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 Reid, 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 to-morrow but was glad to go. I had been seen also by Mr.
Case and one of his companions, who were on the western mountain-side
above the fossil forest, shooting ptarmigans. 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.
Chapter XIX
Auroras
A few days later I set out with Professor Reid'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 bergs, through which it was exceedingly difficult to
force a way. After slowly struggling a few miles up the east side, we
dragged the whale-boat and canoe over rough rocks into a fine garden
and comfortably camped for the night.
The next day was spent in cautiously picking a way 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 fiord
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 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 fiord 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 160 of 163
Words from 83523 to 84037
of 85542
