We Had To Make The Best Of It, However,
As It Was Too Dark To Seek Farther.
After supper was accomplished
among the boulders, they retired to the canoe, which they anchored a
little way out, beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I at the expense
of a good deal of scrambling and panax stinging, discovered a spot on
which we managed to sleep.
The next morning, about two hours after leaving our thorny camp, we
rounded a great mountain rock nearly a mile in height and entered the
Taku fiord. It is about eighteen miles long and from three to five
miles wide, and extends directly back into the heart of the
mountains, draining hundreds of glaciers and streams. The ancient
glacier that formed it was far too deep and broad and too little
concentrated to erode one of those narrow canyons, usually so
impressive in sculpture and architecture, but it is all the more
interesting on this account when the grandeur of the ice work
accomplished is recognized. This fiord, more than any other I have
examined, explains the formation of the wonderful system of channels
extending along the coast from Puget Sound to about latitude 59
degrees, for it is a marked portion of the system, - a branch of
Stephens Passage. Its trends and general sculpture are as distinctly
glacial as those of the narrowest fiord, while the largest
tributaries of the great glacier that occupied it are still in
existence. I counted some forty-five altogether, big and little, in
sight from the canoe in sailing up the middle of the fiord.
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