Over The Icy Levels And Over The Woods, On The
Mountains, Over The Jagged Rocks And Spires And Chasms Of The Glacier
It Boomed And Moaned And Roared, Filling The Fiord In Even, Gray,
Structureless Gloom, Inspiring And Awful.
I first struggled up in the
face of the blast to the east end of the ice-wall, where a patch of
forest had been carried away by the glacier when it was advancing.
I
noticed a few stumps well out on the moraine flat, showing that its
present bare, raw condition was not the condition of fifty or a
hundred years ago. In front of this part of the glacier there is a
small moraine lake about half a mile in length, around the margin of
which are a considerable number of trees standing knee-deep, and of
course dead. This also is a result of the recent advance of the ice.
Pushing up through the ragged edge of the woods on the left margin of
the glacier, the storm seemed to increase in violence, so that it was
difficult to draw breath in facing it; therefore I took shelter back
of a tree to enjoy it and wait, hoping that it would at last somewhat
abate. Here the glacier, descending over an abrupt rock, falls
forward in grand cascades, while a stream swollen by the rain was now
a torrent, - wind, rain, ice-torrent, and water-torrent in one grand
symphony.
At length the storm seemed to abate somewhat, and I took off my heavy
rubber boots, with which I had waded the glacial streams on the flat,
and laid them with my overcoat on a log, where I might find them on
my way back, knowing I would be drenched anyhow, and firmly tied my
mountain shoes, tightened my belt, shouldered my ice-axe, and, thus
free and ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as possible of
mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite slope, its projecting
polished bosses encumbered here and there by boulders and the ground
and bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been
uprooted by the glacier during its recent advance, I traced the side
of the glacier for two or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of
its having encroached on the woods, which here run back along its
edge for fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of this
vast ice-river I could see down beneath it to a depth of fifty feet
or so in some places, where logs and branches were being crushed to
pulp, some of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it
stringy and coarse.
After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for three or four miles,
I chopped steps and climbed to the top, and as far as the eye could
reach, the nearly level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the
gray cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now almost moderate,
though rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a tendency
to mist in the drooping draggled clouds made me hesitate about
attempting to cross to the opposite shore.
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