them carrying pa.s.sengers and requiring a week longer to make the trip, call at stated times at several places, to which the Queen does not go, to take on and unload freight. The natives are the princ.i.p.al fishermen using, both nets and hooks from their trim canoes.
These are dug out from a single log, some barely holding a man, others carrying with safety fifty or more. A log of two feet diameter will make a canoe nearly twice as large at its waist. When dug out to a thin sh.e.l.l almost as light as birch bark, the frame is filled with water, into which hot stones are thrown until the wooden walls are thoroughly steamed, hot and pliable. Sticks of different lengths, the longest at the canoe waist, are then set into the frame, which is spread out into a fine, cutter-shaped keel. A high prow and somewhat raised stern are cut out of the log or set into it. Some of the crafts present finely modeled keels. The sh.e.l.l of a canoe holding over sixty people, is often less than a half inch thick, and so light that two people can easily pull it high on dry land. The native squats in the bottom of his canoe and paddles it with great speed.
We saw a boat not twenty feet long, the whole filled to the top with light firewood. On this were perched two men, three women, a dog, a small tent, and the cooking utensils of the family. They were sailing from Juneau to another village several miles away. A native gets into his canoe as lightly and carefully as if he were treading on eggs. In this instance, the boat sank until its upper line was not four inches out of water. We expected to see it swamped, for there was a light wind and a few white caps. We watched it with our gla.s.ses until safely landed at a village several miles away. The natives, of villages quite distant from the towns at which the steamers call, bring their wives, dogs, and household utensils, together with what they may have to sell in the curio line to these places on the day the steamers are due.
They pitch their tents on the sh.o.r.e not far from the steamboat pier, draw their canoes upon the strand above high water mark, and seem as much at home as if regularly domiciled. They remain as long as they see a chance for trade and then fold their tents and silently steal away. They require only a few minutes to get themselves and their worldly possessions aboard their little dugouts. At Juneau there were several of these temporary inhabitants. They all embarked after sundown, and with the long twilight were able to reach their permanent abodes before well-set dark.
The people catch fish at or near their respective villages. The canneries each have a small steambarge, which is sent to several villages daily to pick up the catch. In this way the salmon are landed at the packing-places when perfectly fresh. The Alaskan salmon is as a rule small, averaging only about six pounds, while "sock eye" of the Frazer River run evenly at eight pounds, and the Columbia River furnishes an average of nearly twenty pounds. Large fish, however, were brought to our steward, also magnificent halibut, which the pa.s.sengers enjoyed greatly. One soon becomes satiated with salmon on the Pacific Coast. It is as thoroughly an every day food, as is the hog and hominy on a southern plantation. Except to the Indian, it does not seem to be as good for a steady diet as the southerner"s homely fare. Several other varieties of salt water fish furnish a less surfeiting every day food than this famous beauty. We hailed with pleasure, the change to halibut given us by our steward when we reached Alaska. No where is this solid denizen of the sea, found in better kelter than up here.
A PICTURE OF SITKA.
Our ship on the excursion stops at Seattle and Port-Townsend, in Washington; Victoria and Nanaimo, on Vancouver"s Island; and at Fort Wrangle, Juneau, and Sitka, in Alaska; at each long enough to afford pa.s.sengers full time to satisfy themselves. Juneau is the largest place owing to the rich mines in the vicinity. All have large canneries near by, which employ natives, many of whom have acquired considerable property. A native woman, widow to a white trader, and her daughter were pa.s.sengers from Juneau to Chilkat. She is a sort of Merchant, continuing the business of her defunct husband. She bore herself most decorously in her half mourning, and seemed quite able to steer her own bark through the remaining voyage of life. She is reputed to be worth several thousand dollars, and manages her affairs shrewdly. Her eligibility was suggested to the late friend of Persia"s shah. His eyes rested more fondly upon her plump daughter, who displayed much agility and a trim ankle when she descended the gangway in a high sea out side of Chilkat.
Sitka has one of the prettiest sites and harbors in the world, and its climate just now is simply delicious. It is built on slightly rising ground on a bay running some miles from the sea, with beautiful little islands, cl.u.s.tered in large number in front of the town. These lift with rounded rocky foundations naked and water-washed at low tide, but are clothed in rich green shrubbery above high water mark. They would make an exquisite water park for a large city. Over one edge of this park lifts a few miles away, Mount Edgec.u.mbe, a perfect volcanic cone about 3,000 feet high. Its lower two thirds are clothed in green. Its upper third, beneath its broad extinct crater, is of rich red rock.
Long points of the red run down into the green, while points of the green run up into the red. It reminds one much of famous Fuji-yama in j.a.pan. The G.o.d-mountain of j.a.pan is over four times as high, but Edgec.u.mbe is seen so close that the contrast does not entirely belittle it.
Around and behind Sitka are lofty foot hills clothed in forests, making a perfect amphitheater, while behind them rear pointed, rocky mountains more or less snow flecked. The town is on the great island of Baranoff, which is a ma.s.s of pinnacled mountains, the northern slopes of which are always white with sheets of snow. When we sailed, a few days before, northward through Prince Frederick Sound, these mountains formed a wonderfully beautiful background. Prince Frederick Sound is about twenty by thirty odd miles. All around it lie grand mountains of exceeding ruggedness on their highest peaks, but green below, with stripes, bands and patches of white. Through a break to the south the sound stretches some miles further, backed by the Baranoff range, rising in innumerable sharply pointed pinnacles, and about their shoulders as purely white as loftiest Alpine heights. All the mountains are comparatively uncovered when seen on their southern, western, and eastern exposures, while those seen from the north although not more lofty, are clothed in blankets of white, as if to protect them from the northern blasts.
The entire Alaskan trip presents a constant succession of gorgeous scenery, and if the weather be fine, it is worth the time taken and the cost in money to one who loves the picturesque and enjoys the rugged grandeur of nature, even if they were no grand glaciers. The time is not far distant, when commodious hotels will be maintained in these northern possessions as summer resorts. Many people will then spend weeks in them, and with the aid of small excursion barges will find health and delights.
An intelligent man who has resided for several years in Sitka, a.s.sured me he much preferred its winter climate to that of southern Ohio, where he had grown up to mature manhood. The average winter climate is rather milder than that of Washington, but with no extreme of cold.
The frequent rainy days during the summer are a great draw back to the pleasure of excursion tourists. The chances are decidedly that he will find everything wet when he arrives. Our party was one of the lucky ones. The air was clear and balmy. The sun made a parasol agreeable to the ladies. I lolled for an hour on the stoop of a deserted house, with my head in shade, but my body and lower limbs warmed by a delicious sun bath, while my eyes feasted upon the glorious picture spread before me of mountain peak and green slopes, and gently rippling water as the tide slowly crept up the soft beach of the little bay behind the town.
Except when sailing across four entrances or broad straits running out to the open sea, the entire voyage to and from Alaska, usually is and always may be through straits, ca.n.a.ls, and fiords so thoroughly protected from the ocean"s angry waters that the smallest steamer can hardly feel a toss. On this excursion of ours, the briny depths below us were often as smooth as gla.s.s, reflecting the mountains, as from a mirror. As the swell from our steamer would roll off in smooth, rounded and diverging lines, they would weave fantastic forms, upon their mirror like surface, of green forest, rugged rocks, or snow caps. Towards the land beyond the effect of the swell, the mountains would often be so perfectly delineated upon the mirror, that a photograph of them would show them as distinctly below as above. The picture could be turned upside down with but little detriment to the view. Near the steamer the rounded crest of the swell would reflect long weird lines of forest, which would spread out behind us as the swell sank to a lower level.
At night millions of small fish, probably herrings, would be disturbed in their schools, and fluttering and hurrying from the ship"s prow would make the water blaze in brilliant phosph.o.r.escence. Now and then a large fish would dart through these schools, leaving behind him a bright wake of flame. As he dashed through them, the herrings would scatter their flame work into myriads of sparkling diamonds. When our ship would push into the school, the alarm seemed to be given to quite a distance in the ma.s.s. The dense pack of little fellows forward the ship"s bow, would break the sea into chaotic burning ma.s.s, as they sped in haste before the great monster chasing them. The line to the right and left then bent aft, weaving the sea into a waving network of fire. Farther off the brightness was toned down to a glistening shimmer, and then was lost in the distance. The schools we saw were moving in great lines in the direction we were sailing. They were composed of millions of little finny flutterers.
PANORAMA ON LAND AND WATER.
Frequently as we sailed over the placid sea, little diving ducks would flap the waters in a race from the ship"s hull, and when a hundred feet off would dive for a score or more feet, perfectly satisfied that by their dive they had hidden their tracks from the mighty monster.
Droves of porpoise rolled about us, and now and then one would race with us for a mile or so and seem really to understand and enjoy the contest. Asiatic crows cawed around us when we were ash.o.r.e most familiarly, and with the cute impudence, so characteristic of his brethren in Eastern Asia. When we landed at Muir Glacier, a young school marm and I wandered along the sh.o.r.e then bare from the receding tide, up to the icy precipice. A couple of crows espied us and flew about us cawing, and finally perched on a rock close by. I told the fair one that these birds instinctively saw that we were to be caught by the incoming tide or under an ice fall, and were awaiting a feast.
Their cawing was so constant, that she become superst.i.tious, and declared she could not stand it. I had to shy a pebble at them to allay her timidity. The crow is a familiar bird up here, but the raven is an Alaskan inst.i.tution. If I be not mistaken he is held by the natives in a sort of veneration. He is twice or more as large as our crow; has a huge roman nosed beak, which occasionally snaps with a report nearly as loud as the snaps of a pelican"s bill. His coat is of shiny, burnished bottle green black, and his eye has an expression queerly mixed of vacuous imbecility, and cunning impudent rascality.
He is a genuine stump speaker, and as fond of his own orations as a famous eastern after dinner talker is of his pretty speeches.
When we strolled in the deep shade of the dense forest behind Sitka, some of these impudent fellows settled in adjoining trees and held dialogues and debates, possibly upon our human characteristics. They would harange and then seem to crack coa.r.s.e jokes, when one of them would almost laugh in low gutturals, not unlike the gurgling of water running from a two gallon jug. A wag among us declared they were making ward stump-speeches, and was willing to wager that if ravens language could be understood, we should find that some of the jokes were utterly unfit for polite ears. Those we saw were rather jolly good fellows, and were not of the family of which one appeared to Edgar Poe in his hashish dreams.
I said that the simple, beautiful scenery presented by the Alaskan excursion, well repays the loss of time and money expended upon it.
Many of the mountain-flanked channels are wonderfully beautiful. The Linn or Chilkat Ca.n.a.l is surpa.s.sed by nothing of the sort we have ever seen. It is about four miles wide and probably 30 long. On either side tower mountains, say 3,000 feet high, rising from the water like great receding b.u.t.tresses, clothed thickly in forest below, with scattered copses toward the upper slopes, and flecked with openings of low shrubbery in pale green, artistically contrasting with the dark tone of firs and spruce. All are topped by rocks, those near us gray, and the most distant ones of an undertone of purple, while in the far distance, the mountains on either sh.o.r.e become first blue-gray, and then blend off into sweet opalescent tints. Over and above all, towered at no great distance mighty snow fields and glaciered heights.
Crillon, Fairweather, and La Peronse to the west cut the clear blue sky with their points 15,000 and nearly 16,000 feet above us; mantels of clouds here and there fell about their t.i.tanic shoulders, and light veils of mist wound and unwound about them just under their snowy pinnacles. Into this glorious fiord we steamed to its head at Chilkat, and then back to enter Glacier Bay, the acme of Alaska"s wonderful exhibitions.
Fully nine Alaskan tourists out of ten go for its glaciers, which are seen in a magnitude and grandeur inducing one to pa.s.s as scarcely worthy of notice, the best of any other country which is possible of approach. They are seen in icy hardness on distant summits shortly after pa.s.sing the boundary of British Columbia. They increase in frequency as one goes further north, until on a clear and cloudless day one is scarcely ever out of sight. The first visited by us was that at the head of Takou inlet south of Juneau. It is comparatively small, less than a mile wide at its foot, but running back several miles. Its foot presents a perpendicular wall of ice 150 to 200 feet high, rising out of water several hundred feet deep. Its face is irregular; here supported by icy b.u.t.tresses, and there sinking back into icy recesses; now with irregular pilasters and projections of soft snowy appearance and then with broken columns, recesses, and caves of every tint of blue from the flitting opalescent to transparent ultra-marine and deep indigo.
FANTASTIC GRANDEUR OF THE GLACIERS.
Now is seen a ma.s.s of closely welded crystals of diamond whiteness glistening under the kiss of the sun, like monster piles of precious gems; then a huge broken and fissured wall compactly studded with turquoise and amethysts and gems so green as to be almost emeralds forming the icy cliffs. Loud reports as of rifle guns would fill the ear, coming from the cracking behind of the solid moving ma.s.s as it pushed onward in its descent. Hark! A rattle of musketry! You look and see a mere hat full of snowy ice tumbling from the upper edge. As it falls it becomes a cart full, a house full, and then with a report as loud as that of a heavy cannon, a section of the wall"s face separates from the ma.s.s behind and tumbles into the deep water with a splash which scatters spray one or two hundred feet around, and the air is filled as with the bellowing of thunder echoed from projecting ice walls and from the lofty mountains hemming in the narrow inlet. The fallen ma.s.s disappears below the surface. But look! See that monster lifting from the water a half hundred feet away from where the tumbling ice fell! It is a dome-like pinnacle of ice. Up it rises slowly, revealing the most exquisite tints as its shoulders broaden; ten feet, twenty, fifty, aye, nearly a hundred feet! For a moment it poses a solidified ma.s.s of ultramarine. Sparkling waters pour in cascades from its uplifted dome. But see! It leans a little; it leans a little more; and tumbles with a mighty noise and sends geysers up to the brink of the icy precipice and wide around for several hundred feet. As its upper member or crest topples over, a huge section many times more bulky than the part we had seen above water, lifts, and then lies stretched three or more hundred feet, and exposed above the surface nearly thirty feet. The huge ma.s.s of possibly a hundred thousand tons weight came only to a small extent from the icy wall standing before and above us; but the fissure above extended--three or more hundred feet down into the glacier below water, and rested on the ground. For one end was covered with mud and for many feet was deeply stained.
An officer of the ship declared this was the finest exhibition of the sort he had ever seen, and that the iceberg thus made and now slowly floated out by the receding tide weighed far more than a hundred thousand tons. Our ship was lying with its bow toward the glacier not a thousand feet away. The vessel rocked and reeled from stem to stern as the great waves made by the glacier avalanche rolled under her. We lay there two hours listening to constant reports and seeing a succession of ice slides. While so resting for the enjoyment of pa.s.sengers, the captain was laying in ice enough for his next round trip. Icebergs of all sizes, from those weighing only a ton up to others half as big as the steamer, were floating all about us. Some of crystal whiteness and as clear as the lens of a telescope. Others were of every tone of blue, deepening sometimes into translucent olive. The most of the bergs were of delicious purity, but a few were full of mud brought from the bed hundreds of feet under water. In some were seen good sized cobble stones; in one a boulder weighing probably a quarter of a ton. Sailors in a boat picked from these ma.s.ses chunks of perfect clearness, pa.s.sed grappling ropes under them, and then hoisted them by the steam derrick upon the main deck. Sometimes the piece seen above water was not larger than a barrel, but when lifted into full view it weighed one, two or more tons. For every foot of ice seen in an iceberg above water eight lie below. Thus when a berg floated close to us showing thirty feet above water, it had, if of even form, 240 feet below.
CLIMBING THE FAMOUS "MUIR."
Some of the pa.s.sengers felt uneasy, fearing another mighty tumble might occur immediately in front of us, and that the ma.s.s might shoot outward below water, and might come up beneath, or uncomfortably close to us. The captain, however, stood upon the bridge ready to send his ship rapidly backward should anything look untoward. The engines were kept in gentle motion holding our bow steadily toward the glacier precipice. The captain, by the way, thinks the Takou the most interesting of the approachable glaciers. The ice gathered was of great solidity. It did not break under an ice pick in straight cleavage, but irregularly, showing its peculiar characteristic of being formed, not from water simply freezing, but from snow compacted under irresistible pressure. Two chunks of perhaps each two tons weight lay between decks supplying the entire ship"s wants for four or five days. It may have been imagination, but I thought this ice more agreeable for eating than that made by ordinary process. It was more friable and broke and crumbled in the mouth in shorter pieces and not in long spiculae as ordinary ice does.
We pa.s.sed on our run close to several other huge glaciers, some of them running quite down to the water; among them the "Stephens" which though very large, reaches the sea in a slope and not with a perpendicular precipice. We, however, stopped only at the celebrated "Muir." We lay in front of it from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.--a half hour in rather dangerous proximity, and then anch.o.r.ed a mile off for pa.s.sengers to land and climb its banks. The Muir presents a precipice to the head of the inlet nearly 300 feet high and over a mile long.
Two years ago it bent outward with a very decided convex front; last year it was nearly straight. Now it is a very open horseshoe. We took soundings when the Queen lay a thousand feet from the front and found under us 720 feet. It possibly shallows considerably close to the wall, say to 400 feet. The glacier is certainly over 200 feet high; this makes, with what is under water, 600 feet. But give it the low estimate of an average across the inlet of 400 feet. It moves steadily downward forty feet a day, and gradually recedes. Thus it will be found that it tumbles into the sea a ma.s.s of ice, 40 x 5280 x 400 feet, or of at least 84,000,000 cubic feet a day.
After wandering for several hours over the surface of the glacier, along a sort of granite road way varying in depth from a few inches up to very many feet thick lying upon it; among blocks of granite weighing tons brought down upon the solid frozen river; across narrow crevices, into whose depths we could look a hundred feet down, into pure ice of all tints of blue from the pearl blue of a southern sky to ultramarine and indigo--tints so beautiful that one involuntarily groaned in pleased admiration; along chasms where our iron-pointed alpenstocks were necessary to prevent a slip, which would have sent us down into glacial graves; looking over pinnacles, domes and valleys of ice in confused profusion; over grotesque forms, over which no one person could safely go, but a dozen attached to each other by ropes, with shoes iron-nailed, might with hazard venture. Then up and before us spread the mighty glacier, 25 miles by 30, fed by many smaller ones. Morains of rock lifted above the surface in long even lines running back for miles, showing the edge of each of the frozen rivers, which have united to make the mighty single one.
The theory explaining the medial moraines of glaciers, is that two or more glaciers come down the gorges and upper valleys of the mountain.