The Berg-Thunder Seems Far Louder Than By Day, And
The Projecting Buttresses Seem Higher As They Stand Forward In The
Pale Light, Relieved By Gloomy Hollows, While The New-Born Bergs Are
Dimly Seen, Crowned With Faint Lunar Rainbows In The Up-Dashing
Spray.
But it is in the darkest nights when storms are blowing and
the waves are phosphorescent that the most impressive displays are
made.
Then the long range of ice-bluffs is plainly seen stretching
through the gloom in weird, unearthly splendor, luminous wave foam
dashing against every bluff and drifting berg; and ever and anon amid
all this wild auroral splendor some huge new-born berg dashes the
living water into yet brighter foam, and the streaming torrents
pouring from its sides are worn as robes of light, while they roar in
awful accord with the winds and waves, deep calling unto deep,
glacier to glacier, from fiord to fiord over all the wonderful bay.
After spending a few days here, we struck across to the main Hoona
village on the south side of Icy Strait, thence by a long cut-off
with one short portage to Chatham Strait, and thence down through
Peril Strait, sailing all night, hoping to catch the mail steamer at
Sitka. We arrived at the head of the strait about daybreak. The tide
was falling, and rushing down with the swift current as if descending
a majestic cataract was a memorable experience. We reached Sitka the
same night, and there I paid and discharged my crew, making allowance
for a couple of days or so for the journey back home to Fort
Wrangell, while I boarded the steamer for Portland and thus ended my
explorations for this season.
Part III
The Trip of 1890
Chapter XVII
In Camp at Glacier Bay
I left San Francisco for Glacier Bay on the steamer City of Pueblo,
June 14, 1890, at 10 A.M., this being my third trip to southeastern
Alaska and fourth to Alaska, including northern and western Alaska as
far as Unalaska and Pt. Barrow and the northeastern coast of Siberia.
The bar at the Golden Gate was smooth, the weather cool and pleasant.
The redwoods in sheltered coves approach the shore closely, their
dwarfed and shorn tops appearing here and there in ravines along the
coast up to Oregon. The wind-swept hills, beaten with scud, are of
course bare of trees. Along the Oregon and Washington coast the trees
get nearer the sea, for spruce and contorted pine endure the briny
winds better than the redwoods. We took the inside passage between
the shore and Race Rocks, a long range of islets on which many a good
ship has been wrecked. The breakers from the deep Pacific, driven by
the gale, made a glorious display of foam on the bald islet rocks,
sending spray over the tops of some of them a hundred feet high or
more in sublime, curving, jagged-edged and flame-shaped sheets. The
gestures of these upspringing, purple-tinged waves as they dashed and
broke were sublime and serene, combining displays of graceful beauty
of motion and form with tremendous power - a truly glorious show.
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