In These Grand
Picture Lessons The Day Was Spent, And We Spread Our Blankets Beneath
A Menzies Spruce On Moss Two Feet Deep.
Next morning we sailed around an outcurving bank of boulders and sand
ten miles long, the terminal moraine of a grand old glacier on which
last November we met a perilous adventure.
It is located just
opposite three large converging glaciers which formerly united to
form the vanished trunk of the glacier to which the submerged moraine
belonged. A few centuries ago it must have been the grandest feature
of this part of the coast, and, so well preserved are the monuments
of its greatness, the noble old ice-river may be seen again in
imagination about as vividly as if present in the flesh, with
snow-clouds crawling about its fountains, sunshine sparkling on its
broad flood, and its ten-mile ice-wall planted in the deep waters of
the channel and sending off its bergs with loud resounding thunder.
About noon we rounded Cape Fanshawe, scudding swiftly before a fine
breeze, to the delight of our Indians, who had now only to steer and
chat. Here we overtook two Hoona Indians and their families on their
way home from Fort Wrangell. They had exchanged five sea-otter furs,
worth about a hundred dollars apiece, and a considerable number of
fur-seal, land-otter, marten, beaver, and other furs and skins, some
$800 worth, for a new canoe valued at eighty dollars, some flour,
tobacco, blankets, and a few barrels of molasses for the manufacture
of whiskey.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 207 of 316
Words from 56072 to 56332
of 85542
