Next Morning It Was Still Raining And Snowing, But The South Wind
Swept Us Bravely Forward And Swept The Bergs From Our Course.
In
about an hour we reached the second of the big glaciers, which I
afterwards named for Hugh Miller.
We rowed up its fiord and landed to
make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The
berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide,
and broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and
flat-topped towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from
pale, shimmering, limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the
most startling, chilling, almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain
mural spaces from which bergs had just been discharged. Back from the
front for a few miles the glacier rises in a series of wide steps, as
if this portion of the glacier had sunk in successive sections as it
reached deep water, and the sea had found its way beneath it. Beyond
this it extends indefinitely in a gently rising prairie-like expanse,
and branches along the slopes and canyons of the Fairweather Range.
Prom here a run of two hours brought us to the head of the bay, and
to the mouth of the northwest fiord, at the head of which lie the
Hoona sealing-grounds, and the great glacier now called the Pacific,
and another called the Hoona. The fiord is about five miles long, and
two miles wide at the mouth. Here our Hoona guide had a store of dry
wood, which we took aboard. Then, setting sail, we were driven wildly
up the fiord, as if the storm-wind were saying, "Go, then, if you
will, into my icy chamber; but you shall stay in until I am ready to
let you out." All this time sleety rain was falling on the bay, and
snow on the mountains; but soon after we landed the sky began to
open. The camp was made on a rocky bench near the front of the
Pacific Glacier, and the canoe was carried beyond the reach of the
bergs and berg-waves. The bergs were now crowded in a dense pack
against the discharging front, as if the storm-wind had determined to
make the glacier take back her crystal offspring and keep them at
home.
While camp affairs were being attended to, I set out to climb a
mountain for comprehensive views; and before I had reached a height
of a thousand feet the rain ceased, and the clouds began to rise from
the lower altitudes, slowly lifting their white skirts, and lingering
in majestic, wing-shaped masses about the mountains that rise out of
the broad, icy sea, the highest of all the white mountains, and the
greatest of all the glaciers I had yet seen. Climbing higher for a
still broader outlook, I made notes and sketched, improving the
precious time while sunshine streamed through the luminous fringes of
the clouds and fell on the green waters of the fiord, the glittering
bergs, the crystal bluffs of the vast glacier, the intensely white,
far-spreading fields of ice, and the ineffably chaste and spiritual
heights of the Fairweather Range, which were now hidden, now partly
revealed, the whole making a picture of icy wildness unspeakably pure
and sublime.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 76 of 163
Words from 39598 to 40156
of 85542
