The Discovery of Glacier Bay
From here, on October 24, we set sail for Guide Charley’s
ice-mountains. The handle of our heaviest axe was cracked, and as
Charley declared that there was no firewood to be had in the big
ice-mountain bay, we would have to load the canoe with a store for
cooking at an island out in the Strait a few miles from the village. We
were therefore anxious to buy or trade for a good sound axe in exchange
for our broken one. Good axes are rare in rocky Alaska. Soon or late an
unlucky stroke on a stone concealed in moss spoils the edge. Finally
one in almost perfect condition was offered by a young Hoona for our
broken-handled one and a half-dollar to boot; but when the broken axe
and money were given he promptly demanded an additional twenty-five
cents’ worth of tobacco. The tobacco was given him, then he required a
half-dollar’s worth more of tobacco, which was also given; but when he
still demanded something more, Charley’s patience gave way and we
sailed in the same condition as to axes as when we arrived. This was
the only contemptible commercial affair we encountered among these
Alaskan Indians.
We reached the wooded island about one o’clock, made coffee, took on a
store of wood, and set sail direct for the icy country, finding it very
hard indeed to believe the woodless part of Charley’s description of
the Icy Bay, so heavily and uniformly are all the shores forested
wherever we had been. In this view we were joined by John, Kadachan,
and Toyatte, none of them on all their lifelong canoe travels having
ever seen a woodless country.
We held a northwesterly course until long after dark, when we reached a
small inlet that sets in near the mouth of Glacier Bay, on the west
side. Here we made a cold camp on a desolate snow-covered beach in
stormy sleet and darkness. At daybreak I looked eagerly in every
direction to learn what kind of place we were in; but gloomy
rain-clouds covered the mountains, and I could see nothing that would
give me a clue, while Vancouver’s chart, hitherto a faithful guide,
here failed us altogether. Nevertheless, we made haste to be off; and
fortunately, for just as we were leaving the shore, a faint smoke was
seen across the inlet, toward which Charley, who now seemed lost,
gladly steered. Our sudden appearance so early that gray morning had
evidently alarmed our neighbors, for as soon as we were within hailing
distance an Indian with his face blackened fired a shot over our heads,
and in a blunt, bellowing voice roared, “Who are you?”
Our interpreter shouted, “Friends and the Fort Wrangell missionary.”
Then men, women, and children swarmed out of the hut, and awaited our
approach on the beach. One of the hunters having brought his gun with
him, Kadachan sternly rebuked him, asking with superb indignation
whether he was not ashamed to meet a missionary with a gun in his
hands. Friendly relations, however, were speedily established, and as a
cold rain was falling, they invited us to enter their hut. It seemed
very small and was jammed full of oily boxes and bundles; nevertheless,
twenty-one persons managed to find shelter in it about a smoky fire.
Our hosts proved to be Hoona seal-hunters laying in their winter stores
of meat and skins. The packed hut was passably well ventilated, but its
heavy, meaty smells were not the same to our noses as those we were
accustomed to in the sprucy nooks of the evergreen woods. The circle of
black eyes peering at us through a fog of reek and smoke made a novel
picture. We were glad, however, to get within reach of information, and
of course asked many questions concerning the ice-mountains and the
strange bay, to most of which our inquisitive Hoona friends replied
with counter-questions as to our object in coming to such a place,
especially so late in the year. They had heard of Mr. Young and his
work at Fort Wrangell, but could not understand what a missionary could
be doing in such a place as this. Was he going to preach to the seals
and gulls, they asked, or to the ice-mountains? And could they take his
word? Then John explained that only the friend of the missionary was
seeking ice mountains, that Mr. Young had already preached many good
words in the villages we had visited, their own among the others, that
our hearts were good and every Indian was our friend. Then we gave them
a little rice, sugar, tea, and tobacco, after which they began to gain
confidence and to speak freely. They told us that the big bay was
called by them Sit-a-da-kay, or Ice Bay; that there were many large
ice-mountains in it, but no gold-mines; and that the ice-mountain they
knew best was at the head of the bay, where most of the seals were
found.
Notwithstanding the rain, I was anxious to push on and grope our way
beneath the clouds as best we could, in case worse weather should come;
but Charley was ill at ease, and wanted one of the seal-hunters to go
with us, for the place was much changed. I promised to pay well for a
guide, and in order to lighten the canoe proposed to leave most of our
heavy stores in the hut until our return. After a long consultation one
of them consented to go. His wife got ready his blanket and a piece of
cedar matting for his bed, and some provisions—mostly dried salmon, and
seal sausage made of strips of lean meat plaited around a core of fat.
She followed us to the beach, and just as we were pushing off said with
a pretty smile, “It is my husband that you are taking away. See that
you bring him back.”
We got under way about 10 A.M. The wind was in our favor, but a cold
rain pelted us, and we could see but little of the dreary, treeless
wilderness which we had now fairly entered. The bitter blast, however,
gave us good speed; our bedraggled canoe rose and fell on the waves as
solemnly as a big ship. Our course was northwestward, up the southwest
side of the bay, near the shore of what seemed to be the mainland,
smooth marble islands being on our right. About noon we discovered the
first of the great glaciers, the one I afterward named for James
Geikie, the noted Scotch geologist. Its lofty blue cliffs, looming
through the draggled skirts of the clouds, gave a tremendous impression
of savage power, while the roar of the newborn icebergs thickened and
emphasized the general roar of the storm. An hour and a half beyond the
Geikie Glacier we ran into a slight harbor where the shore is low,
dragged the canoe beyond the reach of drifting icebergs, and, much
against my desire to push ahead, encamped, the guide insisting that the
big ice-mountain at the head of the bay could not be reached before
dark, that the landing there was dangerous even in daylight, and that
this was the only safe harbor on the way to it. While camp was being
made. I strolled along the shore to examine the rocks and the fossil
timber that abounds here. All the rocks are freshly glaciated, even
below the sea-level, nor have the waves as yet worn off the surface
polish, much less the heavy scratches and grooves and lines of glacial
contour.
The next day being Sunday, the minister wished to stay in camp; and so,
on account of the weather, did the Indians. I therefore set out on an
excursion, and spent the day alone on the mountain-slopes above the
camp, and northward, to see what I might learn. Pushing on through rain
and mud and sludgy snow, crossing many brown, boulder-choked torrents,
wading, jumping, and wallowing in snow up to my shoulders was
mountaineering of the most trying kind. After crouching cramped and
benumbed in the canoe, poulticed in wet or damp clothing night and day,
my limbs had been asleep. This day they were awakened and in the hour
of trial proved that they had not lost the cunning learned on many a
mountain peak of the High Sierra. I reached a height of fifteen hundred
feet, on the ridge that bounds the second of the great glaciers. All
the landscape was smothered in clouds and I began to fear that as far
as wide views were concerned I had climbed in vain. But at length the
clouds lifted a little, and beneath their gray fringes I saw the
berg-filled expanse of the bay, and the feet of the mountains that
stand about it, and the imposing fronts of five huge glaciers, the
nearest being immediately beneath me. 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.
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 cañons of the Fairweather Range.
From 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.
Looking southward, a broad ice-sheet was seen extending in a gently
undulating plain from the Pacific Fiord in the foreground to the
horizon, dotted and ridged here and there with mountains which were as
white as the snow-covered ice in which they were half, or more than
half, submerged. Several of the great glaciers of the bay flow from
this one grand fountain. It is an instructive example of a general
glacier covering the hills and dales of a country that is not yet ready
to be brought to the light of day—not only covering but creating a
landscape with the features it is destined to have when, in the
fullness of time, the fashioning ice-sheet shall be lifted by the sun,
and the land become warm and fruitful. The view to the westward is
bounded and almost filled by the glorious Fairweather Mountains, the
highest among them springing aloft in sublime beauty to a height of
nearly sixteen thousand feet, while from base to summit every peak and
spire and dividing ridge of all the mighty host was spotless white, as
if painted. It would seem that snow could never be made to lie on the
steepest slopes and precipices unless plastered on when wet, and then
frozen. But this snow could not have been wet. It must have been fixed
by being driven and set in small particles like the storm-dust of
drifts, which, when in this condition, is fixed not only on sheer
cliffs, but in massive, overcurling cornices. Along the base of this
majestic range sweeps the Pacific Glacier, fed by innumerable cascading
tributaries, and discharging into the head of its fiord by two mouths
only partly separated by the brow of an island rock about one thousand
feet high, each nearly a mile wide.
Dancing down the mountain to camp, my mind glowing like the sunbeaten
glaciers, I found the Indians seated around a good fire, entirely happy
now that the farthest point of the journey was safely reached and the
long, dark storm was cleared away. How hopefully, peacefully bright
that night were the stars in the frosty sky, and how impressive was the
thunder of the icebergs, rolling, swelling, reverberating through the
solemn stillness! I was too happy to sleep.
About daylight next morning we crossed the fiord and landed on the
south side of the rock that divides the wall of the great glacier. The
whiskered faces of seals dotted the open spaces between the bergs, and
I could not prevent John and Charley and Kadachan from shooting at
them. Fortunately, few, if any, were hurt. Leaving the Indians in
charge of the canoe, I managed to climb to the top of the wall by a
good deal of step-cutting between the ice and dividing rock, and gained
a good general view of the glacier. At one favorable place I descended
about fifty feet below the side of the glacier, where its denuding,
fashioning action was clearly shown. Pushing back from here, I found
the surface crevassed and sunken in steps, like the Hugh Miller
Glacier, as if it were being undermined by the action of tide-waters.
For a distance of fifteen or twenty miles the river-like ice-flood is
nearly level, and when it recedes, the ocean water will follow it, and
thus form a long extension of the fiord, with features essentially the
same as those now extending into the continent farther south, where
many great glaciers once poured into the sea, though scarce a vestige
of them now exists. Thus the domain of the sea has been, and is being,
extended in these ice-sculptured lands, and the scenery of their shores
enriched. The brow of the dividing rock is about a thousand feet high,
and is hard beset by the glacier. A short time ago it was at least two
thousand feet below the surface of the over-sweeping ice; and under
present climatic conditions it will soon take its place as a
glacier-polished island in the middle of the fiord, like a thousand
others in the magnificent archipelago. Emerging from its icy sepulchre,
it gives a most telling illustration of the birth of a marked feature
of a landscape. In this instance it is not the mountain, but the
glacier, that is in labor, and the mountain itself is being brought
forth.
The Hoona Glacier enters the fiord on the south side, a short distance
below the Pacific, displaying a broad and far-reaching expanse, over
which many lofty peaks are seen; but the front wall, thrust into the
fiord, is not nearly so interesting as that of the Pacific, and I did
not observe any bergs discharged from it.
In the evening, after witnessing the unveiling of the majestic peaks
and glaciers and their baptism in the down-pouring sunbeams, it seemed
inconceivable that nature could have anything finer to show us.
Nevertheless, compared with what was to come the next morning, all that
was as nothing. The calm dawn gave no promise of anything uncommon. Its
most impressive features were the frosty clearness of the sky and a
deep, brooding stillness made all the more striking by the thunder of
the newborn bergs. The sunrise we did not see at all, for we were
beneath the shadows of the fiord cliffs; but in the midst of our
studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were startled
by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a strange
unearthly splendor on the topmost peak of the Fairweather Mountains.
Instead of vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, it spread and
spread until the whole range down to the level of the glaciers was
filled with the celestial fire. In color it was at first a vivid
crimson, with a thick, furred appearance, as fine as the alpenglow, yet
indescribably rich and deep—not in the least like a garment or mere
external flush or bloom through which one might expect to see the rocks
or snow, but every mountain apparently was glowing from the heart like
molten metal fresh from a furnace. Beneath the frosty shadows of the
fiord we stood hushed and awe-stricken, gazing at the holy vision; and
had we seen the heavens opened and God made manifest, our attention
could not have been more tremendously strained. When the highest peak
began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however
glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into the body of the sun
itself. Then the supernal fire slowly descended, with a sharp line of
demarcation separating it from the cold, shaded region beneath; peak
after peak, with their spires and ridges and cascading glaciers, caught
the heavenly glow, until all the mighty host stood transfigured,
hushed, and thoughtful, as if awaiting the coming of the Lord. The
white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks
of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of
all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains
themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more
impressive. How long we gazed I never knew. The glorious vision passed
away in a gradual, fading change through a thousand tones of color to
pale yellow and white, and then the work of the ice-world went on again
in everyday beauty. The green waters of the fiord were filled with
sun-spangles; the fleet of icebergs set forth on their voyages with the
upspringing breeze; and on the innumerable mirrors and prisms of these
bergs, and on those of the shattered crystal walls of the glaciers,
common white light and rainbow light began to burn, while the mountains
shone in their frosty jewelry, and loomed again in the thin azure in
serene terrestrial majesty. We turned and sailed away, joining the
outgoing bergs, while “Gloria in excelsis” still seemed to be sounding
over all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any
fate, feeling that, whatever the future might have in store, the
treasures we had gained this glorious morning would enrich our lives
forever.
When we arrived at the mouth of the fiord, and rounded the massive
granite headland that stands guard at the entrance on the north side,
another large glacier, now named the Reid, was discovered at the head
of one of the northern branches of the bay. Pushing ahead into this new
fiord, we found that it was not only packed with bergs, but that the
spaces between the bergs were crusted with new ice, compelling us to
turn back while we were yet several miles from the discharging frontal
wall. But though we were not then allowed to set foot on this
magnificent glacier, we obtained a fine view of it, and I made the
Indians cease rowing while I sketched its principal features. Thence,
after steering northeastward a few miles, we discovered still another
large glacier, now named the Carroll. But the fiord into which this
glacier flows was, like the last, utterly inaccessible on account of
ice, and we had to be content with a general view and sketch of it,
gained as we rowed slowly past at a distance of three or four miles.
The mountains back of it and on each side of its inlet are sculptured
in a singularly rich and striking style of architecture, in which
subordinate peaks and gables appear in wonderful profusion, and an
imposing conical mountain with a wide, smooth base stands out in the
main current of the glacier, a mile or two back from the discharging
ice-wall.
We now turned southward down the eastern shore of the bay, and in an
hour or two discovered a glacier of the second class, at the head of a
comparatively short fiord that winter had not yet closed. Here we
landed, and climbed across a mile or so of rough boulder-beds, and back
upon the wildly broken, receding front of the glacier, which, though it
descends to the level of the sea, no longer sends off bergs. Many large
masses, detached from the wasting front by irregular melting, were
partly buried beneath mud, sand, gravel, and boulders of the terminal
moraine. Thus protected, these fossil icebergs remain unmelted for many
years, some of them for a century or more, as shown by the age of trees
growing above them, though there are no trees here as yet. At length
melting, a pit with sloping sides is formed by the falling in of the
overlying moraine material into the space at first occupied by the
buried ice. In this way are formed the curious depressions in
drift-covered regions called kettles or sinks. On these decaying
glaciers we may also find many interesting lessons on the formation of
boulders and boulder-beds, which in all glaciated countries exert a
marked influence on scenery, health, and fruitfulness.
Three or four miles farther down the bay, we came to another fiord, up
which we sailed in quest of more glaciers, discovering one in each of
the two branches into which the fiord divides. Neither of these
glaciers quite reaches tide-water. Notwithstanding the apparent
fruitfulness of their fountains, they are in the first stage of
decadence, the waste from melting and evaporation being greater now
than the supply of new ice from their snowy fountains. We reached the
one in the north branch, climbed over its wrinkled brow, and gained a
good view of the trunk and some of the tributaries, and also of the
sublime gray cliffs of its channel.
Then we sailed up the south branch of the inlet, but failed to reach
the glacier there, on account of a thin sheet of new ice. With the
tent-poles we broke a lane for the canoe for a little distance; but it
was slow work, and we soon saw that we could not reach the glacier
before dark. Nevertheless, we gained a fair view of it as it came
sweeping down through its gigantic gateway of massive Yosemite rocks
three or four thousand feet high. Here we lingered until sundown,
gazing and sketching; then turned back, and encamped on a bed of
cobblestones between the forks of the fiord.
We gathered a lot of fossil wood and after supper made a big fire, and
as we sat around it the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk
with the Indians about the stars; and their eager, childlike attention
was refreshing to see as compared with the deathlike apathy of weary
town-dwellers, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and
care and poor shallow comfort.
After sleeping a few hours, I stole quietly out of the camp, and
climbed the mountain that stands between the two glaciers. The ground
was frozen, making the climbing difficult in the steepest places; but
the views over the icy bay, sparkling beneath the stars, were
enchanting. It seemed then a sad thing that any part of so precious a
night had been lost in sleep. The starlight was so full that I
distinctly saw not only the berg-filled bay, but most of the lower
portions of the glaciers, lying pale and spirit-like amid the
mountains. The nearest glacier in particular was so distinct that it
seemed to be glowing with light that came from within itself. Not even
in dark nights have I ever found any difficulty in seeing large
glaciers; but on this mountain-top, amid so much ice, in the heart of
so clear and frosty a night, everything was more or less luminous, and
I seemed to be poised in a vast hollow between two skies of almost
equal brightness. This exhilarating scramble made me glad and strong
and I rejoiced that my studies called me before the glorious night
succeeding so glorious a morning had been spent!
I got back to camp in time for an early breakfast, and by daylight we
had everything packed and were again under way. The fiord was frozen
nearly to its mouth, and though the ice was so thin it gave us but
little trouble in breaking a way for the canoe, yet it showed us that
the season for exploration in these waters was well-nigh over. We were
in danger of being imprisoned in a jam of icebergs, for the
water-spaces between them freeze rapidly, binding the floes into one
mass. Across such floes it would be almost impossible to drag a canoe,
however industriously we might ply the axe, as our Hoona guide took
great pains to warn us. I would have kept straight down the bay from
here, but the guide had to be taken home, and the provisions we left at
the bark hut had to be got on board. We therefore crossed over to our
Sunday storm-camp, cautiously boring a way through the bergs. We found
the shore lavishly adorned with a fresh arrival of assorted bergs that
had been left stranded at high tide. They were arranged in a curving
row, looking intensely clear and pure on the gray sand, and, with the
sunbeams pouring through them, suggested the jewel-paved streets of the
New Jerusalem.
On our way down the coast, after examining the front of the beautiful
Geikie Glacier, we obtained our first broad view of the great glacier
afterwards named the Muir, the last of all the grand company to be
seen, the stormy weather having hidden it when we first entered the
bay. It was now perfectly clear, and the spacious, prairie-like
glacier, with its many tributaries extending far back into the snowy
recesses of its fountains, made a magnificent display of its wealth,
and I was strongly tempted to go and explore it at all hazards. But
winter had come, and the freezing of its fiords was an insurmountable
obstacle. I had, therefore, to be content for the present with
sketching and studying its main features at a distance.
[Illustration: The Muir Glacier in the Seventies, showing Ice Cliffs
and Stranded Icebergs.]
When we arrived at the Hoona hunting-camp, men, women, and children
came swarming out to welcome us. In the neighborhood of this camp I
carefully noted the lines of demarkation between the forested and
deforested regions. Several mountains here are only in part deforested,
and the lines separating the bare and the forested portions are well
defined. The soil, as well as the trees, had slid off the steep slopes,
leaving the edge of the woods raw-looking and rugged.
At the mouth of the bay a series of moraine islands show that the trunk
glacier that occupied the bay halted here for some time and deposited
this island material as a terminal moraine; that more of the bay was
not filled in shows that, after lingering here, it receded
comparatively fast. All the level portions of trunks of glaciers
occupying ocean fiords, instead of melting back gradually in times of
general shrinking and recession, as inland glaciers with sloping
channels do, melt almost uniformly over all the surface until they
become thin enough to float. Then, of course, with each rise and fall
of the tide, the sea water, with a temperature usually considerably
above the freezing-point, rushes in and out beneath them, causing rapid
waste of the nether surface, while the upper is being wasted by the
weather, until at length the fiord portions of these great glaciers
become comparatively thin and weak and are broken up and vanish almost
simultaneously.
Glacier Bay is undoubtedly young as yet. Vancouver’s chart, made only a
century ago, shows no trace of it, though found admirably faithful in
general. It seems probable, therefore, that even then the entire bay
was occupied by a glacier of which all those described above, great
though they are, were only tributaries. Nearly as great a change has
taken place in Sum Dum Bay since Vancouver’s visit, the main trunk
glacier there having receded from eighteen to twenty five miles from
the line marked on his chart. Charley, who was here when a boy, said
that the place had so changed that he hardly recognized it, so many new
islands had been born in the mean time and so much ice had vanished. As
we have seen, this Icy Bay is being still farther extended by the
recession of the glaciers. That this whole system of fiords and
channels was added to the domain of the sea by glacial action is to my
mind certain.
We reached the island from which we had obtained our store of fuel
about half-past six and camped here for the night, having spent only
five days in Sitadaka, sailing round it, visiting and sketching all the
six glaciers excepting the largest, though I landed only on three of
them,—the Geikie, Hugh Miller, and Grand Pacific,—the freezing of the
fiords in front of the others rendering them inaccessible at this late
season.