There Were "Big Rocks, Gulches, And Sceneries" Of A Far Better
Quality Down The Coast On The Way To Wrangell.
He and his party were
prospecting, he said, but thus far they had found only a few colors
and they proposed going over to Admiralty Island in the morning to
try their luck.
In the morning, however, when the prospectors were to have gone over
to the island, we noticed a smoke half a mile back on a large stream,
the outlet of the glacier we had seen the night before, and an Indian
told us that the white men were building a big log house up there. It
appeared that they had found a promising placer mine in the moraine
and feared we might find it and spread the news. Daylight revealed a
magnificent fiord that brought Glacier Bay to mind. Miles of bergs
lay stranded on the shores, and the waters of the branch fiords, not
on Vancouver's chart, were crowded with them as far as the eye could
reach. After breakfast we set out to explore an arm of the bay that
trends southeastward, and managed to force a way through the bergs
about ten miles. Farther we could not go. The pack was so close no
open water was in sight, and, convinced at last that this part of my
work would have to be left for another year, we struggled across to
the west side of the fiord and camped.
I climbed a mountain next morning, hoping to gain a view of the great
fruitful glaciers at the head of the fiord or, at least, of their
snowy fountains.
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