Passing west of Douglas Island and through Icy Strait to Glacier Bay,
a magnificent view is presented. Snow-covered mountains rise six and
seven thousand feet all around, and to the northwest is the imposing
Mount Fairweather range, elevated over fifteen thousand feet. Glacier
Bay extends forty-five miles up into the land, its width gradually
contracting from twelve to three miles. Small icebergs and floes cover
much of the surface, as they are constantly detached from the glaciers
descending into it. At the head of the bay is the greatest curiosity
of Alaska and the most stupendous glacier existing,--the Muir
Glacier,--named in honor of Professor John Muir, the geologist of the
Pacific coast, who first saw it in 1879 and thoroughly explored it in
1890. When Vancouver was here at the close of the eighteenth century
he wrote that a wall of ice extended across the mouth of the bay. The
belief is that the glacier once filled the entire bay and has
gradually receded. Near the middle of the bay is Willoughby Island, a
rock two miles long and fifteen hundred feet high, showing striated
and polished surfaces and glacial grooves from bottom to top. This
glacier far exceeds all the Swiss ice-fields put together, and it
enters the sea with a front one mile and a half wide and two to three
hundred feet high. Unlike the dirty terminal moraines of the Swiss
glaciers, this is a splendid wall of clear blue and white ice, built
up in columns, spires and huge crystal masses, displaying beautiful
caves and grottoes. It goes many hundreds of feet below the surface of
the water, and from its front, masses of ice constantly detach and
fall into the bay with noises like thunder or the discharge of
artillery. Huge bergs topple over, clouds of spray arise, and gigantic
waves are sent across the water. Every few minutes this goes on as the
glacier, moving forward with resistless motion, breaks to pieces at
the end. The field of ice making this wonderful glacier is formed by
nine main streams and seventeen smaller arms. It occupies a vast
amphitheatre back among the mountains, thirty to forty miles across,
and where it breaks out between the higher mountains to descend to
the sea is about three miles wide. The superficial area of this mass
of ice is three hundred and fifty square miles. It moves forward from
seven to ten feet daily at the edges and more in the centre, and in
August, when it loses the most ice, the estimate is that about two
hundred millions of cubic feet fall into the bay every day. It loses
more ice in the summer than it gains in the winter, and thus steadily
retrogrades. The visitors go up to its face, although it cannot be
ascended there, and then landing alongside approach it through a
lateral moraine, and can there ascend to the top and walk upon the
surface. The character and appearance of this famous glacier were much
changed by an earthquake in 1899. Among the attractions are the
mirages that are frequent here, which have been the origin of the
"Phantom City," which early explorers fancifully described as upon
Glacier Bay. Other huge glaciers also enter these waters, among them
the Grand Pacific, Hugh Miller and Gelkie Glaciers.