These Curious Glacier Gardens, The First I Had
Seen, Were Evidently Planted By Snow Avalanches From The High Walls.
They
Were well watered, of course, by the melting surface of the ice
and fairly well nourished by humus still attached
To the roots, and
in some places formed beds of considerable thickness. Seedling trees
and bushes also were growing among the flowers. Admiring these novel
floating gardens, I struck out for the middle of the pure white
glacier, where the ice seemed smoother, and then held straight on
for about eight miles, where I reluctantly turned back to meet the
steamer, greatly regretting that I had not brought a week's supply of
hardtack to allow me to explore the glacier to its head, and then
trust to some passing canoe to take me down to Buck Station, from
which I could explore the Big Stickeen Glacier.
Altogether, I saw about fifteen or sixteen miles of the main trunk.
The grade is almost regular, and the walls on either hand are about
from two to three thousand feet high, sculptured like those of
Yosemite Valley. I found no difficulty of an extraordinary kind. Many
a crevasse had to be crossed, but most of them were narrow and easily
jumped, while the few wide ones that lay in my way were crossed on
sliver bridges or avoided by passing around them. The structure of
the glacier was strikingly revealed on its melting surface. It is
made up of thin vertical or inclined sheets or slabs set on edge and
welded together. They represent, I think, the successive snowfalls
from heavy storms on the tributaries. One of the tributaries on the
right side, about three miles above the front, has been entirely
melted off from the trunk and has receded two or three miles, forming
an independent glacier. Across the mouth of this abandoned part of
its channel the main glacier flows, forming a dam which gives rise to
a lake. On the head of the detached tributary there are some five or
six small residual glaciers, the drainage of which, with that of the
snowy mountain slopes above them, discharges into the lake, whose
outlet is through a channel or channels beneath the damming glacier.
Now these sub-channels are occasionally blocked and the water rises
until it flows alongside of the glacier, but as the dam is a moving
one, a grand outburst is sometimes made, which, draining the large
lake, produces a flood of amazing power, sweeping down immense
quantities of moraine material and raising the river all the way down
to its mouth, so that several trips may occasionally be made by the
steamers after the season of low water has laid them up for the year.
The occurrence of these floods are, of course, well known to the
Indians and steamboat men, though they know nothing of their cause.
They simply remark, "The Dirt Glacier has broken out again."
I greatly enjoyed my walk up this majestic ice-river, charmed by the
pale-blue, ineffably fine light in the crevasses, moulins, and wells,
and the innumerable azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the
network of surface streams, large and small, gliding, swirling with
wonderful grace of motion in their frictionless channels, calling
forth devout admiration at almost every step and filling the mind
with a sense of Nature's endless beauty and power. Looking ahead
from the middle of the glacier, you see the broad white flood,
though apparently rigid as iron, sweeping in graceful curves between
its high mountain-like walls, small glaciers hanging in the hollows
on either side, and snow in every form above them, and the great
down-plunging granite buttresses and headlands of the walls marvelous
in bold massive sculpture; forests in side canyons to within fifty
feet of the glacier; avalanche pathways overgrown with alder and
willow; innumerable cascades keeping up a solemn harmony of water
sounds blending with those of the glacier moulins and rills; and as
far as the eye can reach, tributary glaciers at short intervals
silently descending from their high, white fountains to swell the
grand central ice-river.
In the angle formed by the main glacier and the lake that gives
rise to the river floods, there is a massive granite dome sparsely
feathered with trees, and just beyond this yosemitic rock is a
mountain, perhaps ten thousand feet high, laden with ice and snow
which seemed pure pearly white in the morning light. Last evening as
seen from camp it was adorned with a cloud streamer, and both the
streamer and the peak were flushed in the alpenglow. A mile or two
above this mountain, on the opposite side of the glacier, there is a
rock like the Yosemite Sentinel; and in general all the wall rocks as
far as I saw them are more or less yosemitic in form and color and
streaked with cascades.
But wonderful as this noble ice-river is in size and depth and in
power displayed, far more wonderful was the vastly greater glacier
three or four thousand feet, or perhaps a mile, in depth, whose size
and general history is inscribed on the sides of the walls and over
the tops of the rocks in characters which have not yet been greatly
dimmed by the weather. Comparing its present size with that when it
was in its prime, is like comparing a small rivulet to the same
stream when it is a roaring torrent.
The return trip to the camp past the shelving cliff and through the
weary devil's-club jungle was made in a few hours. The Indians had
gone off picking berries, but were on the watch for me and hailed me
as I approached. The captain had called for me, and, after waiting
three hours, departed for Wrangell without leaving any food, to make
sure, I suppose, of a quick return of his Indians and canoe. This was
no serious matter, however, for the swift current swept us down to
Buck Station, some thirty-five miles distant, by eight o'clock.
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