supply of dry wood here, as there is none beyond."
Leaving this last green island we steered northwest into the great bay,
the country of ice and bare rocks. Muir's excitement was increasing
every moment, and as the majestic arena opened before us and the Muir,
Geicke, Pacific and other great glaciers (all nameless as yet) began to
appear, he could hardly contain himself. He was impatient of any delay,
and was constantly calling to the crew to redouble their efforts and get
close to these wonders. Now the marks of recent glaciation showed
plainly. Here was a conical island of gray granite, whose rounded top
and symmetrical shoulders were worn smooth as a Scotch monument by
grinding glaciers. Here was a great mountain slashed sheer across its
face, showing sharp edge and flat surface as if a slab of mountain size
had been sawed from it. Yonder again loomed a granite range whose huge
breasts were rounded and polished by the resistless sweep of that great
ice mass which Vancouver saw filling the bay.
Soon the icebergs were charging down upon us with the receding tide and
dressing up in compact phalanx when the tide arose. First would come
the advance guard of smaller bergs, with here and there a house-like
mass of cobalt blue with streaks of white and deeper recesses of
ultra-marine; here we passed an eight-sided, solid figure of
bottle-green ice; there towered an antlered formation like the horns of
a stag. Now we must use all caution and give the larger icebergs a wide
berth. They are treacherous creatures, these icebergs. You may be
paddling along by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping on the water as mild
and harmless as a lamb; when suddenly he will take a notion to turn
over, and up under your canoe will come a spear of ice, impaling it and
lifting it and its occupants skyward; then, turning over, down will go
canoe and men to the depths.
Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three
nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; hardly a bunch of grass was
seen. The only signs of former life were the sodden and splintered
spruce and fir stumps that projected here and there from the bases of
huge gravel heaps, the moraine matter of the mighty ice mass that had
engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
glacial period overwhelmed and ground them down, and buried them deep
under its moraine matter. When we landed there were no level spots on
which to pitch our tent and no sandy beaches or gravel beds in which to
sink our tent-poles. I learned from Muir the gentle art of sleeping on a
rock, curled like a squirrel around a boulder.
We passed by Muir Glacier on the other side of the bay, seeking to
attain the extreme end of the great fiord. We estimated the distance by
the tide and our rate of rowing, tracing the shore-line and islands as
we went along and getting the points of the compass from our little
pocket instrument.
Rain was falling almost constantly during the week we spent in Glacier
Bay. Now and then the clouds would lift, showing the twin peaks of La
Perouse and the majestic summits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon. These
mighty summits, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand
feet high, respectively, pierced the sky directly above us; sometimes
they seemed to be hanging over us threateningly. Only once did the sky
completely clear; and then was preached to us the wonderful Sermon of
Glacier Bay.
Early that morning we quitted our camp on a barren rock, steering
towards Mt. Fairweather. A night of sleepless discomfort had ushered in
a bleak gray morning. Our Indians were sullen and silent, their scowling
looks resenting our relentless purpose to attain to the head of the bay.
The air was damp and raw, chilling us to the marrow. The forbidding
granite mountains, showing here and there through the fog, seemed
suddenly to push out threatening fists and shoulders at us. All night
long the ice-guns had bombarded us from four or five directions, when
the great masses of ice from living glaciers toppled into the sea,
crashing and grinding with the noise of thunder. The granite walls
hurled back the sound in reiterated peals, multiplying its volume a
hundredfold.
There was no Love apparent on that bleak, gray morning: Power was there
in appalling force. Visions of those evergreen forests that had once
clung trustingly to these mountain walls, but had been swept, one and
all, by the relentless forces of the ice and buried deep under mountains
of moraine matter, but added to the present desolation. We could not
enjoy; we could only endure. Death from overturning icebergs, from
charging tides, from mountain avalanche, threatened us.
Suddenly I heard Muir catch his breath with a fervent ejaculation. "God,
Almighty!" he said. Following his gaze towards Mt. Crillon, I saw the
summit highest of all crowned with glory indeed. It was not sunlight;
there was no appearance of shining; it was as if the Great Artist with
one sweep of His brush had laid upon the king-peak of all a crown of the
most brilliant of all colors--as if a pigment, perfectly made and
thickly spread, too delicate for crimson, too intense for pink, had
leaped in a moment upon the mountain top; "An awful rose of dawn." The
summit nearest Heaven had caught a glimpse of its glory! It was a rose
blooming in ice-fields, a love-song in the midst of a stern epic, a drop
from the heart of Christ upon the icy desolation and barren affections
of a sin-frozen world. It warmed and thrilled us in an instant. We who
had been dull and apathetic a moment before, shivering in our wet
blankets, were glowing and exultant now. Even the Indians ceased their
paddling, gazing with faces of awe upon the wonder. Now, as we watched
that kingly peak, we saw the color leap to one and another and another
of the snowy summits around it. The monarch had a whole family of royal
princes about him to share his glory. Their radiant heads, ruby crowned,
were above the clouds, which seemed to form their silken garments.
As we looked in ecstatic silence we saw the light creep down the
mountains. It was changing now. The glowing crimson was suffused with
soft, creamy light. If it was less divine, it was more warmly human.
Heaven was coming down to man. The dark recesses of the mountains began
to lighten. They stood forth as at the word of command from the Master
of all; and as the changing mellow light moved downward that wonderful
colosseum appeared clearly with its battlements and peaks and columns,
until the whole majestic landscape was revealed.
Now we saw the design and purpose of it all. Now the text of this great
sermon was emblazoned across the landscape--"_God is Love_"; and we
understood that these relentless forces that had pushed the molten
mountains heavenward, cooled them into granite peaks, covered them with
snow and ice, dumped the moraine matter into the sea, filling up the
sea, preparing the world for a stronger and better race of men (who
knows?), were all a part of that great "All things" that "work together
for good."
Our minds cleared with the landscape; our courage rose; our Indians
dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst the
dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong devoutness of gratitude
filled us, to think that we were guided into this most wonderful room of
God's great gallery, on perhaps the only day in the year when the skies
were cleared and the sunrise, the atmospheric conditions and the point
of view all prepared for the matchless spectacle. The discomforts of the
voyage, the toil, the cold and rain of the past weeks were a small price
to pay for one glimpse of its surpassing loveliness. Again and again
Muir would break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with
exclamations:
"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"
Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
than two or three thousand feet, but Muir went more than twice as high.
Upon two or three of the glaciers he climbed, although the speed of
these icy streams was so great and their "frozen cataracts" were so
frequent, that it was difficult to ascend them.
I began to understand Muir's whole new theory, which theory made Tyndall
pronounce him the greatest authority on glacial action the world had
seen. He pointed out to me the mechanical laws that governed those
slow-moving, resistless streams; how they carved their own valleys; how
the lower valley and glacier were often the resultant in size and
velocity of the two or three glaciers that now formed the branches of
the main glaciers; how the harder strata of rock resisted and turned the
masses of ice; how the steely ploughshares were often inserted into
softer leads and a whole mountain split apart as by a wedge.
Muir would explore all day long, often rising hours before daylight and
disappearing among the mountains, not coming to camp until after night
had fallen. Again and again the Indians said that he was lost; but I had
no fears for him. When he would return to camp he was so full of his
discoveries and of the new facts garnered that he would talk until long
into the night, almost forgetting to eat.
Returning down the bay, we passed the largest glacier of all, which was
to bear Muir's name. It was then fully a mile and a half in width, and
the perpendicular face of it towered from four to seven hundred feet
above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
great waves threatened constantly to dash us against the sharp points of
the icebergs. We wished to land and scale the glacier from the eastern
side. We rowed our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
but, attempting to land, were forced hastily to put off again. A great
wave, formed by the masses of ice breaking off into the water,
threatened to dash our loaded canoe against the boulders on the beach.
Rowing further away, we tried it again and again, with the same result.
As soon as we neared the shore another huge wave would threaten
destruction. We were fully a mile and a half from the edge of the
glacier before we found it safe to land.
[Illustration: MUIR GLACIER
Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier of all, which
was to bear Muir's name]
Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty miles
across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains. A cold,
penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept up the
bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When night
approached and Muir had not returned, I set the Indians to digging out
from the bases of the gravel hills the frazzled stumps and logs that
remained of the buried forests. These were full of resin and burned
brightly. I made a great fire and cooked a good supper of venison,
beans, biscuit and coffee. When pitchy darkness gathered, and still Muir
did not come, Tow-a-att made some torches of fat spruce, and taking with
him Charley, laden with more wood, he went up the beach a mile and a
half, climbed the base of the mountain and kindled a beacon which
flashed its cheering rays far over the glacier.
Muir came stumbling into camp with these two Indians a little before
midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm glad to be in
camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not been for the
beacon and old Tow-a-att, I might have had to spend the night on the
ice. The crevasses were so many and so bewildering in their mazy,
crisscross windings that I was actually going farther into the glacier
when I caught the flash of light."
I brought him to the tent and placed the hot viands before him. He
attacked them ravenously, but presently was talking again:
"Man, man; you ought to have been with me. You'll never make up what you
have lost to-day. I've been wandering through a thousand rooms of God's
crystal temple. I've been a thousand feet down in the crevasses, with
matchless domes and sculptured figures and carved ice-work all about me.
Solomon's marble and ivory palaces were nothing to it. Such purity, such
color, such delicate beauty! I was tempted to stay there and feast my
soul, and softly freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What
a great death that would be!"
Again and again I would have to remind Muir that he was eating his
supper, but it was more than an hour before I could get him to finish
the meal, and two or three hours longer before he stopped talking and
went to sleep. I wish I had taken down his descriptions. What splendid
reading they would make!
But scurries of snow warned us that winter was coming, and, much to the
relief of our natives, we turned the prow of our canoe towards Chatham
Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his village, we took our route
northward again up Lynn Canal. The beautiful Davison Glacier with its
great snowy fan drew our gaze and excited our admiration for two days;
then the visit to the Chilcats and the return trip commenced. Bowling
down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered Stevens Passage,
and visited the two villages of the Auk Indians, a squalid, miserable
tribe. We camped at the site of what is now Juneau, the capital of
Alaska, and no dream of the millions of gold that were to be taken from
those mountains disturbed us. If we had known, I do not think that we
would have halted a day or staked a claim. Our treasures were richer
than gold and securely laid up in the vaults of our memories.
An excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier Bay, with its then
three living glaciers; a visit to two villages of the Taku Indians; past
Ft. Snettisham, up whose arms we pushed, mapping them; then to Sumdum.
Here the two arms of Holkham Bay, filled with ice, enticed us to
exploration, but the constant rains of the fall had made the ice of the
glaciers more viscid and the glacier streams more rapid; hence the vast
array of icebergs charging down upon us like an army, spreading out in
loose formation and then gathering into a barrier when the tide turned,
made exploration to the end of the bay impossible. Muir would not give
up his quest of the mother glacier until the Indians frankly refused to
go any further; and old Tow-a-att called our interpreter, Johnny, as for
a counsel of state, and carefully set forth to Muir that if he persisted
in his purpose of pushing forward up the bay he would have the blood of
the whole party on his hands.
Said the old chief: "My life is of no account, and it does not matter
whether I live or die; but you shall not sacrifice the life of my
minister."
I laughed at Muir's discomfiture and gave the word to retreat. This one
defeat of a victorious expedition so weighed upon Muir's mind that it
brought him back from the California coast next year and from the arms
of his bride to discover and climb upon that glacier.
On down now through Prince Frederick Sound, past the beautiful Norris
Glacier, then into Le Conte Bay with its living glacier and icebergs,
across the Stickeen flats, and so joyfully home again, Muir to take the
November steamboat back to his sunland.
I have made many voyages in that great Alexandrian Archipelago since,
traveling by canoe over fifteen thousand miles--not one of them a dull
one--through its intricate passages; but none compared, in the number
and intensity of its thrills, in the variety and excitement of its
incidents and in its lasting impressions of beauty and grandeur, with
this first voyage when we groped our way northward with only Vancouver's
old chart as our guide.
THE LOST GLACIER
NIGHT IN A CANOE
A dreary world! The constant rain
Beats back to earth blithe fancy's wings;
And life--a sodden garment--clings
About a body numb with pain.
Imagination ceased with light;
Of Nature's psalm no echo lingers.
The death-cold mist, with ghostly fingers,
Shrouds world and soul in rayless night.
An inky sea, a sullen crew,
A frail canoe's uncertain motion;
A whispered talk of wind and ocean,
As plotting secret crimes to do!
The vampire-night sucks all my blood;
Warm home and love seem lost for aye;
From cloud to cloud I steal away,
Like guilty soul o'er Stygian flood.
Peace, morbid heart! From paddle blade
See the black water flash in light;
And bars of moonbeams streaming white,
Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.
From darkest sea of deep despair
Gleams Hope, awaked by Action's blow;
And Faith's clear ray, though clouds hang low,
Slants up to heights serene and fair.
V
THE LOST GLACIER
John Muir was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel, the
daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great stampede of
1849 to California, but had found his gold in oranges, lemons and
apricots on a great fruit ranch at Martinez, California. A brief letter
from Muir told of his marriage, with just one note in it, the depth of
joy and peace of which I could fathom, knowing him so well. Then no word
of him until the monthly mailboat came in September. As I stood on the
wharf with the rest of the Wrangell population, as was the custom of our
isolation, watching the boat come in, I was overjoyed to see John Muir
on deck, in that same old, long, gray ulster and Scotch cap. He waved
and shouted at me before the boat touched the wharf.
Springing ashore he said, "When can you be ready?"
"Aren't you a little fast?" I replied. "What does this mean? Where's
your wife?"
"Man," he exclaimed, "have you forgotten? Don't you know we lost a
glacier last fall? Do you think I could sleep soundly in my bed this
winter with that hanging on my conscience? My wife could not come, so I
have come alone and you've got to go with me to find the lost. Get your
canoe and crew and let us be off."
The ten months since Muir had left me had not been spent in idleness at
Wrangell. I had made two long voyages of discovery and missionary work
on my own account,--one in the spring, of four hundred fifty miles
around Prince of Wales Island, visiting the five towns of Hydah Indians
and the three villages of the Hanega tribe of Thlingets. Another in the
summer down the coast to the Cape Fox and Tongass tribes of Thlingets,
and across Dixon entrance to Ft. Simpson, where there was a mission
among the Tsimpheans, and on fifteen miles further to the famous mission
of Father Duncan at Metlakahtla. I had written accounts of these trips
to Muir; but for him the greatest interest was in the glaciers and
mountains of the mainland.
Our preparations were soon made. Alas! we could not have our noble old
captain, Tow-a-att, this time. On the tenth of January, 1880,--the
darkest day of my life,--this "noblest Roman of them all" fell dead at
my feet with a bullet through his forehead, shot by a member of that
same Hootz-noo tribe where he had preached the gospel of peace so simply
and eloquently a few months before. The Hootz-noos, maddened by the
fiery liquor that bore their name, came to Wrangell, and a preliminary
skirmish led to an attack at daylight of that winter day upon the
Stickeen village. Old Tow-a-att had stood for peace, and rather than
have any bloodshed had offered all his blankets as a peace offering,
although in no physical fear himself; but when the Hootz-noos,
encouraged by the seeming cowardice of the Stickeens, broke into their
houses, and the Christianized tribe, provoked beyond endurance, came out
with their guns, Tow-a-att came forth armed only with his old carved
spear, the emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call
his tribe back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his
shoulder, he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses,
when, in an instant, the volley commenced on both sides, and this
Christian man, one of the simplest and grandest souls I ever knew, fell
dead at my feet, and the tribe was tumbled back into barbarism; and the
white man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against such
scenes, were responsible.
[Illustration: DAVIDSON GLACIER
The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white fan, drew our
gaze and excited our admiration for two days]
Muir mourned with me the fate of this old chief; but another of my men,
Lot Tyeen, was ready with a swift canoe. Joe, his son-in-law, and Billy
Dickinson, a half-breed boy of seventeen who acted as interpreter,
formed the crew. When we were about to embark I suddenly thought of my
little dog Stickeen and made the resolve to take him along. My wife and
Muir both protested and I almost yielded to their persuasion. I shudder
now to think what the world would have lost had their arguments
prevailed! That little, long-haired, brisk, beautiful, but very
independent dog, in co-ordination with Muir's genius, was to give to the
world one of its greatest dog-classics. Muir's story of "Stickeen" ranks
with "Rab and His Friends," "Bob, Son of Battle," and far above "The
Call of the Wild." Indeed, in subtle analysis of dog character, as well
as beauty of description, I think it outranks all of them. All over the
world men, women and children are reading with laughter, thrills and
tears this exquisite little story.
I have told Muir that in his book he did not do justice to my puppy's
beauty. I think that he was the handsomest dog I have ever known. His
markings were very much like those of an American Shepherd dog--black,
white and tan; although he was not half the size of one; but his hair
was so silky and so long, his tail so heavily fringed and beautifully
curved, his eyes so deep and expressive and his shape so perfect in its
graceful contours, that I have never seen another dog quite like him;
otherwise Muir's description of him is perfect.
When Stickeen was only a round ball of silky fur as big as one's fist,
he was given as a wedding present to my bride, two years before this
voyage. I carried him in my overcoat pocket to and from the steamer as
we sailed from Sitka to Wrangell. Soon after we arrived a solemn
delegation of Stickeen Indians came to call on the bride; but as soon as
they saw the puppy they were solemn no longer. His gravely humorous
antics were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after
their tribe--an exceptional honor. Thereafter the whole tribe adopted
and protected him, and woe to the Indian dog which molested him. Once
when I was passing the house of this same Lot Tyeen, one of his large
hunting dogs dashed out at Stickeen and began to worry him. Lot rescued
the little fellow, delivered him to me and walked into his house. Soon
he came out with his gun, and before I knew what he was about he had
shot the offending Indian dog--a valuable hunting animal.
Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate manner of many of his
species, did not like to be fussed over, would even growl when our
babies enmeshed their hands in his long hair; and yet, to a degree I
have never known in another dog, he attracted the attention of
everybody and won all hearts.
As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church, during his
visit of 1879 used to break away from solemn counsels with the other
D.D.s and the carpenters to run after and shout at Stickeen. And Mrs.
McFarland, the Mother of Protestant missions in Alaska, often begged us
to give her the dog; and, when later he was stolen from her care by an
unscrupulous tourist and so forever lost to us, she could hardly
afterwards speak of him without tears.