The Dead, Protected Ice In Melting First Sheds Off The
Large Boulders, As They Are Not Able To Lie On Slopes Where Smaller
Ones Can.
Then the next larger ones are rolled off, and pebbles
and sand in succession.
Meanwhile this material is subjected to
torrent-action, as if it were cast into a trough. When floods come
it is carried forward and stratified, according to the force of the
current, sand, mud, or larger material. This exposes fresh surfaces
of ice and melting goes on again, until enough material has been
undermined to form a veil in front; then follows another washing and
carrying-away and depositing where the current is allowed to spread.
In melting, protected margin terraces are oftentimes formed. Perhaps
these terraces mark successive heights of the glacial surface. From
terrace to terrace the grist of stone is rolled and sifted. Some,
meeting only feeble streams, have only the fine particles carried
away and deposited in smooth beds; others, coarser, from swifter
streams, overspread the fine beds, while many of the large boulders
no doubt roll back upon the glacier to go on their travels again.
It has been cloudy mostly to-day, though sunny in the afternoon, and
my eyes are getting better. The steamer Queen is expected in a day or
two, so I must try to get down to the inlet to-morrow and make signal
to have some of the Reid party ferry me over. I must hear from home,
write letters, get rest and more to eat.
Near the front of the glacier the ice was perfectly free, apparently,
of anything like a crevasse, and in walking almost carelessly down it
I stopped opposite the large granite Nunatak Island, thinking that I
would there be partly sheltered from the wind. I had not gone a dozen
steps toward the island when I suddenly dropped into a concealed
water-filled crevasse, which on the surface showed not the slightest
sign of its existence. This crevasse like many others was being used
as the channel of a stream, and at some narrow point the small
cubical masses of ice into which the glacier surface disintegrates
were jammed and extended back farther and farther till they
completely covered and concealed the water. Into this I suddenly
plunged, after crossing thousands of really dangerous crevasses, but
never before had I encountered a danger so completely concealed. Down
I plunged over head and ears, but of course bobbed up again, and
after a hard struggle succeeded in dragging myself out over the
farther side. Then I pulled my sled over close to Nunatak cliff, made
haste to strip off my clothing, threw it in a sloppy heap and crept
into my sleeping-bag to shiver away the night as best I could.
July 21. Dressing this rainy morning was a miserable job, but might
have been worse. After wringing my sloppy underclothing, getting it
on was far from pleasant. My eyes are better and I feel no bad effect
from my icy bath. The last trace of my three months' cough is gone.
No lowland grippe microbe could survive such experiences.
I have had a fine telling day examining the ruins of the old forest
of Sitka spruce that no great time ago grew in a shallow mud-filled
basin near the southwest corner of the glacier. The trees were
protected by a spur of the mountain that puts out here, and when the
glacier advanced they were simply flooded with fine sand and
overborne. Stumps by the hundred, three to fifteen feet high, rooted
in a stream of fine blue mud on cobbles, still have their bark on. A
stratum of decomposed bark, leaves, cones, and old trunks is still in
place. Some of the stumps are on rocky ridges of gravelly soil about
one hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea. The valley has been
washed out by the stream now occupying it, one of the glacier's
draining streams a mile long or more and an eighth of a mile wide.
I got supper early and was just going to bed, when I was startled by
seeing a man coming across the moraine, Professor Reid, who had seen
me from the main camp and who came with Mr. Loomis and the cook in
their boat to ferry me over. I had not intended making signals for
them until to-morrow but was glad to go. I had been seen also by Mr.
Case and one of his companions, who were on the western mountain-side
above the fossil forest, shooting ptarmigans. I had a good rest and
sleep and leisure to find out how rich I was in new facts and
pictures and how tired and hungry I was.
Chapter XIX
Auroras
A few days later I set out with Professor Reid's party to visit some
of the other large glaciers that flow into the bay, to observe what
changes have taken place in them since October, 1879, when I first
visited and sketched them. We found the upper half of the bay closely
choked with bergs, through which it was exceedingly difficult to
force a way. After slowly struggling a few miles up the east side, we
dragged the whale-boat and canoe over rough rocks into a fine garden
and comfortably camped for the night.
The next day was spent in cautiously picking a way across to the west
side of the bay; and as the strangely scanty stock of provisions was
already about done, and the ice-jam to the northward seemed
impenetrable, the party decided to return to the main camp by a
comparatively open, roundabout way to the southward, while with the
canoe and a handful of food-scraps I pushed on northward. After a
hard, anxious struggle, I reached the mouth of the Hugh Miller fiord
about sundown, and tried to find a camp-spot on its steep,
boulder-bound shore. But no landing-place where it seemed possible to
drag the canoe above high-tide mark was discovered after examining a
mile or more of this dreary, forbidding barrier, and as night was
closing down, I decided to try to grope my way across the mouth of
the fiord in the starlight to an open sandy spot on which I had
camped in October, 1879, a distance of about three or four miles.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 82 of 84
Words from 82875 to 83941
of 85542
