We passed
through crowds of bergs at the mouth of the bay, though, owing to
wind and tide, there were but few at the front of Muir Glacier. A
fine, bright day, the last of a group of a week or two, as shown by
the dryness of the sand along the shore and on the moraine - rare
weather hereabouts. Most of the passengers went ashore and climbed
the morame on the east side to get a view of the glacier from a point
a little higher than the top of the front wall. A few ventured on a
mile or two farther. The day was delightful, and our one hundred and
eighty passengers were happy, gazing at the beautiful blue of the
bergs and the shattered pinnacled crystal wall, awed by the thunder
and commotion of the falling and rising ice bergs, which ever and
anon sent spray flying several hundred feet into the air and raised
swells that set all the fleet of bergs in motion and roared up the
beach, telling the story of the birth of every iceberg far and near.
The number discharged varies much, influenced in part no doubt by the
tides and weather and seasons, sometimes one every five minutes for
half a day at a time on the average, though intervals of twenty or
thirty minutes may occur without any considerable fall, then three or
four immense discharges will take place in as many minutes. The sound
they make is like heavy thunder, with a prolonged roar after deep
thudding sounds - a perpetual thunderstorm easily heard three or four
miles away. The roar in our tent and the shaking of the ground one or
two miles distant from points of discharge seems startlingly near.
I had to look after camp-supplies and left the ship late this
morning, going with a crowd to the glacier; then, taking advantage of
the fine weather, I pushed off alone into the silent icy prairie to
the east, to Nunatak Island, about five hundred feet above the ice. I
discovered a small lake on the larger of the two islands, and many
battered and ground fragments of fossil wood, large and small. They
seem to have come from trees that grew on the island perhaps
centuries ago. I mean to use this island as a station in setting out
stakes to measure the glacial flow. The top of Mt. Fairweather is in
sight at a distance of perhaps thirty miles, the ice all smooth on
the eastern border, wildly broken in the central portion. I reached
the ship at 2.30 P.M. I had intended getting back at noon and sending
letters and bidding friends good-bye, but could not resist this
glacier saunter. The ship moved off as soon as I was seen on the
moraine bluff, and Loomis and I waved our hats in farewell to the
many wavings of handkerchiefs of acquaintances we had made on the
trip.
Our goods - blankets, provisions, tent, etc. - lay in a rocky moraine
hollow within a mile of the great terminal wall of the glacier, and
the discharge of the rising and falling icebergs kept up an almost
continuous thundering and echoing, while a few gulls flew about on
easy wing or stood like specks of foam on the shore. These were our
neighbors.
After my twelve-mile walk, I ate a cracker and planned the camp. I
found that one of my boxes had been left on the steamer, but still we
have more than enough of everything. We obtained two cords of dry
wood at Juneau which Captain Carroll kindly had his men carry up the
moraine to our camp-ground. We piled the wood as a wind-break, then
laid a floor of lumber brought from Seattle for a square tent, nine
feet by nine. We set the tent, stored our provisions in it, and made
our beds. This work was done by 11.30 P.M., good daylight lasting to
this time. We slept well in our roomy cotton house, dreaming of
California home nests in the wilderness of ice.
June 25. A rainy day. For a few hours I kept count of the number of
bergs discharged, then sauntered along the beach to the end of the
crystal wall. A portion of the way is dangerous, the moraine bluff
being capped by an overlying lobe of the glacier, which as it melts
sends down boulders and fragments of ice, while the strip of sandy
shore at high tide is only a few rods wide, leaving but little room
to escape from the falling moraine material and the berg-waves. The
view of the ice-cliffs, pinnacles, spires and ridges was very
telling, a magnificent picture of nature's power and industry and
love of beauty. About a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet from the
shore a large stream issues from an arched, tunnel-like channel in
the wall of the glacier, the blue of the ice hall being of an
exquisite tone, contrasting with the strange, sooty, smoky,
brown-colored stream. The front wall of the Muir Glacier is about two
and a half or three miles wide. Only the central portion about two
miles wide discharges icebergs. The two wings advanced over the
washed and stratified moraine deposits have little or no motion,
melting and receding as fast, or perhaps faster, than it advances.
They have been advanced at least a mile over the old re-formed
moraines, as is shown by the overlying, angular, recent moraine
deposits, now being laid down, which are continuous with the medial
moraines of the glacier.
In the old stratified moraine banks, trunks and branches of trees
showing but little sign of decay occur at a height of about a hundred
feet above tide-water. I have not yet compared this fossil wood with
that of the opposite shore deposits. That the glacier was once
withdrawn considerably back of its present limit seems plain.
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