With The Utmost Caution I Picked My Way Through The Sparkling Bergs,
And After An Hour Or Two Of This
Nerve-trying work, when I was
perhaps less than halfway across and dreading the loss of the frail
canoe which
Would include the loss of myself, I came to a pack of
very large bergs which loomed threateningly, offering no visible
thoroughfare. Paddling and pushing to right and left, I at last
discovered a sheer-walled opening about four feet wide and perhaps
two hundred feet long, formed apparently by the splitting of a huge
iceberg. I hesitated to enter this passage, fearing that the
slightest change in the tide-current might close it, but ventured
nevertheless, judging that the dangers ahead might not be greater
than those I had already passed. When I had got about a third of the
way in, I suddenly discovered that the smooth-walled ice-lane was
growing narrower, and with desperate haste backed out. Just as the
bow of the canoe cleared the sheer walls they came together with a
growling crunch. Terror-stricken, I turned back, and in an anxious
hour or two gladly reached the rock-bound shore that had at first
repelled me, determined to stay on guard all night in the canoe or
find some place where with the strength that comes in a fight for
life I could drag it up the boulder wall beyond ice danger. This at
last was happily done about midnight, and with no thought of sleep
I went to bed rejoicing.
My bed was two boulders, and as I lay wedged and bent on their
up-bulging sides, beguiling the hard, cold time in gazing into the
starry sky and across the sparkling bay, magnificent upright bars of
light in bright prismatic colors suddenly appeared, marching swiftly
in close succession along the northern horizon from west to east as
if in diligent haste, an auroral display very different from any I
had ever before beheld. Once long ago in Wisconsin I saw the heavens
draped in rich purple auroral clouds fringed and folded in most
magnificent forms; but in this glory of light, so pure, so bright, so
enthusiastic in motion, there was nothing in the least cloud-like.
The short color-bars, apparently about two degrees in height, though
blending, seemed to be as well defined as those of the solar spectrum.
How long these glad, eager soldiers of light held on their way I
cannot tell; for sense of time was charmed out of mind and the
blessed night circled away in measureless rejoicing enthusiasm.
In the early morning after so inspiring a night I launched my canoe
feeling able for anything, crossed the mouth of the Hugh Miller
fiord, and forced a way three or four miles along the shore of the
bay, hoping to reach the Grand Pacific Glacier in front of Mt.
Fairweather. But the farther I went, the ice-pack, instead of showing
inviting little open streaks here and there, became so much harder
jammed that on some parts of the shore the bergs, drifting south with
the tide, were shoving one another out of the water beyond high-tide
line. Farther progress to northward was thus rigidly stopped, and
now I had to fight for a way back to my cabin, hoping that by good
tide luck I might reach it before dark. But at sundown I was less
than half-way home, and though very hungry was glad to land on a
little rock island with a smooth beach for the canoe and a thicket of
alder bushes for fire and bed and a little sleep. But shortly after
sundown, while these arrangements were being made, lo and behold
another aurora enriching the heavens! and though it proved to be
one of the ordinary almost colorless kind, thrusting long, quivering
lances toward the zenith from a dark cloudlike base, after last
night's wonderful display one's expectations might well be
extravagant and I lay wide awake watching.
On the third night I reached my cabin and food. Professor Reid and
his party came in to talk over the results of our excursions, and
just as the last one of the visitors opened the door after bidding
good-night, he shouted, "Muir, come look here. Here's something fine."
I ran out in auroral excitement, and sure enough here was another
aurora, as novel and wonderful as the marching rainbow-colored
columns - a glowing silver bow spanning the Muir Inlet in a
magnificent arch right under the zenith, or a little to the south of
it, the ends resting on the top of the mountain-walls. And though
colorless and steadfast, its intense, solid, white splendor, noble
proportions, and fineness of finish excited boundless admiration.
In form and proportion it was like a rainbow, a bridge of one span
five miles wide; and so brilliant, so fine and solid and homogeneous
in every part, I fancy that if all the stars were raked together
into one windrow, fused and welded and run through some celestial
rolling-mill, all would be required to make this one glowing white
colossal bridge.
After my last visitor went to bed, I lay down on the moraine in
front of the cabin and gazed and watched. Hour after hour the
wonderful arch stood perfectly motionless, sharply defined and
substantial-looking as if it were a permanent addition to the
furniture of the sky. At length while it yet spanned the inlet in
serene unchanging splendor, a band of fluffy, pale gray, quivering
ringlets came suddenly all in a row over the eastern mountain-top,
glided in nervous haste up and down the under side of the bow and
over the western mountain-wall. They were about one and a half times
the apparent diameter of the bow in length, maintained a vertical
posture all the way across, and slipped swiftly along as if they were
suspended like a curtain on rings. Had these lively auroral fairies
marched across the fiord on the top of the bow instead of shuffling
along the under side of it, one might have fancied they were a happy
band of spirit people on a journey making use of the splendid bow for
a bridge.
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