Pushing Back
From Here, I Found The Surface Crevassed And Sunken In Steps, Like
The Hugh Miller Glacier, As If It Were Being Undermined By The Action
Of Tide-Waters.
For a distance of fifteen or twenty miles the
river-like ice-flood is nearly level, and when it
Recedes, the ocean
water will follow it, and thus form a long extension of the fiord,
with features essentially the same as those now extending into the
continent farther south, where many great glaciers once poured into
the sea, though scarce a vestige of them now exists. Thus the domain
of the sea has been, and is being, extended in these ice-sculptured
lands, and the scenery of their shores enriched. The brow of the
dividing rock is about a thousand feet high, and is hard beset by the
glacier. A short time ago it was at least two thousand feet below the
surface of the over-sweeping ice; and under present climatic
conditions it will soon take its place as a glacier-polished island
in the middle of the fiord, like a thousand others in the magnificent
archipelago. Emerging from its icy sepulchre, it gives a most telling
illustration of the birth of a marked feature of a landscape. In this
instance it is not the mountain, but the glacier, that is in labor,
and the mountain itself is being brought forth.
The Hoona Glacier enters the fiord on the south side, a short
distance below the Pacific, displaying a broad and far-reaching
expanse, over which many lofty peaks are seen; but the front wall,
thrust into the fiord, is not nearly so interesting as that of the
Pacific, and I did not observe any bergs discharged from it.
In the evening, after witnessing the unveiling of the majestic peaks
and glaciers and their baptism in the down-pouring sunbeams, it
seemed inconceivable that nature could have anything finer to show
us. Nevertheless, compared with what was to come the next morning,
all that was as nothing. The calm dawn gave no promise of anything
uncommon. Its most impressive features were the frosty clearness of
the sky and a deep, brooding stillness made all the more striking by
the thunder of the newborn bergs. The sunrise we did not see at all,
for we were beneath the shadows of the fiord cliffs; but in the midst
of our studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were
startled by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a
strange unearthly splendor on the topmost peak of the Fairweather
Mountains. Instead of vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, it
spread and spread until the whole range down to the level of the
glaciers was filled with the celestial fire. In color it was at first
a vivid crimson, with a thick, furred appearance, as fine as the
alpenglow, yet indescribably rich and deep - not in the least like a
garment or mere external flush or bloom through which one might
expect to see the rocks or snow, but every mountain apparently was
glowing from the heart like molten metal fresh from a furnace.
Beneath the frosty shadows of the fiord we stood hushed and
awe-stricken, gazing at the holy vision; and had we seen the heavens
opened and God made manifest, our attention could not have been more
tremendously strained.
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