I Answered As Best I Could, Keeping Up A
Running Commentary On The Subject In General, While Busily Engaged In
Sketching and noting my own observations, preaching glacial gospel in
a rambling way, while the Cassiar, slowly wheezing and creeping
Along
the shore, shifted our position so that the icy canyons were opened to
view and closed again in regular succession, like the leaves of a
book.
About the middle of the afternoon we were directly opposite a noble
group of glaciers some ten in number, flowing from a chain of
crater-like snow fountains, guarded around their summits and well
down their sides by jagged peaks and cols and curving mural ridges.
From each of the larger clusters of fountains, a wide, sheer-walled
canyon opens down to the sea. Three of the trunk glaciers descend to
within a few feet of the sea-level. The largest of the three,
probably about fifteen miles long, terminates in a magnificent valley
like Yosemite, in an imposing wall of ice about two miles long, and
from three to five hundred feet high, forming a barrier across the
valley from wall to wall. It was to this glacier that the ships of
the Alaska Ice Company resorted for the ice they carried to San
Francisco and the Sandwich Islands, and, I believe, also to China and
Japan. To load, they had only to sail up the fiord within a short
distance of the front and drop anchor in the terminal moraine.
Another glacier, a few miles to the south of this one, receives two
large tributaries about equal in size, and then flows down a forested
valley to within a hundred feet or so of sea-level. The third of this
low-descending group is four or five miles farther south, and, though
less imposing than either of the two sketched above, is still a truly
noble object, even as imperfectly seen from the channel, and would of
itself be well worth a visit to Alaska to any lowlander so
unfortunate as never to have seen a glacier.
The boilers of our little steamer were not made for sea water, but it
was hoped that fresh water would be found at available points along
our course where streams leap down the cliffs. In this particular we
failed, however, and were compelled to use salt water an hour or two
before reaching Cape Fanshawe, the supply of fifty tons of fresh
water brought from Wrangell having then given out. To make matters
worse, the captain and engineer were not in accord concerning the
working of the engines. The captain repeatedly called for more steam,
which the engineer refused to furnish, cautiously keeping the
pressure low because the salt water foamed in the boilers and some of
it passed over into the cylinders, causing heavy thumping at the end
of each piston stroke, and threatening to knock out the
cylinder-heads. At seven o'clock in the evening we had made only
about seventy miles, which caused dissatisfaction, especially among
the divines, who thereupon called a meeting in the cabin to consider
what had better be done. In the discussions that followed much
indignation and economy were brought to light. We had chartered the
boat for sixty dollars per day, and the round trip was to have been
made in four or five days. But at the present rate of speed it was
found that the cost of the trip for each passenger would be five or
ten dollars above the first estimate. Therefore, the majority ruled
that we must return next day to Wrangell, the extra dollars
outweighing the mountains and missions as if they had suddenly become
dust in the balance.
Soon after the close of this economical meeting, we came to anchor in
a beautiful bay, and as the long northern day had still hours of good
light to offer, I gladly embraced the opportunity to go ashore to see
the rocks and plants. One of the Indians, employed as a deck hand on
the steamer, landed me at the mouth of a stream. The tide was low,
exposing a luxuriant growth of algae, which sent up a fine, fresh sea
smell. The shingle was composed of slate, quartz, and granite, named
in the order of abundance. The first land plant met was a tall grass,
nine feet high, forming a meadow-like margin in front of the forest.
Pushing my way well back into the forest, I found it composed almost
entirely of spruce and two hemlocks (Picea sitchensis, Tsuga
heterophylla and T. mertensiana) with a few specimens of yellow
cypress. The ferns were developed in remarkable beauty and
size - aspidiums, one of which is about six feet high, a woodsia,
lomaria, and several species of polypodium. The underbrush is chiefly
alder, rubus, ledum, three species of vaccinium, and Echinopanax
horrida, the whole about from six to eight feet high, and in some
places closely intertangled and hard to penetrate. On the opener
spots beneath the trees the ground is covered to a depth of two or
three feet with mosses of indescribable freshness and beauty, a few
dwarf corners often planted on their rich furred bosses, together
with pyrola, coptis, and Solomon's-seal. The tallest of the trees are
about a hundred and fifty feet high, with a diameter of about four
or five feet, their branches mingling together and making a perfect
shade. As the twilight began to fall, I sat down on the mossy instep
of a spruce. Not a bush or tree was moving; every leaf seemed hushed
in brooding repose. One bird, a thrush, embroidered the silence with
cheery notes, making the solitude familiar and sweet, while the
solemn monotone of the stream sifting through the woods seemed like
the very voice of God, humanized, terrestrialized, and entering one's
heart as to a home prepared for it. Go where we will, all the world
over, we seem to have been there before.
The stream was bridged at short intervals with picturesque,
moss-embossed logs, and the trees on its banks, leaning over from
side to side, made high embowering arches.
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