I Had To Look After Camp-Supplies And Left The Ship Late This Morning, Going With A Crowd To The Glacier; Then, Taking Advantage Of The Fine Weather, I Pushed Off Alone Into The Silent Icy Prairie To The East, To Nunatak Island, About Five Hundred Feet Above The Ice.

I discovered a small lake on the larger of the two islands, and many battered and ground fragments of fossil wood, large and small.

They seem to have come from trees that grew on the island perhaps centuries ago. I mean to use this island as a station in setting out stakes to measure the glacial flow. The top of Mt. Fairweather is in sight at a distance of perhaps thirty miles, the ice all smooth on the eastern border, wildly broken in the central portion. I reached the ship at 2.30 P.M. I had intended getting back at noon and sending letters and bidding friends good-bye, but could not resist this glacier saunter. The ship moved off as soon as I was seen on the moraine bluff, and Loomis and I waved our hats in farewell to the many wavings of handkerchiefs of acquaintances we had made on the trip.

Our goods - blankets, provisions, tent, etc. - lay in a rocky moraine hollow within a mile of the great terminal wall of the glacier, and the discharge of the rising and falling icebergs kept up an almost continuous thundering and echoing, while a few gulls flew about on easy wing or stood like specks of foam on the shore.

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