After my twelve-mile walk, I ate a cracker and planned the camp.
I
found that one of my boxes had been left on the steamer, but still we
have more than enough of everything. We obtained two cords of dry
wood at Juneau which Captain Carroll kindly had his men carry up the
moraine to our camp-ground. We piled the wood as a wind-break, then
laid a floor of lumber brought from Seattle for a square tent, nine
feet by nine. We set the tent, stored our provisions in it, and made
our beds. This work was done by 11.30 P.M., good daylight lasting to
this time. We slept well in our roomy cotton house, dreaming of
California home nests in the wilderness of ice.
June 25. A rainy day. For a few hours I kept count of the number of
bergs discharged, then sauntered along the beach to the end of the
crystal wall. A portion of the way is dangerous, the moraine bluff
being capped by an overlying lobe of the glacier, which as it melts
sends down boulders and fragments of ice, while the strip of sandy
shore at high tide is only a few rods wide, leaving but little room
to escape from the falling moraine material and the berg-waves. The
view of the ice-cliffs, pinnacles, spires and ridges was very
telling, a magnificent picture of nature's power and industry and
love of beauty. About a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet from the
shore a large stream issues from an arched, tunnel-like channel in
the wall of the glacier, the blue of the ice hall being of an
exquisite tone, contrasting with the strange, sooty, smoky,
brown-colored stream.
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