Making My Way Up A Steep Granite Slope, Its Projecting
Polished Bosses Encumbered Here And There By Boulders And The
Ground
and bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been
uprooted by the glacier during its
Recent advance, I traced the side
of the glacier for two or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of
its having encroached on the woods, which here run back along its
edge for fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of this
vast ice-river I could see down beneath it to a depth of fifty feet
or so in some places, where logs and branches were being crushed to
pulp, some of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it
stringy and coarse.
After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for three or four miles,
I chopped steps and climbed to the top, and as far as the eye could
reach, the nearly level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the
gray cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now almost moderate,
though rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a tendency
to mist in the drooping draggled clouds made me hesitate about
attempting to cross to the opposite shore. Although the distance was
only six or seven miles, no traces at this time could be seen of the
mountains on the other side, and in case the sky should grow darker,
as it seemed inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of
land and perhaps into a maze of crevasses I might find difficulty in
winning a way back.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 246 of 316
Words from 66671 to 66943
of 85542
