Then came a great thaw, which
produced the flood that deposited the uprooted trees. Also the trees
which grew around the shores above reach of floods were shed off,
perhaps by the thawing of the soil that was resting on the buried
margin of the glacier, left on its retreat and protected by a
covering of moraine-material from melting as fast as the exposed
surface of the glacier. What appear to be remnants of the margin of
the glacier when it stood at a much higher level still exist on the
left side and probably all along its banks on both sides just below
its present terminus.
June 26. We fixed a mark on the left wing to measure the motion if
any. It rained all day, but I had a grand tramp over mud, ice, and
rock to the east wall of the inlet. Brown metamorphic slate,
close-grained in places, dips away from the inlet, presenting edges
to ice-action, which has given rise to a singularly beautiful and
striking surface, polished and grooved and fluted.
All the next day it rained. The mountains were smothered in
dull-colored mist and fog, the great glacier looming through the
gloomy gray fog fringes with wonderful effect. The thunder of bergs
booms and rumbles through the foggy atmosphere. It is bad weather for
exploring but delightful nevertheless, making all the strange,
mysterious region yet stranger and more mysterious.
June 28. A light rain. We were visited by two parties of Indians. A
man from each canoe came ashore, leaving the women in the canoe to
guard against the berg-waves. I tried my Chinook and made out to say
that I wanted to hire two of them in a few days to go a little way
back on the glacier and around the bay. They are seal-hunters and
promised to come again with "Charley," who "hi yu kumtux wawa
Boston" - knew well how to speak English.
I saw three huge bergs born. Spray rose about two hundred feet.
Lovely reflections showed of the pale-blue tones of the ice-wall and
mountains in the calm water. Mirages are common, making the stranded
bergs along the shore look like the sheer frontal wall of the glacier
from which they were discharged.
I am watching the ice-wall, berg life and behavior, etc. Yesterday
and to-day a solitary small flycatcher was feeding about camp. A
sandpiper on the shore, loons, ducks, gulls, and crows, a few of
each, and a bald eagle are all the birds I have noticed thus far. The
glacier is thundering gloriously.
June 30. Clearing clouds and sunshine. In less than a minute I saw
three large bergs born. First there is usually a preliminary
thundering of comparatively small masses as the large mass begins to
fall, then the grand crash and boom and reverberating roaring.
Oftentimes three or four heavy main throbbing thuds and booming
explosions are heard as the main mass falls in several pieces, and
also secondary thuds and thunderings as the mass or masses plunge and
rise again and again ere they come to rest. Seldom, if ever, do the
towers, battlements, and pinnacles into which the front of the
glacier is broken fall forward headlong from their bases like falling
trees at the water-level or above or below it. They mostly sink
vertically or nearly so, as if undermined by the melting action of
the water of the inlet, occasionally maintaining their upright
position after sinking far below the level of the water, and rising
again a hundred feet or more into the air with water streaming like
hair down their sides from their crowns, then launch forward and fall
flat with yet another thundering report, raising spray in
magnificent, flamelike, radiating jets and sheets, occasionally to
the very top of the front wall. Illumined by the sun, the spray and
angular crystal masses are indescribably beautiful. Some of the
discharges pour in fragments from clefts in the wall like waterfalls,
white and mealy-looking, even dusty with minute swirling
ice-particles, followed by a rushing succession of thunder-tones
combining into a huge, blunt, solemn roar. Most of these crumbling
discharges are from the excessively shattered central part of the
ice-wall; the solid deep-blue masses from the ends of the wall
forming the large bergs rise from the bottom of the glacier.
Many lesser reports are heard at a distance of a mile or more from
the fall of pinnacles into crevasses or from the opening of new
crevasses. The berg discharges are very irregular, from three to
twenty-two an hour. On one rising tide, six hours, there were sixty
bergs discharged, large enough to thunder and be heard at distances
of from three quarters to one and a half miles; and on one succeeding
falling tide, six hours, sixty-nine were discharged.
July 1. We were awakened at four o'clock this morning by the whistle
of the steamer George W. Elder. I went out on the moraine and waved
my hand in salute and was answered by a toot from the whistle. Soon a
party came ashore and asked if I was Professor Muir. The leader,
Professor Harry Fielding Reid of Cleveland, Ohio, introduced himself
and his companion, Mr. Cushing, also of Cleveland, and six or eight
young students who had come well provided with instruments to study
the glacier. They landed seven or eight tons of freight and pitched
camp beside ours. I am delighted to have companions so congenial - we
have now a village.
As I set out to climb the second mountain, three thousand feet high,
on the east side of the glacier, I met many tourists returning from a
walk on the smooth east margin of the glacier, and had to answer many
questions.
