The Ice In These
Pools Does Not Melt With Anything Like An Even Surface, But In Long
Branches And Leaves, Making Fairy Forests Of Points, While Minute
Bubbles Of Air Are Constantly Being Set Free.
I am camped to-night on
what I call Quarry Mountain from its raw, loose, plantless condition,
seven or eight miles above the front of the glacier.
I found enough
fossil wood for tea. Glorious is the view to the eastward from this
camp. The sun has set, a few clouds appear, and a torrent rushing
down a gully and under the edge of the glacier is making a solemn
roaring. No tinkling, whistling rills this night. Ever and anon I
hear a falling boulder. I have had a glorious and instructive day,
but am excessively weary and to bed I go.
July 18. I felt tired this morning and meant to rest to-day. But
after breakfast at 8 A.M. I felt I must be up and doing, climbing,
sketching new views up the great tributaries from the top of Quarry
Mountain. Weariness vanished and I could have climbed, I think, five
thousand feet. Anything seems easy after sled-dragging over hummocks
and crevasses, and the constant nerve-strain in jumping crevasses so
as not to slip in making the spring. Quarry Mountain is the barest
I have seen, a raw quarry with infinite abundance of loose decaying
granite all on the go. Its slopes are excessively steep. A few
patches of epilobium make gay purple spots of color.
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