This Proved To Be
The Largest Of The Series Of Narrow Lakelets That Lie In Shallow
Troughs Between The Moraine
And the glacier, a miniature Arctic
Ocean, its ice-cliffs played upon by whispering, rippling waveless
and its small berg
Floes drifting in its currents or with the wind,
or stranded here and there along its rocky moraine shore.
Hundreds of small rills and good-sized streams were falling into the
lake from the glacier, singing in low tones, some of them pouring in
sheer falls over blue cliffs from narrow ice-valleys, some spouting
from pipelike channels in the solid front of the glacier, others
gurgling out of arched openings at the base. All these water-streams
were riding on the parent ice-stream, their voices joined in one
grand anthem telling the wonders of their near and far-off fountains.
The lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the forested
moraine, though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more
than a century old, is in great part resting on buried ice left
behind as the glacier receded, and melting slowly on account of the
protection afforded by the moraine detritus, which keeps shifting and
falling on the inner face long after it is overgrown with lichens,
mosses, grasses, bushes, and even good-sized trees; these changes
going on with marvelous deliberation until in fullness of time the
whole moraine settles down upon its bedrock foundation.
The outlet of the lake is a large stream, almost a river in size,
one of the main draining streams of the glacier. I attempted to ford
it where it begins to break in rapids in passing over the moraine,
but found it too deep and rough on the bottom. I then tried to
ford at its head, where it is wider and glides smoothly out of the
lake, bracing myself against the current with a pole, but found it
too deep, and when the icy water reached my shoulders I cautiously
struggled back to the moraine. I next followed it down through the
rocky jungle to a place where in breaking across the moraine dam it
was only about thirty-five feet wide. Here I found a spruce tree
which I felled for a bridge; it reached across, about ten feet of the
top holding in the bank brush. But the force of the torrent, acting
on the submerged branches and the slender end of the trunk, bent it
like a bow and made it very unsteady, and after testing it by going
out about a third of the way over, it seemed likely to be carried
away when bent deeper into the current by my weight. Fortunately, I
discovered another larger tree well situated a little farther down,
which I felled, and though a few feet in the middle was submerged,
it seemed perfectly safe.
As it was now getting late, I started back to the lakeside where I
had left my bundle, and in trying to hold a direct course found the
interlaced jungle still more difficult than it was along the bank
of the torrent. For over an hour I had to creep and struggle close
to the rocky ground like a fly in a spider-web without being able
to obtain a single glimpse of any guiding feature of the landscape.
Finding a little willow taller than the surrounding alders, I climbed
it, caught sight of the glacier-front, took a compass bearing, and
sunk again into the dripping, blinding maze of brush, and at length
emerged on the lake-shore seven hours after leaving it, all this
time as wet as though I had been swimming, thus completing a trying
day's work. But everything was deliciously fresh, and I found new
and old plant friends, and lessons on Nature's Alaska moraine
landscape-gardening that made everything bright and light.
It was now near dark, and I made haste to make up my flimsy little
tent. The ground was desperately rocky. I made out, however, to level
down a strip large enough to lie on, and by means of slim alder stems
bent over it and tied together soon had a home. While thus busily
engaged I was startled by a thundering roar across the lake. Running
to the top of the moraine, I discovered that the tremendous noise was
only the outcry of a newborn berg about fifty or sixty feet in
diameter, rocking and wallowing in the waves it had raised as if
enjoying its freedom after its long grinding work as part of the
glacier. After this fine last lesson I managed to make a small
fire out of wet twigs, got a cup of tea, stripped off my dripping
clothing, wrapped myself in a blanket and lay brooding on the gains
of the day and plans for the morrow, glad, rich, and almost
comfortable.
It was raining hard when I awoke, but I made up my mind to disregard
the weather, put on my dripping clothing, glad to know it was
fresh and clean; ate biscuits and a piece of dried salmon without
attempting to make a tea fire; filled a bag with hardtack, slung it
over my shoulder, and with my indispensable ice-axe plunged once more
into the dripping jungle. I found my bridge holding bravely in place
against the swollen torrent, crossed it and beat my way around pools
and logs and through two hours of tangle back to the moraine on the
north side of the outlet, - a wet, weary battle but not without
enjoyment. The smell of the washed ground and vegetation made every
breath a pleasure, and I found Calypso borealis, the first I had seen
on this side of the continent, one of my darlings, worth any amount
of hardship; and I saw one of my Douglas squirrels on the margin of a
grassy pool. The drip of the rain on the various leaves was pleasant
to hear. More especially marked were the flat low-toned bumps and
splashes of large drops from the trees on the broad horizontal leaves
of Echinopanax horridum, like the drumming of thundershower drops
on veratrum and palm leaves, while the mosses were indescribably
beautiful, so fresh, so bright, so cheerily green, and all so low and
calm and silent, however heavy and wild the wind and the rain blowing
and pouring above them.
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