This Was My First General View Of Glacier Bay, A Solitude Of Ice
And Snow And Newborn Rocks, Dim, Dreary, Mysterious.
I held the
ground I had so dearly won for an hour or two, sheltering myself from
the blast as best I could, while with benumbed fingers I sketched
what I could see of the landscape, and wrote a few lines in my
notebook.
Then, breasting the snow again, crossing the shifting
avalanche slopes and torrents, I reached camp about dark, wet and
weary and glad.
While I was getting some coffee and hardtack, Mr. Young told me that
the Indians were discouraged, and had been talking about turning
back, fearing that I would be lost, the canoe broken, or in some
other mysterious way the expedition would come to grief if I
persisted in going farther. They had been asking him what possible
motive I could have in climbing mountains when storms were blowing;
and when he replied that I was only seeking knowledge, Toyatte said,
"Muir must be a witch to seek knowledge in such a place as this and
in such miserable weather."
After supper, crouching about a dull fire of fossil wood, they became
still more doleful, and talked in tones that accorded well with the
wind and waters and growling torrents about us, telling sad old
stories of crushed canoes, drowned Indians, and hunters frozen in
snowstorms. Even brave old Toyatte, dreading the treeless, forlorn
appearance of the region, said that his heart was not strong, and
that he feared his canoe, on the safety of which our lives depended,
might be entering a skookum-house (jail) of ice, from which there
might be no escape; while the Hoona guide said bluntly that if I was
so fond of danger, and meant to go close up to the noses of the
ice-mountains, he would not consent to go any farther; for we should
all be lost, as many of his tribe had been, by the sudden rising of
bergs from the bottom. They seemed to be losing heart with every howl
of the wind, and, fearing that they might fail me now that I was in
the midst of so grand a congregation of glaciers, I made haste to
reassure them, telling them that for ten years I had wandered alone
among mountains and storms, and good luck always followed me; that
with me, therefore, they need fear nothing. The storm would soon
cease and the sun would shine to show us the way we should go, for
God cares for us and guides us as long as we are trustful and brave,
therefore all childish fear must be put away. This little speech did
good. Kadachan, with some show of enthusiasm, said he liked to
travel with good-luck people; and dignified old Toyatte declared that
now his heart was strong again, and he would venture on with me as
far as I liked for my "wawa" was "delait" (my talk was very good).
The old warrior even became a little sentimental, and said that even
if the canoe was broken he would not greatly care, because on the way
to the other world he would have good companions.
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