I Found A Good Place For A Camp
In A Slight Hollow Where A Few Spruce Stumps Afforded Firewood.
But
all efforts to get Tyeen out of his harbor failed.
"Nobody knew," he
said, "how far the angry ice mountain could throw waves to break his
canoe." Therefore I had my bedding and some provisions carried to my
stump camp, where I could watch the bergs as they were discharged and
get night views of the brow of the glacier and its sheer jagged face
all the way across from side to side of the channel. One night the
water was luminous and the surge from discharging icebergs churned
the water into silver fire, a glorious sight in the darkness. I also
went back up the east side of the glacier five or six miles and
ascended a mountain between its first two eastern tributaries, which,
though covered with grass near the top, was exceedingly steep and
difficult. A bulging ridge near the top I discovered was formed of
ice, a remnant of the glacier when it stood at this elevation which
had been preserved by moraine material and later by a thatch of dwarf
bushes and grass.
Next morning at daybreak I pushed eagerly back over the comparatively
smooth eastern margin of the glacier to see as much as possible of
the upper fountain region. About five miles back from the front I
climbed a mountain twenty-five hundred feet high, from the flowery
summit of which, the day being clear, the vast glacier and its
principal branches were displayed in one magnificent view.
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