Up This Bend We Toiled Against Wind And Tide, Creeping
Closely Along The Wall On The Right Side, Which, As We Looked Upward,
Seemed To Be Leaning Over, While The Waves Beating Against The Bergs
And Rocks Made A Discouraging Kind Of Music.
At length, toward nine
o'clock, just before the gray darkness of evening fell, a long,
triumphant shout told that the glacier, so deeply and desperately
hidden, was at last hunted back to its benmost bore.
A short distance
around a second bend in the canyon, I reached a point where I obtained
a good view of it as it pours its deep, broad flood into the fiord in
a majestic course from between the noble mountains, its tributaries,
each of which would be regarded elsewhere as a grand glacier,
converging from right and left from a fountain set far in the silent
fastnesses of the mountains.
"There is your lost friend," said the Indians laughing; "he says,
'Sagh-a-ya'" (how do you do)? And while berg after berg was being
born with thundering uproar, Tyeen said, "Your friend has klosh
tumtum (good heart). Hear! Like the other big-hearted one he is
firing his guns in your honor."
I stayed only long enough to make an outline sketch, and then urged
the Indians to hasten back some six miles to the mouth of a side
canyon I had noted on the way up as a place where we might camp in
case we should not find a better. After dark we had to move with
great caution through the ice. One of the Indians was stationed in
the bow with a pole to push aside the smaller fragments and look out
for the most promising openings, through which he guided us,
shouting, "Friday! Tucktay!" (shoreward, seaward) about ten times a
minute. We reached this landing-place after ten o'clock, guided in
the darkness by the roar of a glacier torrent. The ground was all
boulders and it was hard to find a place among them, however small,
to lie on. The Indians anchored the canoe well out from the shore and
passed the night in it to guard against berg-waves and drifting
waves, after assisting me to set my tent in some sort of way among
the stones well back beyond the reach of the tide. I asked them as
they were returning to the canoe if they were not going to eat
something. They answered promptly: -
"We will sleep now, if your ice friend will let us. We will eat
to-morrow, but we can find some bread for you if you want it."
"No," I said, "go to rest. I, too, will sleep now and eat to-morrow."
Nothing was attempted in the way of light or fire. Camping that night
was simply lying down. The boulders seemed to make a fair bed after
finding the best place to take their pressure.
During the night I was awakened by the beating of the spent ends of
berg-waves against the side of my tent, though I had fancied myself
well beyond their reach. These special waves are not raised by wind
or tide, but by the fall of large bergs from the snout of the
glacier, or sometimes by the overturning or breaking of large bergs
that may have long floated in perfect poise. The highest berg-waves
oftentimes travel half a dozen miles or farther before they are much
spent, producing a singularly impressive uproar in the far recesses
of the mountains on calm dark nights when all beside is still. Far
and near they tell the news that a berg is born, repeating their
story again and again, compelling attention and reminding us of
earthquake-waves that roll on for thousands of miles, taking their
story from continent to continent.
When the Indians came ashore in the morning and saw the condition of
my tent they laughed heartily and said, "Your friend [meaning the big
glacier] sent you a good word last night, and his servant knocked at
your tent and said, 'Sagh-a-ya, are you sleeping well?'"
I had fasted too long to be in very good order for hard work, but
while the Indians were cooking, I made out to push my way up the
canyon before breakfast to seek the glacier that once came into the
fiord, knowing from the size and muddiness of the stream that drains
it that it must be quite large and not far off. I came in sight of it
after a hard scramble of two hours through thorny chaparral and
across steep avalanche taluses of rocks and snow. The front reaches
across the canyon from wall to wall, covered with rocky detritus, and
looked dark and forbidding in the shadow cast by the cliffs, while
from a low, cavelike hollow its draining stream breaks forth, a river
in size, with a reverberating roar that stirs all the canyon. Beyond,
in a cloudless blaze of sunshine, I saw many tributaries, pure and
white as new-fallen snow, drawing their sources from clusters of
peaks and sweeping down waving slopes to unite their crystal currents
with the trunk glacier in the central canyon. This fine glacier
reaches to within two hundred and fifty feet of the level of the sea,
and would even yet reach the fiord and send off bergs but for the
waste it suffers in flowing slowly through the trunk canyon, the
declivity of which is very slight.
Returning, I reached camp and breakfast at ten o'clock; then had
everything packed into the canoe, and set off leisurely across the
fiord to the mouth of another wide and low canyon, whose lofty outer
cliffs, facing the fiord, are telling glacial advertisements. Gladly
I should have explored it all, traced its streams of water and
streams of ice, and entered its highest chambers, the homes and
fountains of the snow. But I had to wait. I only stopped an hour or
two, and climbed to the top of a rock through the common underbrush,
whence I had a good general view.
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