The Prolonged Roar Of Its Fall Comes With
Startling Effect, And Heavy Swells Are Raised That Haste Away In
Every Direction To Tell What Has Taken Place, And Tens Of Thousands
Of Its Neighbors Rock And Swash In Sympathy, Repeating The News Over
And Over Again.
We were too near several large ones that fell apart
as we passed them, and our canoe had narrow escapes.
The
seal-hunters, Tyeen says, are frequently lost in these sudden berg
accidents.
In the afternoon, while we were admiring the scenery, which, as we
approached the head of the fiord, became more and more sublime, one
of our Indians called attention to a flock of wild goats on a
mountain overhead, and soon afterwards we saw two other flocks, at a
height of about fifteen hundred feet, relieved against the mountains
as white spots. They are abundant here and throughout the Alaskan
Alps in general, feeding on the grassy slopes above the timber-line.
Their long, yellowish hair is shed at this time of year and they were
snowy white. None of nature's cattle are better fed or better
protected from the cold. Tyeen told us that before the introduction
of guns they used to hunt them with spears, chasing them with their
wolf-dogs, and thus bringing them to bay among the rocks, where they
were easily approached and killed.
The upper half of the fiord is about from a mile to a mile and a half
wide, and shut in by sublime Yosemite cliffs, nobly sculptured, and
adorned with waterfalls and fringes of trees, bushes, and patches of
flowers; but amid so crowded a display of novel beauty it was not
easy to concentrate the attention long enough on any portion of it
without giving more days and years than our lives could afford.
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