Long Beach made quite a display of
new houses along the beach, north of the mouth of the Columbia.
I had pleasant company on the Pueblo and sat at the chief engineer's
table, who was a good and merry talker. An old San Francisco lawyer,
rather stiff and dignified, knew my father-in-law, Dr. Strentzel.
Three ladies, opposed to the pitching of the ship, were absent from
table the greater part of the way. My best talker was an old
Scandinavian sea-captain, who was having a new bark built at Port
Blakely, - an interesting old salt, every sentence of his conversation
flavored with sea-brine, bluff and hearty as a sea-wave, keen-eyed,
courageous, self-reliant, and so stubbornly skeptical he refused to
believe even in glaciers.
"After you see your bark," I said, "and find everything being done to
your mind, you had better go on to Alaska and see the glaciers."
"Oh, I haf seen many glaciers already."
"But are you sure that you know what a glacier is?" I asked.
"Vell, a glacier is a big mountain all covered up vith ice."
"Then a river," said I, "must be a big mountain all covered with
water."
I explained what a glacier was and succeeded in exciting his
interest.
