When Night Was Drawing Near, I Ran Down The Flowery Slopes
Exhilarated, Thanking God For The Gift Of This Great Day.
The setting
sun fired the clouds.
All the world seemed new-born. Every thing,
even the commonest, was seen in new light and was looked at with new
interest as if never seen before. The plant people seemed glad, as if
rejoicing with me, the little ones as well as the trees, while every
feature of the peak and its traveled boulders seemed to know what I
had been about and the depth of my joy, as if they could read faces.
Chapter VIII
Exploration of the Stickeen Glaciers
Next day I planned an excursion to the so-called Dirt Glacier, the
most interesting to Indians and steamer men of all the Stickeen
glaciers from its mysterious floods. I left the steamer Gertrude for
the glacier delta an hour or two before sunset. The captain kindly
loaned me his canoe and two of his Indian deck hands, who seemed much
puzzled to know what the rare service required of them might mean,
and on leaving bade a merry adieu to their companions. We camped on
the west side of the river opposite the front of the glacier, in a
spacious valley surrounded by snowy mountains. Thirteen small
glaciers were in sight and four waterfalls. It was a fine, serene
evening, and the highest peaks were wearing turbans of flossy,
gossamer cloud-stuff. I had my supper before leaving the steamer, so
I had only to make a campfire, spread my blanket, and lie down. The
Indians had their own bedding and lay beside their own fire.
The Dirt Glacier is noted among the river men as being subject to
violent flood outbursts once or twice a year, usually in the late
summer. The delta of this glacier stream is three or four miles wide
where it fronts the river, and the many rough channels with which it
is guttered and the uprooted trees and huge boulders that roughen its
surface manifest the power of the floods that swept them to their
places; but under ordinary conditions the glacier discharges its
drainage water into the river through only four or five of the
delta-channels.
Our camp was made on the south or lower side of the delta, below all
the draining streams, so that I would not have to ford any of them on
my way to the glacier. The Indians chose a sand-pit to sleep in; I
chose a level spot back of a drift log. I had but little to say to
my companions as they could speak no English, nor I much Thlinkit or
Chinook. In a few minutes after landing they retired to their pit and
were soon asleep and asnore. I lingered by the fire until after ten
o'clock, for the night sky was clear, and the great white mountains
in the starlight seemed nearer than by day and to be looking down
like guardians of the valley, while the waterfalls, and the torrents
escaping from beneath the big glacier, roared in a broad, low
monotone, sounding as if close at hand, though, as it proved next
day, the nearest was three miles away. After wrapping myself in my
blankets, I still gazed into the marvelous sky and made out to sleep
only about two hours. Then, without waking the noisy sleepers,
I arose, ate a piece of bread, and set out in my shirt-sleeves,
determined to make the most of the time at my disposal. The captain
was to pick us up about noon at a woodpile about a mile from here;
but if in the mean time the steamer should run aground and he should
need his canoe, a three whistle signal would be given.
Following a dry channel for about a mile, I came suddenly upon the
main outlet of the glacier, which in the imperfect light seemed as
large as the river, about one hundred and fifty feet wide, and
perhaps three or four feet deep. A little farther up it was only
about fifty feet wide and rushing on with impetuous roaring force in
its rocky channel, sweeping forward sand, gravel, cobblestones, and
boulders, the bump and rumble sounds of the largest of these rolling
stones being readily heard in the midst of the roaring. It was too
swift and rough to ford, and no bridge tree could be found, for the
great floods had cleared everything out of their way. I was therefore
compelled to keep on up the right bank, however difficult the way.
Where a strip of bare boulders lined the margin, the walking was
easy, but where the current swept close along the ragged edge of the
forest, progress was difficult and slow on account of snow-crinkled
and interlaced thickets of alder and willow, reinforced with fallen
trees and thorny devil's-club (Echinopanax horridum), making a jungle
all but impenetrable. The mile of this extravagantly difficult growth
through which I struggled, inch by inch, will not soon be forgotten.
At length arriving within a few hundred yards of the glacier, full of
panax barbs, I found that both the glacier and its unfordable stream
were pressing hard against a shelving cliff, dangerously steep,
leaving no margin, and compelling me to scramble along its face
before I could get on to the glacier. But by sunrise all these cliff,
jungle, and torrent troubles were overcome and I gladly found myself
free on the magnificent ice-river.
The curving, out-bulging front of the glacier is about two miles
wide, two hundred feet high, and its surface for a mile or so above
the front is strewn with moraine detritus, giving it a strangely
dirty, dusky look, hence its name, the "Dirt Glacier," this
detritus-laden portion being all that is seen in passing up the
river. A mile or two beyond the moraine-covered part I was surprised
to find alpine plants growing on the ice, fresh and green, some of
them in full flower.
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